The Dawn of the End (The Rising Book 3)

by Kristen Ashley

  All right, I banged on it.

  She took her time but opened it.

  “Are you ready to prepare for bed, my queen?” she asked flatly.

  “I was horrible because I’m quarreling with Mars, I do not know what Miet is, Elpis is at least a week away from arriving and…and…so much more I have not told you, my head is swimming in it.”

  Her deserved pique instantly melted away as she moved into the room, saying, “Let’s prepare you for bed and you can tell me all about it,”

  There was too much to tell for I hadn’t even told her about my father and my mother and…

  With these thoughts, something unpleasant slithered through me.

  I pushed them to the back of my mind and shook my head jerkily.

  “No, I think Mars will be here shortly,” I told her. “And I think…I think that is good, for we need to get a few things straight.”

  “Can I suggest you loosen a few things before you get them straight?”

  I pushed thoughts of loosening things to the back of my mind as well, for I very much missed getting loose with Mars.

  And to accomplish burying these thoughts, I wrapped my hand around Piccola, pulled her from my hair, cuddled her to my cheek and then held her out to Tril.

  “You could take care of my darling for me.”

  “I will,” Tril said, taking hold of Piccola. “And Silence.”

  When she spoke no more, I asked, “What?”

  “He adores you,” she said quietly. “Whatever you’re quarreling about, remember that.”

  I drew in breath and wondered what manner of adoring man made his wife sit opposite his former lover at dinner.

  I then nodded.

  She nodded back, lifted a hand, cupped my jaw briefly and then walked to the door of her room.

  She stopped there and turned back.

  “And I am always and forever here to listen to you, to help you, to do anything for you,” she reminded me.

  I bit my lip to stop the sting in my eyes.

  “You know that?” she asked.

  “I do,” I answered. “And I am the same for you.”

  “I do not have to figure out how to host an orgy in my garden,” she mumbled.

  Eep!

  “What?” I asked.

  “For later, my love. I wish you luck.”

  She blew me a kiss and disappeared behind her door.

  I stared at it after she closed it, and then I realized I had no idea how much time I had, and thus I had no time to waste.

  Therefore, I needed to decide, when my husband came to me, where the conversation we would need to have should occur.

  And I knew instantly it should not be in the bedchamber.

  I did not hurry (in case he came in), but I also did not dawdle on my way to the sitting room.

  However, I found myself having to stop pacing because he did not come quickly.

  Instead I had to find parchment in his desk, inks and pens, and I took these to the settee to write the missives I had lied to Ines that I needed to write (though it would be good to have them done for a clearer day the next day).

  And I did this beginning to feel less flustered and starting to fume.

  For apparently my husband took my insincere invitation to reminisce with his old lover as sincere.

  And equally apparently, they had much to reminisce about.

  Not long after, I found I was beginning not to fume, but instead feel as if I would weep as the minutes ticked by and he did not come to me.

  Finally, I realized he did not intend to come to me, and perhaps he thought I would go to him (even if I did not know where he slept at night as I had not asked).

  But that would not be happening.

  I had nothing to apologize for.

  He did.

  And this list was ever growing.

  He had been dictatorial.

  He had treated me like a mischievous child.

  He was withholding from me.

  He had retreated from me.

  And he had introduced me to and made me sit at dinner with that woman.

  It struck me that perhaps he had no intention of settling matters a’tall.

  I could not finish my letter to Ha-Lah and would probably find on the morrow that it made little sense.

  I decided to set it aside, and was about to do this, when the door to our chambers opened.

  I looked that way and watched Mars at first walk to our bedchamber.

  I did not have time to call out before he turned on his foot and headed my way.

  I sat on the settee and watched his approach, hearing the strong cadence of his sandaled feet hitting the tile in a manner that was remarkably but oddly, in that moment, soothing.

  He cleared the entryway, saying, “Excellent. You did not disrobe.”

  I felt my head twitch and was no longer soothed.

  Had he lost his mind?

  “My king—”

  He arrived at me and wasted not a moment pulling the pen from my fingers.

  He tossed it to the table in front of me.

  “Excuse me!” I snapped.

  He pulled the book upon which was the letter I was writing out of my hands and the book landed with a thud on the table while the parchment floated there.

  “Well!” I cried.

  And then I went stone still as he planted a fist in the cushion on either side of my hips and he was all I could see.

  “If you address me as ‘my king’ one more time, I will redden your arse to the point you will not be able to sit for a week,” he warned low.

  Of all the…

  “You are my king,” I retorted heatedly.

  “Do not try me, Silence. My wife has denied herself to me for a week, and I am in no mood.”

  He…

  He…

  He was in no mood?

  And he was accusing me of denying myself to him?

  He’d walked away from me!

  “Well, by all means,” I hissed. “Take what is yours, husband.”

  His anger wafted over me like a wave of heat.

  “This is trying me,” he cautioned.

  “Well, perhaps I should force you to have dinner with one of my old lovers so you will know the definition of trying,” I retorted. “No, wait. Strike that. There are none I could try you with.”

  “Her clan is the most powerful of my realm, outside my own, and she has the eye of the eldest son of the baron, that being the man who will inherit the title. So, although she is venomous as sport, she is not someone I care to bother with right now.”

  “But you did care to invite her to dinner,” I returned.

  “It would be impolitic not to.”

  “Regardless of the fact this meant your wife would have to sit opposite a woman who knows you as intimately as she does.”

  “Ines is nowhere near knowing me as intimately as you do,” he growled.

  “Truly, Mars,” I bit. “Although there is no possibility of this happening, I suggest you consider how it would feel with the shoe on the other foot. I mean, can you not understand how insulting it was for you to expect me to dine with that woman?”

  “It is good we are talking about insults now for there is another one I prefer to discuss,” he shot back.

  I felt my skin start to burn.

  “I’m seeing you did not come up here to share your regret at your behavior toward me that set this off between us,” I noted.

  “My behavior?” he demanded.

  “Did you hear a word I said during our quarrel?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, Silence,” he whispered sinisterly. “Some are still ringing in my ears.”

  I stared at him.

  And then I whispered in return (though, not sinisterly, disbelievingly), “You are angry with me.”

  “What gave you that impression?” he asked sarcastically.

  “There was not a hint of love…in that house…from him, to me,” I said deliberately slowly.

  “And yet yo
u compared him to me,” he clipped.

  “There was not…a hint of love…in that house…from him…to me.”

  Everything that was Mars went completely inert.

  I sensed this.

  I even saw it.

  But I did not register it.

  “And she only gave me what she could get away with giving.”

  “Silence.”

  “I am wrong.”

  “What are you wrong about?” he asked quietly.

  His question drifted right through me as if it had not been asked.

  “I am wrong. I am not right. I am a bluestocking.”

  “Bellezza—”

  “The Mouse. Incidental. Useless.”

  One of his fists went out of the settee so he could curve his hand under my jaw.

  “My love, focus on me.”

  “Back there, I would have lived in my shadow if I could. Not to be seen. Not to be known. Nothing expected of me. No one to disappoint. My shadow was everything to me. It was my saving grace. If I had not had it, I would have gone quite mad.”

  “Gods damn it,” he murmured, shifting as if he would take me into his arms.

  But I shoved against him and scuttled away, shouting, “No!”

  I nearly tripped over my skirt as I made my feet.

  I then whirled to him, backing away.

  He had straightened and was facing me.

  “I would wish you to come to me, my Silence,” he urged softly.

  “And all this time I was not even his?” I asked.

  His voice had changed to one I had never heard when he repeated, “Silence, I wish you to come to me.”

  “I know why I have my shadow now, Mars,” I informed him. “I have come to understand it. I understand why I can disappear into nothing. This is because I was never even meant to be.”

  “You were.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were, mia bellezza.”

  I leaned toward him, emotion bubbling up in me, boiling me from the inside, and I screeched, “I wasn’t!”

  He came at me then, and I struggled, I fought.

  I did this because I had to flee, I did not know to where.

  All I knew was I had to flee.

  “I will not fight you, amore, but I will subdue you,” Mars said, doing just that. “But I do not wish to hurt you as I do, so please, calm for me.”

  Abruptly, I did as he asked, finding myself caught tight in his arms.

  I looked up to see his face, awash with concern, staring down at me.

  “I believed,” I told him.

  “What is it you believed?” he asked.

  “That he…that he…that there was something there for him with me.”

  “It is not your burden he is a revolting man.”

  Again, I spoke like Mars hadn’t.

  “All this time, all these years, I wanted there to be.”

  “Of course you did, you were a daughter and you thought he was your father.”

  “All these years, he made me feel like nothing, when he was.”

  “Yes,” Mars said firmly. “Yes, Silence, it was he who is nothing.”

  “But he made me feel like nothing.”

  “Fuck,” he bit. “I did not mean to make you feel that way, my love.”

  “He made me feel like nothing.”

  “Silence.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Piccolina.”

  “A shadow,” I whispered, right before I dissolved into tears.

  I would have collapsed in his arms, but he lifted me up in them instead, and he carried me to our bed.

  There, he entered it, holding me close, and he continued to do so as I wept into his skin.

  I did not want to feel this.

  I did not want to give my father this.

  But I could not seem to stop.

  Mars tutted and stroked my hair and back and held me tight, altering this with rocking me like a baby.

  And moments before I cried myself to sleep, I heard my husband say, “Your shadow is not nothing, my queen. You were right. It is a gift. And the gods do not grant something this important, this beautiful to someone who is nothing.”

  King Mars

  The King’s Study, East Wing, Catrame Palace, Fire City

  FIRENZE

  Lorenz arrived in Mars’s study looking alert even if it was late and Mars was certain his call took his captain from his bed.

  And it was a bed Lorenz was also late to, Mars knew, for they had had a very long discussion about things they were learning from the Go’Ella. None of it about The Rising, but none of it was good. This happening after he had scraped off Ines which was soon after Silence had left them.

  He did not see Lorenz directly.

  Mars was standing behind his desk, looking out the window.

  And he was doing this keeping his body very still.

  It was Lorenz’s reflection in the window that he saw.

  “Mars?” Lorenz called.

  “Select men, the best you know for this sort of operation, and deploy them immediately.”

  “What operation?”

  “I want Johan Mattson, Lord of the Arbor, ruined.”

  “The queen’s father?” Lorenz asked with verbal shock.

  Mars turned from the window.

  Upon one glace at his king, Lorenz stood straighter.

  “Ruined, Lorenz. Fucking destroyed. All that he cares about, all that is important to him, I want it gone. And once that is done, I want him to know it was me who took it from him.”

  “What did he do to her?” Lorenz whispered, his face now carved from stone.

  “He made her feel like nothing.”

  A muscle ticked in Lorenz’s jaw.

  He then dipped his chin and stated, “It will be done.”

  And without another word, Mars’s captain pivoted and walked out the door.

  Mars turned to the window.

  He did not see anything out of doors, but not because it was dark.

  All he could see were the twin flames that burned as a reflection in the glass.

  Mars did not sleep a moment of that night after he returned to his Silence and again pulled her into his arms.

  And thus, he was awake in the morning when she stirred.

  He tipped his chin down and watched her rub her face against his chest before she pulled slightly away, blinked sleepily at it, and then tilted her head back to catch his eyes.

  The silver in hers went liquid with affection before it shifted, and remorse filled her face.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Mars moved swiftly.

  He pressed the pads of his middle three fingers tenderly against her lips and murmured, “You need not speak of it.”

  Silence moved in order to wrap her fingers around his wrist and pull his hand to her throat.

  “I compared you to him,” she whispered.

  “You need not speak of it,” he repeated.

  “My love—” she began but ceased speaking when he crushed her to him.

  Curling into her, falling into her, forming a shield around her wee body, he pressed his face into the fragrant hair at the top of her head.

  There, he declared fiercely, “I wish my father was alive. He would dote on you, Silence. You would walk into a room, and he would smile, and the world would fall away until he had asked how you were and knew you were well and happy. He would boast greatly of your hair and your wit and your silver eyes and your intelligence. He would live for the sound of your laughter. He would memorize every single smile. He would slay dragons for you. He would move mountains for you.”

  Her, “Mars,” was muffled.

  But he was not finished.

  “He would love you, amore, to the marrow of his bones.”

  It took effort Mars forced her to make in order to push her head back to try to catch his eyes.

  He, however, did not force her to make the effort of gaining his gaze.

  He gave it to her.

 
“This is what you had from him,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “And this is what you give to me.”

  “Yes,” he stated.

  She closed that silver from him.

  Thus, he demanded, “Give me your eyes.”

  She opened them for him.

  “I love that you had that, Mars.”

  “I do as well.”

  “And I owe him much for he gave you that and now you can give it to me.”

  He loosened his hold on her enough that he could bend his neck to rest his forehead to hers.

  “I am so very sorry I said what I—” she began.

  “Do not speak of it, my love.”

  “I was angry that you spoke to me the way you did, but I should never have said those words to you. We had become heated, you were trying to open a discussion to cool things, and I lashed out, and I cannot tell you how much I regret it.”

  He let her have that before he pointed out, “You are speaking of it, Silence.”

  She wrinkled her lips into her nose, and this was so adorable, Mars grinned at her.

  Her face relaxed at seeing the smile on his lips, and then she pulled her head away and forced her hand between them to touch the chain that ran from his nostril to his lip.

  “You did not take off your chain,” she said softly.

  “You slept in yours as well.”

  “I missed taking off your chain, Mars,” she whispered.

  “As did I, my Silence.”

  He felt her body expand with a big breath and then he felt her let it go.

  “I think I may not be handling things as well as I would like,” she admitted.

  “You have much to wrap your mind around. We will spend the coming days in each other’s company so I can take better care of my queen.”

  “It’s not just that, it’s that I…well, it will be good when your mother returns.”

  Ah.

  “And we will spend the coming days in each other’s company not only so I can keep an eye on you, but also so I can help you navigate things until Mama arrives.”

  “I think that would be good,” she murmured, then began to look uncertain. “Do we, erm, need to host an orgy in the garden?”

  Mars started to chuckle as he pulled her up so they were face to face, doing this still holding her closely.

  “For Miet, there will be a number of them throughout the city, the largest in the Heden District, and yes. It is tradition that Catrame Palace has one in the royal garden.”