“I can’t.”
“Why not?” She sounded like a petulant child denied a toy because I wouldn’t let her run off and kill random males.
Fucking ridiculous, really.
And it truly spoiled the moment—not that we were having one.
“You’re not leaving Noxia this week, and that’s final.” I pushed away from her and dodged her fist this time with expert ease. “Stop throwing a tantrum and go back to your room, Zaya.”
“You can’t keep me here!”
“I can,” I countered. “And I will lock you in a dungeon if I have to. Now stop being a brat and leave me alone.”
This time I not only caught her punch, but I also flattened her beneath me on the ground, the abrupt movement knocking the wind from her lungs and reminding her whom she chose to fight.
“I’m not in the mood for this bullshit right now, Zaya. We’re done. You’re not leaving. End of discussion.”
“I’m not a prisoner,” she growled.
“No, you’re my damn burden,” I threw back at her. “Adrik demanded I save your life, thereby tying your essence to mine, thus making you my responsibility. And you’re an obligation I don’t have time for right now.”
I regretted my words pretty much immediately.
Especially when she gaped up at me with such shock in her gaze that I caught the flicker of hurt before she could hide it.
Lucifer, I was a bastard sometimes.
I sighed and cupped her cheek, feeling like a dick. “Look, I didn’t mean that. I just—”
“What the hell isss going on here?” a shrill voice demanded, the s holding the trademark hiss of the viper my mother wanted me to wed.
I groaned, not pleased at all by the interruption and seriously wondering if I needed to invest in a better lock. Because apparently all females felt they could just enter my room at will. Which, yeah, usually wouldn’t be a problem.
Right now, however, it was a major inconvenience.
“We were sparring, Napia,” I replied, reluctantly lifting myself off of Zaya. She refused to meet my gaze or accept my help up off the ground. Instead, she used the wall to climb unsteadily to her feet, her throat moving in a way that told me she was suppressing some unwanted emotion. Had my pinning her brought back memories? Or was that a response to my words? Perhaps both.
“I’ll, uh, leave you two to your…” Zaya waved her hand to finish that sentence, then moved around Napia toward my foyer and left without a word.
“That did not look like sparring, Grigory.” Napia folded her slender arms, her pale skin contrasting against her vibrant green dress. At least she didn’t have scales. But those snakes were a major turnoff. Beady black eyes, slithering tongues, and writhing wormlike dancing just didn’t do it for me.
“What do you want, Napia?” I asked her, causing her to lift two auburn brows in surprise.
“Isss that any tone to take with your betrothed?”
“It’s a tone you should probably get used to from me,” I told her. “Because it’s the one I will be using frequently. Now what the fuck do you want?”
It was no secret that I didn’t want to marry her, just as it was no secret that she didn’t want to marry me. Hell’s Realms, she’d even brought her consort in as part of her entourage. I wasn’t blind.
She sputtered something about hoping to have a conversation about dinner arrangements for tomorrow night, then went off on some tangent about my unacceptable manners, and ended with some lunacy about my impossible chef.
I listened to most of her words, digested maybe a fraction of them, and yawned at the rest. Loudly. Which only set her off on another lecture about our future and how I needed to change if I wanted to make this work.
“I don’t,” I said, but she was too busy ranting to hear me.
So I let her exhaust herself, then forced a contrite expression at the end with the hope that it would convince her to leave. Her snakes weren’t very convinced, if their collective hiss was anything to go by, but she eventually departed on a flourish of emerald skirts, finally leaving me in peace.
Only, I didn’t feel an ounce of satisfaction. If anything, I felt worse. It had nothing to do with Napia and everything to do with the female I’d called a burden.