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My face falls and I stare down at the dress.
“You do not like it?” Surprise lowers his voice for a beat. His hand stills on my spine.
I shake my head. “It’s not that. It’s...”
“Speak your mind to me, April.” A command.
“Fine.” I turn to look up at him with my set jaw. “Last time you took me out of the castle, it didn't go so well for me. I don't want to look around me and have someone smile at me, and then I’m beaten down for it.” I fold my arms over my chest. “I don’t want to go.”
He ducks his head to the nook of my neck. His smirk shifts against my skin. “You fool yourself into believing you have some say in what I decide. It is ... What is the word?”
He kisses along the curve of my neck.
“Cute?” I challenge, fingering the crystal corset of the dress. It’s stiff to the touch, unmovable and absolutely stunning, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And it’s for me. Beige, cream—whatever the tone, it’s the mark of a slave.
“Adorable,” I add half-heartedly, letting my hand slip away from the dress and back to my side. “Frustrating?”
“Enticing,” he decides, drawing back from me. “You have some time to be prepared for the Court. I expect you will be presentable,” he adds, eyeing the damp curls he’s still got wound around his fingers. He slips his hand away.
“I’ll need help,” I tell him as I turn to face him. “I can only do a bun. Hilda taught me.”
“You may have assistance,” he says, eyeing me over. “I will meet you in the courtyard one hour before the Warmth.”
“Does that mean I have time for a sleep? We still have the whole Quiet.”
He turns to walk out. Before he leaves, he says, “Do what you must. I expect you ready, April. What you do beyond that does not concern me.”
Now I know that’s a lie.
Everything I do concerns him. I breathe, he watches. I look at another male, he strikes me. I’m not in the Hall for meals, he comes to find me.
He’s obsessed.
Terry’s words echo in my mind.
No, it’s more than that. He has kissed me a few times now, thinking I have no understanding of what that means.
He loves me. Some dark, twisted version of it, some kind of love that’s fitting for the dokkalves. But I guess that’s what it is.
Poison.
That’s what it means to me.
I don’t love him back.
I never will.
Sometimes, I like him—when he’s smirking and smiling and luring laughs out of me and playing with me. Even sometimes when he’s teasing and mocking me, I like him. But then the dark times come and dampen everything he’s done to build up that affection I dared to blossom for him.
Not only that, I can’t deny that my body responds to him, that my mind can swim for too long in memories of the pleasure he’s done to me. I especially get fixated on the black markings that cover his honey-toned skin, and the small dimples in his firm bottom.
So there’s that, too.
On-and-off affection and lust. That doesn't make love.
Not that I ever really expected love in my life. Back in the village, people marry for what the other one has, what they can build together. Not for love.
Mother and Father are just lucky that way.
