Page 18 of Bride of Ash & Dust

What in the nine hells?

I glance down at the stupid red strips of fabric I’m wearing. They’ve come off-center, so I have red cloth covering the curve of my stomach while my bare nipples point at my husband.

Sometimes they need a little help, Anura told me. I didn’t think Zarek would need help. His cock was hard when he walked into the room. And the strips of crimson fabric trailing down my body feel stupid, like dressing up a goat and parading her through the streets. He must not have been past the stopping point after all.

Or maybe he just doesn’t want me.

“Fuck,” Zarek growls, loudly, as he rocks back and forth on the bed. “Fuck, yes!”

I feel too hot, then too cold. There’s an unpleasant ache between my legs; the room is spinning so violently I feel like I’m going to throw up. And when Zarek leans back, there’s nothing hard between his legs, just soft black fabric across his thighs.

And a knife.

Shit.

I gasp as Zarek pulls a blade from a sheath strapped around his thigh. Without looking at me, he runs the blade across his skin. Blood swells from the cut in his thigh. I gag, and he reaches for the sheet beneath me.

Crimson spreads across the white fabric as Zarek presses it to his skin, and I think of the map that Blayne showed me, the one where Vsenrog flowed out like ink to cover all the places I loved.

Vsenrog. My husband’s kingdom.

The back of my throat turns hot and bitter. I only just make it to the edge of the bed and shove the curtain aside before vomiting onto the floor. I retch over and over, thinking about mirrors that are windows, wondering how many people just watched me puke cake and wine and Anura’s drugs onto the thick carpet beneath the bed. A sob slips out from between my lips, followed by another, harsh and barking.

“Well, that was fun,” the snake says from behind me.

There’s another rattle of rungs pulled over wood. He slides off the other side of the bed and comes to his feet. I’m dimly aware of my husband pulling on his pants as the room spins wildly around the bed, and the tears I feel like I’ve been holding for my entire life pour down my face.

“I’m going to go get drunk,” Zarek announces.

With that, he pulls the curtains closed and leaves me alone, on the bloody sheets, sobbing as if I’ve just lost something important.

Chapter 12

Zarek

PUNISHMENT

Fuck me. Everything hurts.

I open my eyes to glare at the rising sun as it spills through the windows of the feast hall. There’s an army stomping on the inside of my skull, my mouth tastes like something died in it, and apparently, I just spent my wedding night passed out on the floor of the feast hall.

And my wife spent it drugged out of her mind. Lovely.

She wasn’t drugged at the feast. There’s no way she could have been drugged and taken that bite of cake from the end of my sword, a gesture so blatantly sexual I have the bad feeling it’s going to be a recurring theme in my jack-off fantasies for the rest of my life.

So she was saving the drugs for the marital bed.

I sigh, then force myself to my feet. My head howls in protest.

She might be addicted. Something twists in my chest as I remember the scent of vomit and old hay, sun slanting through the open window⁠—

Shit. That would explain why her kingdom was so happy to hand her off to Vsenrog, although Petrys probably would have heard if she had any bad habits like that. You can’t exactly hide addiction, especially not in a castle full of servants with wagging tongues.

I stagger toward the door, trying to avoid the patches of obnoxiously bright sunlight as they fall across the polished floor. There are a few half-empty wine glasses still on the table. I grab one and down it, which helps take the edge off the hammer beating on the inside of my temples.

“Zarek.”

I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, then look up. Mortimyr, one of King Malrik’s personal attendants, is watching me with his customary expression of distaste, as if I were something particularly offensive that crawled up from the dungeons.