“Of course I’m a liar. A liar,” he said, advancing on her. “A liar who shows a mask to the whole world.” He took another step closer to her, a dangerous heat rising up inside of him. “A drunk.” He lifted his glass. Then he took another step toward his bride, so close that he could smell the lovely, enticingly feminine scent that he associated only and ever with her. “A killer.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “All these things. And me? I am broken. Grieving. Tragic. Ruthless. Innocent. Guilty. We are all a great many things, are we not?”
“Don’t test me tonight,” he said.
“It is for just that reason that I test you. Because you don’t wish it. Who wants to test a man who is prepared for that test? Boring.”
“Are you in danger of being bored?”
“Not with you. Never with you.” She closed the door behind her. “Also, I am not leaving. You do not scare me, Maximus King. I suppose I am now Annick King. You have made me a King as well.” Her lips tugged into a smile. “And a Queen. A strange thing.”
“I did not think a Queen would take the name of the man she married.”
“Maybe not in public. But in private, I would like to do so. I have no family. I like very much the idea of being part of yours.”
That brushed against that raw, deadly thing inside of him. “Whatever you wish.”
“And if I wish for my wedding night?”
“Unwise,” he said, tipping back the last of his whiskey.
“You keep saying this. As if there is a monster in you, waiting to savage me at the first available moment. But I have not met this monster. What would you say if I told you that I would like to meet him?”
“You don’t.”
“Why not? Did your Stella meet the monster?”
“Stella,” he said, his voice rough, “didn’t meet the monster because I was just a man when I was with her. Just one man. Not...whatever I have become.”
“Good,” Annick said. “I want to be the first. You were my first. Let me be yours.”
“There have been many women.”
“But none of them have met the real you, have they? No one has. Not your family...and even with me you hold back.”
“I saw the dungeon that you lived in for all of your life. I feel sorry for you. I pity you. I would never put you in an even more pitiable position by exposing you to everything I am.”
“And me, I’m not fragile. You know what I’ve seen. The same things you have. The life of the ones I love drained away right before my eyes. How could you think that I am someone who needs to be protected from monsters? Maybe I am a monster as well. Maybe we all are, given the right circumstances. Maybe that is the real secret. That we are all of us capable of anything if pushed. I kidnapped a man and dragged him across the world in spite of the fact that I spent many years being held prisoner. You would think I would not be able to do so, but I did. When feeling desperate. Because we are all human. We just lie, all the time, about what it means to be human.”
“This is your final warning.”
He could feel the beast within pulling at the chains. He would give her something to be afraid of if she wasn’t careful.
“I do not do what I’m told anymore.” And then she unzipped that wedding gown and let it fall to the floor, revealing her bare, pale body, so fragile and lovely. Soft. Calling to everything that was dark and rough and hideous within him.
He wanted to devour her. Consume her. Make her his own. Utterly and completely. His captive.
His Queen. Did she understand that he was no better than those men that had held her for all those years? She didn’t seem to care. She was foolish for him, and it made him angry as much as it satisfied him. He had no real consistency when it came to her, and that bothered him most of all. He didn’t know what face to wear, what mask. And that resulted in this feeling that he had no mask at all. A fate that terrified him most of all.
“Give me your darkness.”
“No.”
“It is in our vows. And I will add to them. Give me your darkness and I will be your light.”
“You need all the light you have. If you have any yet remaining inside of you...”
“I will give it how I wish. It is not exhaustible.” She reached out and touched his face. “And when it is put up against the darkness, the light wins, Maximus. Every time.”