Page 82 of Between Two Kings

“Such as?”

“Such as what happened just now. I gave you an order—I told you to calm down, and you did it.”

There was a moment of silence as Tem waited for her words to land. Then:

“But why did I do it? Why did I feel so…?” But Leo trailed off.

Tem couldn’t imagine how it felt for him to receive a command and have to obey it. She’d never been controlled like that before. The fact that she’d just done it to Leo—even inadvertently—made her want to cry. He deserved to know the truth.

“The bond makes it so that you must do as I say.”

Comprehension dawned on him slowly. Leo had saved her life. Now she controlled his. “I’m…beholden to you?”

Tears threatened to fall. “Yes,” she whispered. “Technically, you are, but I would never—”

“Never what?” he snapped. “Give me an order? You just did.”

“No, I mean—yes, I did…but not because I wanted to. I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted you to—”

“Wanted me to what? To calm down? So you ordered me to do it?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

But Leo just stared at her, his hands clenched into fists. “Your intent is irrelevant,” he said icily.

Tem could only sit there and take it. He was absolutely right; it didn’t matter that she hadn’t meant it. She had done it, and she couldn’t take it back.

“I’m sorry, Leo. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

He only shook his head.

The parallels weren’t lost on Tem. She was saying all the things Caspen had once said to her—that he would try his best not to hurt her, that it wouldn’t happen again, that he would do better next time. And he never did. And Tem knew she wouldn’t either. If a time came when she needed to give Leo an order, she would do it. She knew she would. Her basilisk side would demand it of her, like it demanded so many other things. It didn’t matter that her human side hated the thought of controlling someone else. The serpent in her longed for more.

Of all the things she was trying to protect Leo from—heartbreak, Evelyn, his father, the villagers, Caspen—she hadn’t considered protecting him from herself. Tem needed to be better for Leo. She needed to be the person he deserved. But it wasn’t so simple. She wasn’t so simple. It was not a matter of will. Tem was resisting the draw of nature, the very thing that brought her to Leo in the first place. It was impossible to resist such a force, and she was powerless against it.

“This isn’t the first time, is it?” Leo said.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t the first order you’ve given me. At our wedding, you told me to go. You told me to find Evelyn.”

Tem bit her lip. Was he going to yell at her for that? “Yes. I did.”

She expected him to stand up again—to explode. Instead he simply stared at her, his brow slightly furrowed, as if he were working out a complicated problem.

“Why did you do that?” he asked quietly.

Why indeed. It was the same question she’d asked herself a hundred times since then. There was really only one answer. “Because I wanted you to be happy. You deserved more.”

Myriad emotions passed over his face. Tem had no idea what he was thinking and didn’t dare ask. Instead she waited for a long moment before saying, “The last thing I wanted was to hurt you, Leo.”

This was received with an incredulous laugh. “And yet, that’s all you do, Tem.”

She opened her mouth to protest but found she didn’t have the words. Then, to her surprise, Leo softened.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

He didn’t say he didn’t mean it—only that he shouldn’t have said it.