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But he wasn’t going to ask. He’d said no without hesitation, just like he’d turned down Astrid Panarina’s marriage proposal. As though it had never even been within contemplation.
“My response needs to be placating,” Ren mused, and it took me a moment to realise he considered the matter so settled that he’d changed the subject back to what we’d been discussing before. Lukia’s unjust demands for reparations. “But firm. Something that says ‘we hear you and we’d prefer not to end up at war’, but also ‘fuck you with something extremely sharp because your duke tried to kill my fucking consort.’” He cocked his head. “Perhaps I should commission the palace bard to convey it through song?”
“Well, Lukia will be expecting to find you dead or incapacitated by grief when they arrive tomorrow,” I murmured, capturing his hand and kissing his knuckles one by one in a pitiful attempt toconvey how very much I loved him. “I expect that will give you an advantage.”
He’d have them begging for Quareh’s forgiveness within the hour, I was sure.
Ren was silent for a moment as he processed that. “Mathias,” he said quietly. “What the fuck happened today?”
“I’ll tell you after you’ve had a good night’s sleep,” I responded. “Maybe when you’re in another of those annoyingly chipper morning moods?”
He snorted. “I’m normal in the mornings. You’re just extra grumpy.”
“You’ve never beennormal, husband,” I said affectionately, and then yelped as he shimmied his way down me to rummage in my pocket.
“Got anymore snacks? Ooh, what’s this?”
“A fucking nosy prick,” I snapped when he tugged the letter from my pocket. I tried to snatch it back but he deftly rolled out of the way and gave me a solid smack on my thigh for my efforts.
Ren’s face lit up in recognition as he scanned the letter’s contents.
I sighed. “Your Council made me open it when we realised you were missing.”
“Hmm,” he said, looking thoughtful and more than a little sly. “I hope you found it instructive?”
Technically yes, for it had beenfilledwith instructions, carefully detailed and characteristically filthy.
Helpful instructions, absolutely not.
“You’re going to write another Letter of Last Instruction – a proper one,” I quickly amended, “that actually assists yourkingdom in the unthinkable event of your death and does not include a single word about what kind ofshowyou expect me to put on for you.”
Ren pouted. “But I’ll be so bored,” he whined. “At least this way, looking back down onto the earthly plane from heaven, I get to have fun watching you pleasuring yourself. And a little bit of self-torture,” he admitted happily.
“Renato.”
He tossed the parchment back onto my chest. “Letters of Last Instruction are for revealing secrets the king does not wish to share before he dies,” he said with disdain. “I have no secrets from you,mi cielo.”
“Except a certain secret passageway in a certain storage room,” I pointed out, making him hide his face under the hem of my shirt. Stubble brushed against my stomach.
“That was…to be fair, I only remembered it at the time,” Ren explained sheepishly, wide eyes peeking out over the top of the fabric as if to assess how mad I was before he dared to re-emerge. It was adorable, and I had to try very hard not to laugh.
“The Council had all pissed me off,” he continued, then raised his voice in exaggerated mimicry. “‘You can’t be a king without an heir! One stray arrow could end your dynasty! If only you had married a woman like every single Quarehian king in the history of ever!’ Fuckingassholes.”
I reached out and rested my hand on his head. He eyed it suspiciously as if I shouldn’t know where to find him when he was still hiding, and then nuzzled up into my palm.
“Perhaps I should have called an end to the meeting sooner, but I didn’t want them to just pick the subject up next time.” Ren huffed out an annoyed breath. “But by the time I’d yelled at themand left the room, I felt…not right,” he muttered, ducking his head, and I translated that Ren-speak asabout to have a panic attack.For a man who prided himself on forthrightness, he was never very good at voicing his struggles with his mental health.
“I needed space,” he said awkwardly, and I nodded, appreciating that feeling. I understood the necessity of our guards – especially since seeing that pile of threats Vidrio had been holding – but I missed being able to take walks without someone constantly at my back. And Ren hated anyone seeing what he thought of as his weakness.
“I wanted to find you, Nat, but I didn’t know where you were, and then we were passing the storage room and I remembered sneaking through there with my brother when we were children. I just thought…I didn’t mean to be so long. I thought I’d be back before Aitor even noticed.”
“Why come here?” I asked gently. “Why this particular place?”
Ren sprang to his feet and raced across the room to the bookcases we’d been fucking against earlier. “This is the palace’s old library,” he called over his shoulder, hair flying loose behind him. “Most of the books got moved over when they built the new one, but the really old and obscure texts that no one reads remained. I thought if there was an answer to our fuckingheirissue, it would be here.”
My heart leapt. “And did you find it?”
He turned, grinning, with the book he’d been fretting about earlier cradled in his arms. “Read this,” he ordered, and when he showed no inclination to come bounding back over, I offered a grunt of complaint and pushed myself to my feet.
