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I sit up a little to allow him more access, taking comfort in the woodsy smell that is utterly Einar.
“But how much of what we tell him can we trust him not to tell her?” I despise having to wonder about this, to keep more from her, to question if she’ll ever be able to overcome a lifetime of loyalty to a woman who will never, ever deserve it.
Or a lifetime of fear that she hardly acknowledges.
“You said he hates her,” Einar reminds me.
“He hates her the way you hated me,” I explain.
“Ah, so not at all then.”
“Liar.” I splash a tiny bit of water back at him.
“Well, not much, anyway,” he amends.
Shaking my head, I lean back against him. He drops the soap in the still-steaming water, trailing his fingers up and down my sides, circling my hipbones in a tantalizing pattern.
“Well, allow me to show you how very little I hate you now.” His lips are pressed against my shoulder, so I feel the words as much as hear them.
Perhaps I should argue, insist on talking this to death. But there are no guarantees in Madame’s world.
So I take this moment with him for myself and tuck it away where she can never steal it from me.
CHAPTEREIGHT
REMY
Nothing Aika does should surprise me anymore.
And it doesn’t, entirely.
Once I found out that the tiny girl who spent her evenings in her bed with me was spending her nights torturing people and burning them alive, my capacity for shock where she was concerned somewhat dissipated.
Then she announced that she was The Flame.
Celestial Hells.
It’s impossible to piece together everything I already knew about the girl I just married, to make it fit with the things I know now.
Zaina has left by the time I emerge from the washroom, but not before she destroyed all the evidence of Aika’s injuries. What was left of the shoes, the vials she brought, and all the stained towels are gone. Even my sister’s dress.
Warmth spreads through the room, stretching from the raging fire in the hearth. I see it then, the bloody fabric cracking and popping in the fireplace. I don’t know what she did with all the glass, but colorful flames burst and catch around the gown Aika was wearing.
I have a fleeting thought about how that’s the last time Gisele will let me borrow a dress before I catch sight of my new wife and the humor melts away, just as surely as the expensive fabric in the flames.
She’s tucked underneath the plush white blanket, so still and silent that it’s easy to believe she is nothing more than a ghost in my bed. A spectral form of the girl I thought I knew.
Gemma.
The vigilante.
Lady Aika—mywife.
And now The Flame.
So many identities, yet not one of them fits her.
I would almost think she was sleeping except for the reflection of flames dancing in her onyx gaze while she assesses my every move.
