Page 117 of City of Snakes
I sighed. El could be so tiresome. “I had my chance for all of that once. It’s not something you come across twice.”
“Sayswho?”
I glared at her and grunted, but that didn’t deter her.
“Kraiiit, get this through your thick skull—that woman has the weight of two realms on her shoulders while also facing a shit decision. And for some reason, she’s still even an ounce interested in your insufferable ass. Loving each other in the end? Wouldn’t that be a karmic reward for both of you?”
I groaned with a hand over my face before my gaze landed on the bronze statue in the corner.
My heart sank.
“No one said a thing about love. Stop building a life for me in your head. We need a child—those can be made without the novelty of parents who love each other.”
Elsedora reached out and grabbed my shoulder, with an irritating, condescending expression. “Know that when you ruin this for yourself, and it comes crashing down, I’ll be here for you. But I will not refrain from saying that I told you so. Because with that attitude...you are undoubtedly going to ruin it.”
She hopped off the desk and headed for the door. “I’m off to see a King about a sword.” Her airy voice carried over her shoulder.
There was no point in telling her not to go. “Be careful,” I said uselessly as the door shut behind her.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
You could not ruin something you never intended to have.
I’d let desire win in the library. I couldn’t allow that to happen again until I pulled myself together. I needed to stay indifferent to her.
I entered the bedchamber that night only after Sybilla had fallen asleep andintendedto rise before she woke.
But when my eyes snapped open at sunrise, Sybilla was awake—facing me. I nearly jumped from the bed.
She’d propped herself up, with her head resting in her palm and elbow on the pillow beside me. Her hair was tied back with that silly blue ribbon, and she’d already dressed for the day in a light linen dress.
“I already relit the candles that burned out in the tower.”
My eyes widened. She’d been to the bell tower. Again. I wondered what conversations she’d attempted to have with the dead this time. I wondered whether she’d spoken ill of me.
“You didn’t have to—”
She cut me off. “I know. I wanted to. And there is something we need to discuss, so I couldn’t afford you running off before I woke up.”
Lifting myself onto my elbows, I scooted up so my back rested against the wooden headboard. “Alright,” I answered, looking down at her there in my bed. She stared at me like she was about to begin negotiations.
I’d been ambushed at the crack of dawn.
“I once wanted to marry for love...My father tried to arrange three perfectly suitable political matches. Bringham was one. There were two others—a noble from the East Corridor, then another from the Southern isles. Each engagement failed because I was too stubborn to recognize that love didn’t need to be a part of the equation.” She swallowed hard.
“What about Mattock?” I asked, my teeth clenching against the subtle pain in my chest at the thought of her with the North King.
“I asked Emmerick to marry me once. It was long before my father died. I wasn’t yet eighteen. But I didn’t ask him to be my King—I asked him to run away with me. To live a life away from the courts of Henosis. He refused, obviously.”
My brow furrowed. “Why‘obviously’?”
I wanted to let my Shadows tear apart any other man who’d touched her.
She gave me a dry expression. “That would not have been the life he deserved. He made the right choice for both of us. I was young and naive. My people didn’t need a fool in love. They needed a Queen willing to sacrifice whatever she must.”
She met my eyes with an intensity that was like poisonous flames ready to engulf me. I missed the heat in her stare, the gasps and moans I’d summoned out of her, the way she’d tugged at my hair. This cool and calculated alternative spelled disaster.
“I don’t need love in a marriage,” she concluded.
