The gritted use of my name had me expelling a rush of breath and shifting upon the stool to fully face him.

Leaning against the doorframe to my parlor, his hair and tunic dusted with raindrops and his gaze unwavering, he unclenched his jaw. “I will ask you one last time.”

I should’ve been alarmed, afraid even.

I felt nothing but that awakening pinch within my chest. “Why?”

“Why?” he repeated with a harsh laugh. “You know damned well that you promised his death the moment you let him touch you.”

I nodded, smiling slightly at the thought. Rorn was a fierce warrior, to be sure, but the ability to shift had not been granted to him like it had for many others in his family, and so I didn’t like his chances. Nor did I like the idea of either male injuring themselves. “You’re still there, then.”

“There?” he asked, irritated. “Where?”

“Anger,” I said, turning back to my easel. Looking beyond it to the bay window, I gently rolled my neck. “It will pass soon.”

I could almost hear his teeth grind. “If you truly believe there will come a day when I won’t wish to know who he is, then you’re indeed lying about having been with another at all, or you’ve forgotten who the fuck I am.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” I said, gentle but firm. “I merely cannot remember ever agreeing to marry a male who’d so easily disregard my own heart for the sake of his cock and pride.”

A prolonged minute of silence screamed and strangled.

“His fucking name, Astrantia,” Rorn ordered, each word enunciated with a rare, worrying sharpness. “Now.”

“I do not know it,” I said, the half-truth falling from my lips with ease. “Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything.” Smirking down at the paint-stained fingers in my lap, I laughed, the sound choked and wet. “You’ll never find him, Rorn.”

The emerald king snarled and crossed the room in an instant.

A stunned inhale was trapped in my throat when he gripped my neck. Rage whitened his eyes, his every feature, and rolled from him in waves. “I will find him, and when I do…”

Just when I’d thought he might let that rage and his strength get the better of him and tighten his hold on my neck, he kissed me.

Bruising hands plucked me from the stool to set me on the window seat. Grabbing at my skirts for access to my thighs, they were too fast, too knowing to stop. “When I do,” he continued, “mark my words, wife, he will bleed out while watching me take you.”

“Rorn.” Horror swept through me, emptied my lungs of enough air. “Rorn, we can’t,” I rasped when he laid a knee upon the seat and dragged me closer, pulling me against him.