My Vampire King Husband Died on Our Wedding Night? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Wrong Ring

Bryson shoves her to the ground and carries Pippa away; at the hospital he soothes his real love, and Imogen walks to the crypt where her husband's fingers close around hers.

"Oh, Imogen," Pippa said, and sighed like I was a child who had thrown a plate.

"He got nervous. That's what happens when a man really loves someone."

The terrace was silent, and sixty people were watching me.

[She's performing for the room. Make her say it in front of them.]

I had known Pippa since we were seventeen, and I had never once needed to be told that she was acting.

"Why do you want this so badly?" I asked.

She tilted her head, and her eyes went wide and wet.

"Because I'm worried about you. You told me yourself that Edmund frightened you."

She turned to the nearest table and lowered her voice.

"She told me she would never have married a monster like him if it weren't for the money."

Someone behind me muttered, "Poor thing."

I did not know if they meant me or her.

It was true that Edmund had frightened me once.

He was very pale, and the first night we met, he had appeared in the mirror behind my shoulder without a sound.

I screamed so loudly that the whole charity hall turned.

He had stayed away for a month after that, and sent my apartment a hundred white roses with a note that said only, "Forgive me."

I had never called him a monster.

I had never said I wanted his money.

I had spent six months sleeping in his shirt.

"I never said that," I said.

"Sweetheart, you did," Pippa said, softly. "You were crying."

I slapped her.

It was the second time I had hit someone in five minutes, and my palm stung.

Pippa cried out and put her hand to her cheek.

Then Bryson's arm shot out, and he shoved me in the chest with both hands.

I went down hard on the stone floor, and my knee split against the edge of a planter.

Nobody gasped this time.

Bryson had already turned his back on me.

"You're out of your mind," he said, over his shoulder.

He scooped Pippa up and cradled her against his chest.

"You know she's fragile. How could you hit her?"

Pippa hid her face in his neck.

Not one of the people at those tables moved to help me.

I looked at the two of them, and the picture clicked into place.

[Look at how he holds her. That's not how you hold a friend.]

I got to my feet without help.

My knee was bleeding through my stocking, and I brushed my skirt off with a steady hand.

Bryson finally noticed me standing.

His face softened into worry so quickly it was almost impressive.

"Imogen, I'm sorry. I panicked. Let me drive you to the hospital."

"Take her first," I said.

He didn't even hesitate.

"I'll be right back for you. Wait here, okay? Then we'll pick out a ring together, a better one."

He carried Pippa out through the glass doors.

I called a car and went to the hospital on my own to have my knee dressed.

In the emergency waiting room, I saw them again.

Pippa sat in a plastic chair with her eyes closed, and Bryson crouched in front of her and rubbed her temple with one finger.

It was the same small circle he had made against my temple the week of the funeral, when I couldn't stop shaking.

I had thought it was a tender thing only he did for me.

He looked up and saw me, and he practically jumped.

"There you are!" he said brightly. "Imogen, she's fine, it was just a scare. Let's go find your ring. Pippa has great taste, she'll help."

"I'm not marrying you."

His smile dropped, and for the first time I saw confusion on it.

"It was one mistake. I sold my car and everything I own to put down on a villa for us. See?"

He held out a folded paper with a bank logo on it.

[The villa is already paid for. By the duke. Ask him which duke.]

"You bought a villa," I said slowly. "With what, a mortgage?"

"A small one," Bryson said. "I'll cover it myself. You can trust me."

Pippa opened her eyes and looked at me with such pity that it made my skin crawl.

"She knows how much money matters to her," she said to him, not to me.

"She told me she never loved Edmund. She said she'd only ever loved you."

I did not say anything.

I left them in the waiting room and walked out into the night.

I did not go home to the empty bedroom in the keep.

I told the driver to take me to the crypt chapel instead.

The doors were open, because Hester kept them open every night, and the candles near the altar were still burning.

The coffin lay at the foot of the altar under its glass lid, with white roses along the side.

Edmund looked the way he had looked six months ago.

His skin was grey-white, his lips colorless, and his black hair lay across his forehead.

I put my bandaged knee against the stone step and took his cold hand through the gap at the edge of the lid.

"If you can hear me," I whispered, "I never said yes. I never said any of it."

The letters appeared in the dark air above his chest.

[Hold on tighter.]

I held on tighter.

His fingers curled around mine.

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