Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Everything about me warmed.
“You look, erm, beautiful too,” I told him.
A smile flirted with his lips before he ordered, “Come to your husband.”
My husband.
That man was my husband.
I moved to him slowly.
He curled up to sitting, and my feet were on the furs that carpeted the podium on which the bed sat before he reached with his long arms, caught my hips and pulled me down on him.
He lay back against the headboard again.
I lay on him.
Oh faith.
“I like the sound of your laughter with your woman,” he murmured, his gaze now trailing over my face.
“We do it often,” I told him.
“I do not know if I’ve ever heard you laugh like that, Silence,” he remarked.
Was this true?
“I-I’m sorry,” I replied.
His brows drew together before he asked, “Why are you sorry?” But he did not expect an answer for he kept talking. “It is me who should feel remorse for I have not made you laugh like this.”
Yes, this was the Mars I could fall in love with.
“We’ve not had much time together, Mars,” I reminded him.
“You’ve made me laugh.”
I had. Not purposefully, but it could not be denied I found a thrill in doing so.
“Well—” I began.
His arms curled tighter around me, and he dragged me slightly up his frame so my face was closer to his.
And when he got me in position, he declared, “It will be my reason for being, after we leave Sofia to her rest, to make you laugh often, my wife.”
I slid my hand that was lying on his warm chest up to his neck, whispering, “Mars.”
“I do not wish to do so in this moment, but it’s important so I’m sorry to say I must remonstrate you again,” he shared.
I blinked into his face at his swift change in topic.
“I set Kyril on you,” he continued. “Before I found you earlier and you came up to our chamber, he’d found me and reported that you’d disappeared in the garden.”
Oh no.
Had Kyril seen my drawing over my shadow?
“You set Kyril on me?”
“Silence, you were attacked last night. But regardless, you are queen. You’ll now have a guard everywhere you go for the rest of your life.”
Well then.
That made sense.
It was unnerving.
But it made sense.
And further, all this proved that Mars could see through my shadow because Kyril, apparently, could not.
I wondered if this had anything to do with the prophecy.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to discuss this with him. Not right then.
Instead, I had a thornier topic to discuss.
I did not get to broach it.
“I must command you not to disappear like that again,” Mars said. “It’s not safe.”
He was right, in a manner, so I nodded.
It was then, his hand came up to my face and he touched the hoop in my nostril lightly, murmuring, “Your woman did not take your chain.”
And it was then I noticed he was no longer wearing his.
“I—”
“This I like,” he decreed. “Of a night, every night, if we retire together, and even if we don’t, I shall come up with you and take your chain and you shall take mine.”
I was surprised.
“You don’t wear them to bed?”
He smiled tenderly at me. “No, my Silence. They would catch on pillows and might cause harm. We will wear them when we make love. We will remove them after.”
As this was the thornier subject I had intended to broach, the fact I didn’t wish to do that tonight, I felt my heart start beating harder, and Mars surely felt it too, as I was lying atop him. But, with some expertise, he unhooked the chain at my lip and upper ear and carefully unthreaded it from the hoops.
He then set it aside on his nightstand, and I gasped when he immediately rolled me—and rolled over me—but he did this to blow out the lamp on the other side of the bed. He rolled us again and he blew the lamp out there.
Directly after, he pulled the hides and silks out from under us. He drew them over us and arranged our bodies so mine was in the curve of his, my bottom in his lap, my back pressed to his chest, the backs of my legs riding the fronts of his thighs.
He held me close at the waist and I felt his breath stir the hair on the top of my head.
I had never—in my life—slept thus with anyone.
And it was…
It felt…
Lovely.
I stared into the dark and heard a lone female laugh drifting up from the gardens below.
Someone was dallying.
“Sleep, Silence,” Mars said into my hair.
But I was no longer sleepy.
“Did you see to it that Tril had a special place to watch our ceremony?” I asked in order to confirm my earlier thought.
He squeezed me with his arm lightly and then it relaxed.
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes tight.
And saw the inside of the necropolis and all that had happened there in a grisly flash.