The Empire (The Lover's Opalus) by Grayson Reyes-Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

were merely a frightened girl.”
    Her chin came up a notch. “Only one ring separates us.”
    “Yes, but my father had already begun to waste. My mother refused to leave his side. I had been ruling in truth for two rings by then. Surely, our experiences were different.” He continued earnestly, “Though I did not want to, for your eyes were yet wide as a child’s and I believed you would lie still, cold as ice beneath me, I had to take you. Until then our marriage was not true. Though you would not, you had the right to leave me. I was weak. You were beautiful. So unlike any other woman. I could not allow the chance that you would escape me. Because, though I felt shame, I knew I wanted you, and you have always been mine. The thought that you could spring like a tsillis from a trap coursed like poison through my veins.”
    “You had an Empire.”
    “You are the Empire.”
    A ball of fire dropped from her throat down to her belly and lower. The words were formal. They had been said many times in other, official settings, but this time. This… She licked her lips and took a breath despite the tingling of her nerves. “You could have declined me as your bride.”
    “It is traitorous to deny the Empire anything.” Lanus’s hands fisted. “You were and are mine, Raeche.”
    “Am I an object, then? Am I a curious formation living from the bark of your tree, no more than my birth? Do you seek sway or power over the fools who write songs to my beauty and hurl themselves at my feet for a favorable glance? Or the stupid girls who stoop in their gowns to appear short and stain their faces beneath their eye to mimic my mark?”
    “You insist on believing the opposite of my words and my Spirit. What I seek, Raeche, is forgiveness. I hurt you. Because I lost myself in pleasure I hurt you, making this fear you have of me a permanent thing.”
    Raeche felt embarrassment on behalf of her husband. “I knew it would hurt the first time.”
    “And so, when you willingly came to me the second time, I shamed myself and hurt you again.”
    Raeche offered, “I have learned that is not unusual with one who is small like me, especially when coupled with one who is large like you.”
    “Nevertheless, I vowed to stay away from you until you were ready. I needed to wait until I no longer felt I was bedding a child.”
    “I was no child.”
    “You were. You nursed childish dreams and rebellion. You still do.”
    Raeche’s lips were dry. She wanted water. She wanted Lanus to stop speaking.
    He did not. “Because you feared me, resented the loss of your childhood, you sought what was not me. You risked death to chase a man that held dominion over nothing more than his timra. A man who chose you and who you chose in return rather than someone arranged for you by your parents. You chose a man who was calmer, smaller, whose body held no fear. You chose someone who was not me, not at all like me.”
    He knew of Galan. He knew. He knew. He knew.  
    As he sat there calmly, Raeche thought to deny it, but what use was that? “I do not know what you mean.” She acted an imbecile anyway.
    Lanus sighed. “Go back to your chamber. Do not use the curtain again.”
    Her brows drew tight and her body felt as if it were aflame. “You have no right to bar me from this room.”
    “You misunderstand. I have asked that you come to the door and knock, that you never come around the curtain that separates this space.”
    “And your bed?”
    “You may not come to my bed.”
    “It is traitorous to deny the Empire anything,” she challenged.
    “Then I make it a request, Empress. It would please me greatly were you to stay on the other side of the curtain.”
    “If I do not come to your bed, no woman comes to your bed.” It was bold, angry, and something that, should he will it, Raeche could not enforce. It was law. Should one partner deny their spouse their bed, the other would be well within their rights to seek the bed of another. Unfortunately