“Mine!” he growled uninhibitedly. He would fill her body with so much pleasure that she wouldn’t even think of seeking another. She lifted her lashes to look at him, helpless. Her sensual expression was all too beautiful. How could he capture this beautiful moment and keep it with him always?
“Amara. Since when did you become so beautiful?”
Her grey eyes lit up in astonishment, and then, they turned to a warmer shade. She pulled him even closer and sought his kisses.
Chapter Thirteen
Rion stared up the staircase even long after the raven-haired woman left.
“This way, Miss,” the old man urged once again in a language she didn’t comprehend, but he was making the gesture for her to follow him. She glanced up at the staircase once more and then followed him. He led her to a bedroom that was much smaller than what she was used to and said, “I hope you find your accommodation for the night satisfactory. I will come back with a change of clothes and your dinner within the hour.” He bowed his head and then retreated from her presence.
Rion rounded the room; her fingers ever so lightly touching the surface of every piece of furniture. She stopped in front of a large mirror and spent a long while staring at her image reflecting back. She looked the same as she remembered herself and wondered if her husband still looked the same as she remembered him. She looked up at the ceiling when she heard the sound that a man and a woman would make during mating, and grimaced.
Her mother had educated Rion and her sisters on many occasions that it was common for men to seek the company of other women away from home and they must overlook such things if they wished to maintain a happy home. Her father had a string of mistresses, but her mother was the mother of his legitimate children and his only queen. Her mother was a very practical woman, and she taught her three daughters to be the same, especially when it came to the different faces of marriage. Born as princesses, the decision of whom they would marry was never theirs to decide. Her mother was very serious about teaching the sisters how to be wives to powerful men. Rion resented those lessons almost as much as she resented her fate.
Her people had pampered her only for the sole purpose of marrying her off to make or fortify alliances like a sacrificial object. She would live like a hostage for the purpose of warming the bed of a man she had never met.
Her eldest sister was married off to a man old enough to be their grandfather. Liana was in for a shock at her wedding night and almost committed suicide. Fortunately for her sister, the old man was quick to die and left her a widow.
Her second sister was married off to a lecherous violent brute who forced her first night. He was abusive to her sister on a daily basis and even had the gall to bring other women into their marriage bed. He quickly grew bored of her sister because she wasn’t beautiful enough and sent her back home.
When it was Rion’s turn to get married, her mother gave her very little details about her future husband. Only that he was the fourth prince of Loma, and he was in need of a wife. Like her two sisters, they neglected to tell her any details beyond that.
Rion was fearful for her own fate. So fearful that her mind was clouded by a nobleman who offered to save her from being married off to a foreign prince. He would marry her himself. She was so desperate to escape her fate that she believed his lies. She gave him all of herself, foolishly believing she was in love. She became pregnant with his child and she thought that he would come to her father and ask for her hand in marriage. But he was a coward and a liar! He fled and left her to deal with the aftermath.
To survive, she plotted to pass the child off as her future husband’s. She didn’t care who he was or what he looked like anymore. Be it an old man or an ugly hairy brute! She would seduce him, bed him, and survive. Her child would survive.
But then she met Summit.
She recalled the exact moment she saw him walking down the corridor of the temple. She marveled at the sight of him. He was tall, he was powerful, and he was stunning! He was a man at the prime of his youth and had the physique to show for it. His blue eyes were so ethereal and not of this world. Just looking into them sent chills through her. The charming smile he had on his face when he offered his greeting literally melted her. Two rows of straight white teeth gleamed brighter than his shining armor.
During the length of the ceremony, she just couldn’t believe that she was about to become the wife of this man. Then sadness veiled over the perfectly beautiful day. Regret felt like daggers ripping through her flesh. If only she had been patient. If only she had waited to meet her future husband. If only… she wasn’t carrying another man’s child.
She was so remorseful that she was going to cry right then and there at the altar if it weren’t for the many pairs of eyes watching her, including his blue ones.
After the wedding ceremony, he brought her back to his palace on his chariot. During the entire time, she was going over the plan in her mind. She tried to figure out about how she would seduce him, how she would get him into her bed, and how she would reveal to him the pregnancy months later.
He looked down to his side and flashed another one of his smiles at her. His intent was friendly, but she felt so nervous that she diverted her gaze. If she couldn’t even look him in the eye, how did she plan on seducing him?
While he and his brothers were celebrating the happy occasion, Rion waited for her husband in her bedchamber. She rehearsed the plan over and over again in her mind until she could play it backward, but her nerves failed her the moment she heard the door opening. The brothers pushed her husband into the room and closed him in with her.
She couldn’t look at him so she focused on her reflection in the mirror. She picked up the hairbrush and began running it through her hair. He paid her a compliment about her hair and astonished her. She thought about the possibility of him acting the gentlemen in front of other people and only showing his true self behind closed doors. Her father had been that kind of man. Her husband then offered her the privilege of calling him by his given name. Neither of her two sisters had the privilege of calling their husbands by their given names. She wanted to take him up on his offer, but his name got stuck in her throat. She saw his reflection in the mirror, and he looked nervous and a little unsure. Then he said something that she still remembered until this very day. He said, “You have nothing to fear from me.”
“I know, your highness…” she replied shakily. She didn’t believe his words at the time.
“Good,” he said. “I am exhausted. I will retire to bed early.”
She flinched because she thought that was his invitation to his bed.
“To sleep,” he clarified. She could tell that he tried his best not to frighten her. “Just sleep.”
She found his attempt to pacify her charming. Her sisters told her the horrible details of their wedding nights of how the old man wanted to touch his young wife or how the brute took everything by force. She felt sick from just remembering the graphic details of her sisters’ descriptions and that was when everything fell apart. He asked if she wanted to summon a physician and she was so scared that everyone would find out that she panicked.
He was furious when he figured out the truth. His gentle blue eyes became unrecognizably hostile toward her. She was petrified when she saw him glancing at the sword at his side. She cowered back, shut her eyes, and waited for him to take her life. A moment came after another, he was still standing still. His sword was still at his side.
For whatever reason, he decided to spare her life.
For the next two months, life was peaceful for her. Her husband did not reveal what he knew to others. He rarely spoke to her since that night, and if they happened to run into each other, he would exchange a few polite words. She speculated that he had spared her life for the sake of the alliance between their two kingdoms. She also speculated that he would secretly try to eliminate the child in her womb to conceal his shame, but no harm befell her or her child. He was kind to her up to her death.
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She still remembered very clearly the moment she was killed. She was surrounded by spears and soldiers. In that final moment, she heard him calling out.
“Stop…! I command you to stop!”
If she had more time with him, he would have grown to love her as she did him.
Rion folded her arms in front of her chest and dug her nails into her trembling flesh. Even when her mother taught her to overlook her husband’s indiscretion, the reality upstairs was difficult for any woman to overlook.
You must be patient, Rion advised herself. She was given a second chance by Death to mend her marriage and must treat it with the utmost care. She truly believed that if she had more time with her husband, he would grow to love her as she did him.
Chapter Fourteen
After a quick, refreshing shower, Noctis dressed himself in the usual manner – the only thing that he didn’t do was button his dress shirt all the way. He could never get used to the tedious task of fastening buttons, so he returned to his bed and gently shook the shoulder of the naked female lying in it. When she refused to budge, he bent his head.
“Amara,” he whispered into her ear. “Help me get dressed.”
She turned her body to lie on her back and looked up at him with clear grey eyes. The damaged tissues on his face and neck had healed significantly so he didn’t mind showing his face to her in daylight. “Is that an order or are you asking nicely?”
His bride was getting more insolent by the day, but he wasn’t upset with her. “Hurry up,” he urged her.
She sat up and shyly pressed the comforter in front of her chest as though he hadn’t seen every inch of her body. She made sure her breasts were covered before she reached out to help him fasten the buttons of his shirt. She smoothed out the fabric that was on his chest after she was done. “There.”
“Well done,” he said.
She smiled up at him and asked, “No ‘thank you’ for me?”
He ignored the question and said, “Get dressed and come with me to breakfast.”
“I would have to shower first. I’ll meet you downstairs?”
He nodded to show his approval and went downstairs by himself. The corner of his lips curved into a frown as soon as he arrived in the dining room. There was a blonde woman sitting at the table where his bride would usually sit. She was facing the windows with her back against the entrance, but he didn’t need to see her face to know she was Rion. He was puzzled by her reappearance in the land of the living since last night, but she had been buried at the back of his head until now. He realized that he had made an enemy with Death, but why had Death chosen Rion of all people? Surely, it couldn’t be from a lack of candidates. He had a long list of enemies to choose from, and there were a few personal favorites that would make his life a lot more interesting.
He entered the dining room casually and seated himself at his usual seat. He picked up the newspaper that was meticulously ironed smooth and began to read through the current events. He flipped through the paper, reading only the headlines, and skimming through the rest. There was nothing interesting going on with the exception of the coming solar eclipse. He skipped right to the business section of the newspaper. His stocks had gone up.
“Your highness,” Rion called for his attention.
“Speak,” he said, giving her permission to continue.
She was quiet for a long while and then she spoke again, “…Summit.”
Noctis lowered the newspaper in his hands just enough for him to see the woman behind them. The Rion that was sitting in that chair was even more beautiful than the woman that he had in his memory. Her golden hair looked as though it was made of sunlight. Out of the three sisters of Haba, she was rumored to be the most beautiful. He confirmed that fact after he met her other two sisters, although he couldn’t remember what either of them looked like now. The memory was too distant, and he didn’t bother to recall it.
What really surprised him was the way Rion addressed him by his given name. There was once a time when he had given her his consent to call him by his name, but that license had long since expired. Hadn’t she realized that?
Just as he was about to make a correction in her form of address, Amara arrived. His bride looked at the woman sitting at the table and suddenly remembered she had invited her in their home the night before. Her facial expression was incredibly transparent.
“So you decided to stay the night,” Amara said as she walked toward the table and then seated herself on the other side. “The weather has been unpredictable lately; it’s no surprise that it caught you off guard. Did you sleep well? Do you need to call the mechanic to have your car fixed?”
His bride was assuming Rion had arrived by vehicle.
Rion glanced at Amara and then slid her eyes back to him. “Please kindly tell her that I do not understand the language she is speaking.”
Noctis sighed and then passed the word on. “She can’t understand you.”
“Oh…” Amara formed an ‘o’ with her luscious lips. “I didn’t realize she didn’t speak English. How rude it was of me to rant in front of her.”
“Have your breakfast,” he reminded her.
For a reason beyond his understanding, she was hesitating. She was waiting for him to do something, but he didn’t know what she was expecting him to do. After two minutes had passed, she smiled and then started on her breakfast. He lifted the newspaper to eye level again.
“She doesn’t know who I am, does she?” Rion asked him.
“Does she need to?” he countered without removing his eyes from yesterday’s closing stocks.
“I suppose that it doesn’t matter to me if your mistress has knowledge of me or not.”
He disliked her choice of words even more than he disliked her tone of voice. “Amara is not my mistress,” he made the correction with a severe tone of voice.
“I was being respectful to you by calling her your mistress. Would you prefer I call her your whore?”
Noctis couldn’t hold back his temper and slammed his hand against the corner of the table. The ground beneath the leg of the table indented and cracked. His bride looked up at him, startled.
He rose and leaned over the table. “I forbid you! I forbid you from ever insulting the woman I love again, am I understood?”
“Don’t!” Amara bolted up from her seat. She grabbed him by his right arm and used all of her strength to pull him toward herself. “Why are you acting up again?”
Rion was staring back at him with fright and swallowed. He kept a stern glare on her until she nodded.
He reseated himself on the chair and turned to his bride, who was glaring at him angrily. She released her grip on his arm only when his muscles relaxed again.
“Have your breakfast,” he switched back to English in a harsher tone than he had intended.
“I want to apologize to her for your behavior, but I don’t even know how to make her understand.”
“She’s the one who should be apologizing to you!”
“Why?” his bride curiously asked.
Noctis leaned his head on his hand when he felt a massive headache underway. He was beginning to see why Death had brought Rion back to life and not some other names on his long list of enemies. He was bound by honor to treat her civilly, but if she overstepped the line once again, he wouldn’t be playing by the rules anymore. Honor is swell and all, but he could go both ways.
“I know that he has sent you here with a purpose,” he said to Rion in his native tongue. “I don’t care what it is and I won’t ask what it is, but know that if anything should happen to her,” he pointed at his bride, “I will gladly send you back to wherever you crawled out of.”
“Why are you pointing at me?” Amara asked, clueless.
Rion regained her composure and glanced over to Amara. “I didn’t realize that you were so smitten with this mistress of yours.”
“Again, Amara is not my mistress,” he repeated himself with great annoyance.
> “I had no prior knowledge of her until she answered the door wearing nothing more than a thin layer of silk.”
“I like silk,” he said with a widening smirk on his face.
Rion couldn’t hide the furious blush from her pale face. “I am here because I want to…” she inhaled deeply, “…I want to mend our marriage.”
He lifted a brow. “Run that by me again?”
“I was given a second chance to put things right, Summit. So many things went wrong that we both lost sight of what could have been.”
“I’m curious. What brought this on all of a sudden?”
“It is not sudden at all. It is what I have always wanted for us. If I had not been… pregnant with another man’s child, we would have gotten along.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted. Prior to meeting her, he already made up his mind on being a committed husband. He planned on spoiling his new wife with everything that was within his powers to give. And being an obscenely wealthy man in his own rights, the future mother of his children would have been the envy of kingdoms far and near.
“And with time, we would have developed an understanding toward each other,” she continued.
“That is also a possibility.”
“You would have grown to love me as I have learned to love you.”
He didn’t think his headache could have gotten any worse, but he was wrong. A moment ago he could still talk to her with a straight face, but now he realized that there was something terribly wrong with the conversation they were having. He should have ended the conversation then and there to save whatever good impression he still had of her, but he was very curious as to why she shamed him on their wedding day when their marriage had been planned months in advance.