“I would have lied to you forever if I thought I could get away with it.”
The admittance strikes me like a stone to the head, and I waver, blinking rapidly, trying to clear my blurring vision.
The words were said with such cold, detached certainty.
“Why?”
“Because I made a promise to a dying woman.” He slides forward a step, a half-lit shadow lording over me, boring through my ebbing stability. “A promise I intend to keep.”
“And what was that promise?” I ask around the swollen lump in my throat.
“To keep yousafe.”
Safe ...
“And that’s it?” Every cell in my body seems to pause. “That’s theonlyreason?”
“Yes.”
His reply is instant, the word a lash that severs something vital.
My eyes shutter, and I feel my heart do the same—the single word a needle that bleeds my bubble of uncertainty.
I lift my chin, watching his eyes widen as I harden my own. “Well. Consider this me formally releasing you from that pledge.”
I stalk toward the bed, but a hand whips out and snags my wrist, halting my retreat and making my head whirl around.
“Lai—”
“Get your hand off me.”
He drops it with a sharp hiss, then snatches the other andyanks—pulling me so close I can feel the beat of his anger in the rise and fall of his chest. He dips his head and plants his face right in front of mine, so I’m assaulted by the draft of his icy breath.
“You’ll never be rid of me. You may not have a shadow, but you’re chained to mine for eternity. You thinkthishas any weight?” he says, waving my wrist around—the one shackled by Cainon’s cupla—and a vicious sort of chuckle rolls out of him that smarts my skin. “You can run off and tie yourself to your pretty High Master, but I’ll hunt you to the four corners of the continent. Not because I want to, but because I can’tfuckinghelp myself.”
My wrist is tossed at me with such force that I stumble back three steps. He traces those same steps until my back collides with one of the poles on my four-poster bed.
I suck a gasp as he pulls so close I can feel the press of all his hard angles, all the bulging pockets of muscle. His thigh slides between my legs and notches into place, pressing against my most private area ...
That bare, exposed part of me that’s suddenly flushed and aching.
I should be afraid, pinned to a pole by a man well over twice my size wearing eyes glazed with ire.
I’m not.
I’m trapped somewhere between wanting to claw his face off and wishing he’d lift his thigh—put a little more pressure on that hot, swollen spot between my legs.
His gaze cuts to the side, and he sneers, snatchingGypsy and the Night Kingoff the edge of my bed. “You want a fairy tale?” he spits, waving it in my face. “I’myour fucking fairy tale. I’m nailed to your soul, Orlaith, and believe me when I tell you there is no happily ever after. Not for me, and certainly not for you.”
He tosses the book on the bed and retreats a step, leaving me gasping for air and clinging to the pole.
My world has tipped on its axis. I don’t recognize myself, and I have absolutely no idea who this man is standing before me, looking at me like he despises me.Trulydespises me.
Right now, the feeling is mutual.
I hate that he’s lied to me all these years—hurt me in ways that are unforgivable. And I hate that even now, after everything he’s done, my body is still hot and so fucking raw for him, my muscles throbbing with need for him to dig up into me.
I’m confused, scattered, and done.
