“And so you decided that because I let my guard down and we fooled around once that you can wander around town wearing my wife’s wedding headpiece?” he demanded. “It’s not just presumptuous, it’s offensive. It’s heartless.”
Yasmine froze, the words refusing to make sense in her head.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said as the horror began to descend on her. “I did what?”
“Don’t play coy with me,” he shouted. “That headpiece was featured on every newsfeed, in every fashion magazine. The feather was a gift from the Hryy Nation, from the last living zyrkabird. There are two hundred thousand credits’ worth of Arkooshian gemstones on the band. You can’t pretend not to know what it is.”
Yasmine’s blood froze in her veins. She wished that the marble floors would open up and let her fall into the depths of the underworld.
Every instinct told her to run to her rooms and pack her things before he could say any more.
But she was still wearing the hat.
Desperately, she tried to remove it with shaking hands.
But the clasp got caught in her curls and it stuck, hanging sideways half off her head while tears of panic slid down her cheeks.
“For the sake of the frigid Outer Rings,” Kreed cursed, moving to help her.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t do this on purpose.”
But Kreed’s face was rigid as he quickly untangled the apparently-priceless headpiece from her hair.
Did he really think she was using it to try to stake some sort of creepy claim over him?
“I would never do something like that,” she said again, her voice trembling but not breaking. “I would never want to hurt you or the children.”
“But you did do it,” he said, releasing the clasp from her hair at last.
“I’m so sorry, My Ruler,” she whispered.
But he didn’t respond.
It hit her that he was wearing his circlet now, and he couldn’t read her emotions like last night. It was almost as if he couldn’t hear her at all.
Humiliated, she ran up the stairs to her rooms.
If only he had let her resign last night. It would have saved them both so much pain and embarrassment.