Chapter 76: Seventy Six
Valka
Lucien didn’t come to me and I didn’t seek him out. I saw him at breakfast and dinner. I saw him whenever I looked out my window at the scenery, and sometimes his eyes met mine. I’d waited for it to ebb, the anger. But when it finally did, I felt... cold.
Not betrayal. Not frustration. Not anger. Not even a tinge of sadness.
The numbing cold that had started right after our wedding night had spread through my chest, icing the very blood in my veins, and I let it. I welcome it.
I understood perfectly what my place was and never strayed from it. I attended the wedding revelries alongside him. I learned etiquette and customs. I attended the Council meetings. I learned diplomacy. I hosted the women of Court and listened to their unending gossips. I drank tea. I wore the pretty dresses and the tiaras. But I never looked at him. Never spoke to him except when spoken to. Most times, not at all.
At first, he seemed amused by my decision to act like he didn’t exist, thinking it was some game I was playing at. But my life was no joke, and I was just... done.
It was on the eighth day after the wedding, while the castle was abuzz, preparing for the trip to Voss, and I was forced to take the customary ride with him through the kingdom, offering gifts and smiling for the people that he realized it. Perhaps it was my utter disinterest. Or my lack of attention when I could feel his scorching gaze on me at all times.
His nonchalant façade began to crack.
It began with gifts. I didn’t give them second glances before throwing them in the hearth or thrash, leaving the maids with less time to discuss about my marriage and more to clean. Then came the letters. A chunk of them. Apologies. Poems. I didn’t even know he could construct a ballad.
Either way, I fed them to the flames.
The visits followed. Popping up to my chambers whenever he felt like with a list of ’customary’ things to do. To which I went along with, and continued to act like he was no one.
And soon, his temper and patience began to fray, his frustration seeping through the cracks of his otherwise untouchable mien.
"If you would just move a little closer, Your Majesties," the painter says, an uncertain smile on his face as he regards Lucien and I. "A little bit of contact may yet make the outcome much better."
My back remains stiff on the sitter, though I relax against where Lucien’s hands grip the back of the chair. "Better?"
The old man’s lips thin. "Not...quite. You appear uncomfortable." His gaze rises to Lucien’s. "Perhaps a minute or two to clear the tense air would do you both good."
Lucien grunts, walking around the chair and I catch him wave off the old man in my peripheral, his movements tight with annoyance. "Ten steps away." He nods to the maids bearing the snacks and the guards by the door. "Turn around."
Unease spreads through me at the unusual command. I am about to stand when he springs forward like a mountain cat, too fast to have detected. His hands brace on the arms of the chair on either side of me and his face is suddenly inches away from mine. "What is your problem?"
I draw in a deep breath to calm my heart. And when I speak it is with steadiness and a mask of cold calm. "I don’t understand what you mean."
"You’ve been ignoring me," he says.
"I’ve been occupied."
"Parading the castle with Evadne? Holing up in the library to avoid me? Hosting tea parties that conveniently take place whenever I summon you? Missing meals, defying me at every turn? And now you can’t hold still for five minutes for a portrait, making it clear to anyone who looks that my touch disgusts you?"
I blink once. "Shall I act otherwise? Pretend it doesn’t disgust me?"
The maids probably heard that, considering the gasps and the chilling silence that follows.
"Do not vex me, Valka. Do not think me so lenient that I will condone your constant insolence."
I lean forward. "Then punish me, by all means, my liege. It is what this farce has been about all along, isn’t it? You think diamonds, letters and flowers will patch things up between us. You believe my affection is some trinket you can buy with gestures and lies." My voice sinks lower. "You’ve never been sorry a single day in your life. Do not begin to pretend with me now. You want to change something? Find a way to break this bond and perhaps, I shall regard you once more as deserving of my attention."
Lucien’s light lashes flutter against his cheeks, an unfathomably dark expression dimming the light in his eyes. He tilts his head, the sunlight catching on his crown as he studies me.
"You always were a difficult pill to swallow," he murmurs almost fondly.
His hand rises to my face. I lean back, but he catches my cheeks in one palm, holding me still. The warmth of his skin burns against mine.
"You speak of theft your ability to choose," he breathes, "but you have stolen far more from me."
My pulse stutters. "What in the hells are you talking about?"
"Two hundred years." He laughs, thumb brushing along my jaw. "Two hundred years of searching for a woman I could not remember, a scent I could not name or place face to, a voice that tormented my dreams but when I opened my eyes. Two centuries of madness, Valka--madness you planted in me and walked away from as if it were nothing."
I freeze, ears ringing as something begins gnawing at my subconscious, at the back of my mind.
"I thought you were a dream," he continues, voice raw and low. "And when I learned of your gifts, I chalked it up to your dream-walking. And then, during the mating rite..." His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, and my breath catches. "I remembered. Every piece of you I’d ever lost came rushing back. Gods, you are absolutely cruel, Valka."
An unbearable ache pierces my skull and I flinch, reaching to grab my head. "Stop it. You...sound insane."
His lips curl into a terrifying smile, delight flashing in his eyes. "Oh, I am. I always have been. More now, because of you." Those violet-gold depths deepen even further. "And this bond was the only way I knew to keep you from slipping through my fingers again."
My heart beats once, a hard, painful thud.
"Deserving of your attention?" he laughs, the finger on my jaw tightening. "Sweetheart, it was you who took my meaningless, painful existence and gave me life again. Only to take it all away from me. And you may not remember it. But you will, in time, as I assume the rest of your memories have begun to return."
His grip tightens, just slightly, enough to make me feel how inescapable it is. "And when you do," he whispers, "you’ll either accept me... or you’ll leave me for dead. Again."
An image flashes in my mind’s eye then.
"Come home with me," he’d said. "Come home, Lyra. Please."
"You want me because I’m her. You do not truly ache for me. You would get her back at any cost and bury me for it. And I do not want to live like that. I cannot."
The scenery changes.
A broken sob spilling from me as I tore at my skin to get the blood off my hands. His? Theirs? I don’t know.
Pain lances in my head and I shake it off, sweat clinging to my skin. Bile roils in my stomach and I shove down the sudden urge to puke. "Stop. Talking."
Lucien actually does. He nods once and pulls his hands away from my face. The simple obedience catches me off guard, until he sinks to one knee before my chair.
"What are you doing?"
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he glances at the painter as he gently lifts my left leg through the slit of my gown. My breath stutters when he slips off my heel with slowly, setting it aside at the hem of my red dress. "Paint this."
"Y-Your Majesty?" the painter stammers, eyes widening as Lucien bows his head and presses a hot kiss to the instep of my bare foot. The touch sends butterflies scattering through my stomach.
"I assume this is intimate enough for the history halls," he says thickly.
The man pales, visibly mortified. "I-It will hang for all the world to see. Generations will look upon this portrait!"
Settling my foot on his chest, Lucien’s hands slide to my waist. I gasp when he pulls me toward the edge of the seat, my hands bracing on his shoulders. I’m caught --utterly caught--in the snare of his gaze as he murmurs, "Let it be known then, that King Lucien Draemont is and was owned by his Queen, and no one else."
And in that moment, I realize he isn’t just looking at me, he’s looking through me. Stripping past every lie, every brittle mask, every truth I’ve never dared to speak. And it clicks.
It clicks like a door slamming shut. Like a flame sparking to life in a long-dark room. His words fall together in a pool, mingling with the little flashes I just had. And it just...clicks.
He knows everything.