Page 247 of Between Two Kings

“Do you want me to go?” she whispered.

Was she imagining it? Or did a smile cross his lips? “I want you to decide for yourself.”

Tem went. Just before she reached Leo’s bedroom, she looked over her shoulder to see Caspen one last time. But he was gone.

Leo closed the door after her. Tem couldn’t believe she was back in Leo’s bedroom for the second time in the span of an hour. This time, it was Leo who handed her a drink, and this time it was whiskey. She wondered wildly where Evelyn had ended up. Was she sequestered in another bedroom somewhere, drowning her feelings in expensive champagne? No. Tem would have bet everything she owned that Evelyn was still downstairs socializing, keeping up appearances, no matter the cost.

Leo still hadn’t spoken. In the silence, Tem thought of all the things she wished she could do. She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to press her lips to his. It was torture not to.

“You look beautiful, Tem,” he whispered. He shouldn’t be saying that. He shouldn’t be telling a woman who wasn’t his bride that she looked beautiful. But he was.

“So do you,” Tem whispered back.

Leo tilted his head. “Is that so?”

“Yes. Boys can be pretty too.”

He smiled. Did he remember when she’d said that to him the first time they’d slept together? Did he know that she still meant it? Tem had to break the moment.

“How are you feeling?”

To her surprise, Leo laughed. “How am I feeling?”

“I don’t know what else to ask.”

Leo crossed to the fire. “I don’t know how to answer.”

Tem joined him, and they stared at the flames together.

“I feel sad,” he whispered.

Tem turned to him. His gray eyes were shining. “Why would you say that?”

Leo stepped closer. “Because I can’t breathe when I look at you. Because it hurts”—he pressed his hands to his chest—“right here.”

Tem’s chest felt the same. It had felt that way ever since he’d walked off the stage at their wedding. Nothing had felt good since then. Nothing had felt right. There were too many memories here—too many reminders of what she and Leo had been through. Too many things that were no longer hers.

Leo was still talking:

“I think about you all the time, Tem. I can’t fucking stop. Nothing distracts me—nothing draws my focus. You’re always there, in the back of my mind, watching me.”

“I’m not watching—”

“I know you feel it too. I know what you did at our wedding did something to us.”

Tem stared up at him.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” He stepped even closer. She didn’t step away. “Something changed. We’re different than we were. It’s not just that you can give me orders. It’s something else—something permanent. Your basilisk magic bound us together, didn’t it?”

Tem didn’t trust herself to speak. She could only nod.

“I fucking knew it,” Leo hissed.

The same scent from earlier washed over her. An earthiness she couldn’t place.

“What is it, Tem? What did you do to us?”

That question was too vast to answer. What had Tem done to them? She’d ruined them. She’d made it so that Leo’s life was at stake—so he was trapped with a woman who didn’t love him the way Tem did. The conditions of the crest were clear: it would bind the recipient to her. Tem should have guessed that there would be some caveat, some horrible catch. Nothing with the basilisks was simple—certainly not their magic. There were always complications. Always a cost.