Not the Bride He Wanted novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Not Yet

"I don't know," I told Tilde. "But I'm about to."

I found Magnus in the yard behind the Hall, splitting wood in his shirtsleeves with the breath steaming off him.

Three guards were pretending not to watch from the stable door.

I didn't care.

"Tilde says Kings mark their Queens on the wedding night."

He set the axe head down on the block.

"Tilde says a lot."

"Is it true?"

"It's custom. It isn't law."

"Your father marked your mother before the feast was over."

"My father was a romantic." He wiped his forehead with his wrist. "I'm not."

"Last night you turned your face away from my neck."

He looked at me then.

The guards in the stable door very suddenly found something to do inside the stable.

"I know what I did," he said.

"Then tell me why."

He was quiet for so long I heard the lake hitting the rocks below the bluff.

"Not yet," he said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have this week."

He came around the block and stood in front of me.

"Give me until the Frost Moon, Brenna. Then ask me anything, and I'll answer it in front of whoever you like."

"Is it something you did?"

"No."

"Is it something you're going to do?"

His jaw moved.

"Yes."

"Will I like it?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I'd like to think you will."

I didn't know what to do with that.

So I picked up a log from the pile and set it on the block in front of him.

"Split that," I said. "And don't think I've stopped asking."

The corner of his mouth went up.

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