My Fated Mate Was a Lie, Now the Alpha King Wants the Truth novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: What It Cost

I woke at dusk in a bed the size of a boat, with every blanket in the palace on top of me.

I was still cold.

It was the kind of cold that sits behind the ribs.

For a few seconds I thought I had Verity's fear in my own chest, and I lay very still and waited for it to go.

It didn't go.

It only faded to something I could carry.

"That's the second day," said Hester from the chair by the window. "The first day is worse. You slept through it."

"I slept through a day?"

"Fourteen hours. Drink this."

I drank it, and it tasted like boiled bark.

"What did you do to yourself?" she said.

"I unraveled a bought mark."

"I know that. I mean what does it do to you?"

I thought about how to say it.

"It's not pain," I said. "It's what the pain was covering. Verity's whole life was the thing her mother paid for. I felt that. For a day I get to be her, and then I get to be me again."

Hester looked at me for a long time.

"He's asked me nineteen times if you're all right," she said. "It's boring."

"Where is he?"

"Outside the door. He's been outside it since the sun came up. He won't come in until you say."

I drew the blankets up.

"Tell him to come in."

She went to the door, opened it and said, "She's awake and she's vile. Go on."

Then she picked up her bag and left, and I heard her say in the corridor, "Eat something, you great ox."

Cassian came in and shut the door and stood against it.

He was in shirtsleeves, with the collar open, and his hair was a mess.

He looked like he hadn't slept.

"You're not supposed to carry a woman across a room when she's unconscious," I said. "It's in the Registry rules."

"I read them. I decided they were wrong."

"There are no rules on that."

"Then I wrote a rule." The corner of his mouth moved. "How do you feel?"

"Like a drowned cat."

"Idony."

"Cold," I said. "Everywhere. Empty."

He crossed the room in three strides and sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand in both of his.

His palms were hot.

My whole arm sighed.

"You did that in front of a hundred people so that a stranger would be free," he said. "I want to know what it cost you."

Nobody had ever asked me that.

Not my uncle, not Peregrine, not the Registry that had called me a restorer and meant a tool.

I opened my mouth to say I was fine.

What came out was, "I was so lonely for her, Cassian."

His thumb moved across my knuckles.

"I want to feel something that's mine," I said. "Something nobody paid for."

"Then tell me what you want."

I stared up at him.

He wasn't smiling.

He was waiting, very still, the way a man waits who has decided to hear the answer even if it breaks something.

"Take your shirt off," I said.

He did.

The black lines had pulled back to the edge of his ribs.

I put my free hand over the crescent, and it hummed.

"Lie back," I said. "No. On your knees. By the bed."

His brows rose, and he slid off the mattress without a word and knelt on the rug.

My heart was going fast.

I kicked the blankets away and sat on the edge of the bed in my shift, with my knees on either side of his shoulders.

His palms rested on my knees, hot through the thin linen.

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