Rorn just stared at me, his face marred with sweat and sun and a trace of fury.

“Nothing to say?” I tapped at the rose fashioned from gold at the end of my throne’s armrest. So rarely, with the exception of formal gatherings and visitors, did we now sit in this empty, soulless room.

Rorn turned to leave.

Still too enraged, then, I surmised.

“It will wear off soon.” I couldn’t help myself—found the temptation too irresistible. “The anger. You’ll soon enter this lovely fog of numbness. You might even find yourself capable of forgetting, if only for fleeting moments of time.”

“Stars, Astrantia.” Rorn whirled, booted steps echoing as he stormed across the stone floor. “You think to torment me further with venomous words?”

Placing my hand beneath my chin, I brushed a finger over my lips. “Do you believe you’ve been tormented enough for your transgressions, my king?”

His ire faded, brows pulling low. “That’s not what I meant—”

“I wish to know something.” I rose and descended the steps to stand before him.

His eyes flared when I reached between us to palm his growing erection.

“When you pushed this lovely cock inside this female you chose, did you think I would forgive you?” I stroked my nail over the rock-hard bulge. “Did you think my love for you was so vast that your pitiful reasoning would make perfect sense?”

Rorn stiffened, coiling to take a step back.

I squeezed him through his pants and he hissed. “Did you think you could be just like your father? Have yourself a doting wife and also do whatever you please while outside of these towers?”

“You know I thought none of that,” he seethed between his teeth. “Nothing like that at all.”

“You’re right,” I said with a flat laugh. Releasing him, I strode to the doors. “To think anything of the sort, you’d have needed to think of me at all.”

The doors to the throne room slammed with a harsh wind. Besides warping, maneuvering air was Rorn’s only magical ability—and that he’d been given what he considered scraps from his powerful royal lineage bothered him endlessly.

His heated presence loomed at my back. “I did it for us. For you. So you will admit to lying in order to hurt me with your claims of giving yourself to another, and you will stop this.”

“Stop what?” I asked, apathetic.

He saw right through it, his hands grasping my hips and turning me. “Punishing me. Pushing me away.”

“Then you shouldn’t have given me reason to.” Forced against the doors by his body, I shoved at his chest. “Release me.”

His eyes flashed, bright with intent. “Never.”

“Don’t you dare even think—”

His mouth stole mine before I could finish speaking, the violent prying of his lips rendering me useless for searing moments.