Page 36 of Bride of Ash & Dust

I know a trap when I see one. I don’t say anything, even though my mind is screaming.

Men can’t hold back, Blayne said. Not after you push them past the stopping point. He warned me not to keep pushing, but I wanted one more kiss. I wanted to know what it felt like to touch the hard rod between his legs.

He asked me not to push him. Hells, he begged me not to.

But I pushed him anyway. I forced him past the stopping point, time and again. It was my own fault I lost my maidenhead, that I was no innocent bride. I did it to myself.

But Zarek is right, too. Blayne did have that potion in his bag. Every time. And he made me drink it every time I pushed him past the stopping point, even though it made me bleed so heavily I was dizzy for a week.

Zarek shakes his head.

“Fuck that guy,” he declares.

I swallow. The woman with the milky eye shows up at our table with two more mugs of bitter ale, and I take a long swig. This mug tastes better than the first, for some bizarre reason.

“Okay,” Zarek says, brushing his hands together like he’s getting rid of something. “Let’s see the letter.”

Chapter 21

Zarek

MY DEAREST L⁠—

Lilias pushes my cloak off her shoulders, letting the fabric pool around her hips as she pulls the tightly folded square of parchment from her pocket. She holds it out for me. It shivers above the sticky table. I shake my head.

“You read it,” I say. “It’s got your seal on it.”

She frowns, like she’s about to disagree, but then she slides her fingernail under the wax seal and unfolds the parchment. Her lips move slightly as she reads the message, and her eyes widen.

I try to swallow the knot of fear rising in the back of my throat. I still don’t know this woman particularly well, and she’s just been through one hell of a shock. Two shocks, actually; her husband interrupted her with a lover, and her lover used her royal seal without her knowledge.

Asking her to read the message might be a mistake.

I clench my jaw as I watch her. At least we’re here, in the scummiest pub in town. If she throws a fit in here, it won’t get back to the king’s ears. Probably.

Lilias flings the parchment down on the table and recoils like she’s trying to get away from it.

“I— I didn’t write that,” she stammers.

She looks angry, but there’s something more beneath the anger. Fear, sure, but not just fear. Slowly, giving her plenty of time to stop me, I reach for the parchment.

She doesn’t stop me.

The handwriting scrawled across the parchment is soft and flowery, exactly what you’d expect for a princess. It’s written in some sort of blue ink, making the message look both frivolous and expensive. The parchment is thick, too; it feels expensive, luxurious. Someone clearly put a fair amount of thought into this.

I turn to the words scratched in blue ink.

My dearest L— it begins.

I miss you terribly. My situation here is unbearable— the snake violates me every night. My tears mean less than nothing to him⁠—

I stop reading. The skin pulls tight on the back of my neck, that old warning. There’s danger here, hidden just beneath the surface, maddeningly out of view.

“I didn’t write that,” Lilias says again.

She’s scowling at the scrap of parchment like she wants to punch it, and I realize I believe her. I don’t have any reason to trust this woman, but still, I do.

“I know,” I say.