Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
When he arrived, he saw the lights were dimmed in all but their bedchamber, and thus, he headed there.
Silence was not abed, but hearing him arrive, Piccola scurried out of her dressing room, found a piece of furniture to climb and launched herself at him.
He caught the wee monkey and allowed her to scuttle up his shirt in order to hang onto the side of his neck as he moved to his wife’s dressing room.
He pushed aside the sheers that covered the doorway.
His queen was seated with her back to him, wearing a nightgown he had a feeling he would like very much, for he already did only seeing one side of it, and Tril was at work, brushing her gleaming hair.
Tril gave him wide eyes.
Mars shook his head to her and cast his gaze to the back of his wife’s head.
“The barons have left,” he announced.
“All right,” Silence replied tonelessly, not turning to look at him.
Tril kept brushing, now averting her eyes and biting her lip.
Mars fought back a sigh and shared, “I shall meet you in bed.”
“Yes,” was all Silence said.
He turned, taking Piccola with him to his own dressing room where their pet had to release him so Mars could disrobe and put on his silk sleeping pants.
This he did, and then he entered their bedchamber, fell to his back on their bed, his shoulders and head against the headboard.
He folded his hands behind his head but took one away to stroke Piccola’s back when she curled in a ball on his stomach just above his navel.
She was tired out, their baby, from all the activity and attention of the night.
He thought this, aiming his eyes to Silence’s dressing room.
No murmur of conversation came from there, but it took a frustrating amount of time for his queen to emerge from behind the sheers with Tril following her.
And at one sight of his wife, Mars’s body turned to stone.
This was not because her nightgown wasn’t fetching.
It very much was.
It was because her marital chain was gone.
Tril swiftly made her way about the room, blowing out lamps, though she did not approach the bed to blow out the ones glowing at each side.
And when she started to make her way back to the dressing room, through which was a door to her room, she called Piccola, who did not want to leave her papa. But animals had instincts and the mood in the room was far from lost on their wee one.
Thus, the monkey scuttled away.
Through this, Silence had made the journey slowly to her side of the bed. She’d thrown back the silks and had sat her arse on the side in preparation to fully enter it.
“You will not lie down in our bed.”
It did not elude Mars’s notice, the rumbling quality of his voice.
It did not elude his wife’s either, for she turned to look over her shoulder at him.
“Come around to this side,” he ordered.
“My king, I am tired.”
It struck him then that, even in company, from the moment he’d shouted at her, she had not addressed him as anything but “my king.”
“Come around to this side,” he repeated.
“Perhaps we can—”
“Do it.”
In the now, his tone brooked no argument, and although she appeared for a moment as if she would disagree with that notion, she did not.
She stood and walked to his side of the bed.
As she did, he sat up and twisted so he was seated with his legs splayed wide.
When she was before him, he commanded, “Come here,” explaining “here” by pointing at the floor between his feet.
Silence hesitated but moved there.
He did not touch her.
What he did was tilt his head to look at her.
“It was not so long ago, no? Not so long ago when I removed my wedding chain even though we had promised always to remove one another’s before sleep,” he reminded her.
“It was not so long ago,” she replied. “No.”
That was all she said.
Mars felt that pit that had developed in his stomach earlier start to burn.
“Therefore, it was not so long ago you felt what I am feeling right now,” he continued.
“You’re right. It was not so long ago.”
And again, that was all she said.
He did not have vast reserves in this situation, but he gathered what patience he could muster. And he did this primarily because of what he said next.
“It was much I shared with you this morning,” he told her softly. “It was bad timing. Not my timing, I will remind you. But bad, for we had both been away long, and there was much to see to, and due to that, I could not see to you after sharing what had to be confusing and upsetting news.”
“I have had time to think on it during the day, my king.”
My king.
Mars clenched his teeth.
“And I will admit to a bevy of emotion felt throughout this day,” she carried on. “Including upset and concern, that mostly for my mother, and anger, that mostly for my father. But in the end, I found you were right. It explains a great many things in my life as pertains to my place in the house where I was raised. So, although I am not unaware that these emotions will likely careen for some time, I feel strong in saying that I will settle on simply being relieved that I was unloved not because I was unlovable, but my father is the man he is.”