Page 19 of Reign
“Dreams are rarely reliable,” I say.
His stare goes murderous, and it almost comforts me.There’sthe man who never tolerated evasions from me. Not when he knew me, not when he hated me, and not even now when he doesn’t understand the difference.
His grip tightens in the sheets beside my shoulder, and I expect even more fire from him. But instead, he asks, “Why is it always like this?”
I go very fucking still. “Like what?”
“You.” His mouth twists around the word. “Your voice, your face, and that fucking look. The way everyone gets careful when your name comes up, and how I can’t ask a simple questionwithout half the room acting like I’ve pointed a gun at my own head.”
“Nikolaj—”
“I wake up with you in my skull, Vincenzo,” he growls out my name, and my heart does a traitorous leap at the sound of it. “I hear you saying things I don’t remember hearing. I see rooms I don’t remember entering. Books. Smoke. A gun underneath my chin, and always the same fucking line echoing in my head when I wake. Then the pain tears through my eye so hard that I nearly black out. So, don’t you fucking lie to me.”
My throat tightens around his words, and I know exactly which memory is trying to crawl its way back. He remembers enough to suffer, but not enough to know why. That might be worse than nothing.
“I can’t give you what you’re asking for,” I say.
He laughs, but it’s humorless. “Bullshit. You can tell me.”
I shake my head. “I can tell you my version. I can tell you what I remember and what happened from where I stood. I can tell you what you said and did, and I can tell you what it did to me when you forgot,” I tilt my head into the blade, and I can feel where blood starts to bead. “But if I hand it to you like that, you’ll either reject it because it comes from me, or you’ll break something open too fast and never get the pieces aligned correctly. You need records. Proof. Something that doesn’t come from my mouth.”
His eyes search mine, desperate in a way he will never call desperate out loud. “What records?”
“Vintermoor,” I say. “Look up your time there.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “I know what happened at Vintermoor.”
“No, you know what they allowed you to keep,” I correct. “You know what was easier for them to explain away.”
“They…” he asks.
“Your family. Mine. Whoever benefitted from the silence without knowing what you would become.”
His face hardens with such speed that it might be mistaken for indifference, and his grip tightens on the knife. “Careful, Vieri,” he warns.
I scoff. “If you wanted me dead, I’d never have opened my eyes.”
For a moment, it looks like he might cut me, if only to punish the honesty. Instead, he lowers his face closer to mine, close enough that I can see the darker ring around his iris. Close enough that my body betrays me by remembering the exact angle required to kiss him.
“This is a fucking game to you, isn’t it?” he says, his breathing getting heavier by degrees.
“No.” The word leaves me sharper than intended. “No, this is the furthest thing from a game. Look up your time at Vintermoor and ask yourself why those closest to you never answer you properly, and why the name Vieri doesn’t feel as simple as it should.”
“You’re very brave for a man with a knife to his throat.”
“I’m very tired,” I correct lazily. “And very drunk.Andvery done with being the only one in this equation who remembers what happened at that godforsaken academy.”
There’s open hostility in his eyes, and he shifts his weight slightly over my lap. My body registers every inch of it with humiliating clarity. Bourbon still sits heavy in my veins, but not enough to dull him. Nothing is ever enough to dull him.
“Now, do you mind leaving so I can sleep this off? I have a full schedule tomorrow,” I lie, needing him gone and wanting him closer in equal measure.
“Liar.”
The word should anger me, but it doesn’t. No, it warms some old, tragic corner of me instead, because he used to call me that in a dozen ways.
Liarwhen I said we’d never be more than a fuck.
Liarwhen I told him he was only useful on his knees.
