Evil Twin by Kati Wilde
7
Echo
For a full week,her husband stared at her with intense, burning eyes as if stripping her naked in his mind. At dinner, he fed her the choicest bits from his fingertips. But he did not kiss her or attempt to fuck her—or even touch her much, aside from when he held her while they slept. And he carried her around at the oddest moments, as if he thought her legs were still sore. Every time she approached the steps from the lower decks to the upper, he reacted as if she were about to scale a cliff and lifted her over it, instead.
It was strange. And stranger still that she didn’t protest much.
She concocted no schemes. What was there to scheme against? A good husband? A good king? Only lazy and tyrannical rulers needed to be overthrown, and Bane was neither.
And never before had she realized how much tension she’d lived with. Always having to be on her guard. Always protecting herself. Tightening her shoulders. Making her head ache.
Yet Bane would protect her. She might not trust him with her heart but she trusted that. She wasn’t alone. So that tension seemed to be slowly melting away.
He asked her opinion about everything. What hopes she had for their kingdom and the people who would soon arrive there. The laws she wanted to keep and those she wanted to abolish and those she wanted to make. And he not only asked. He listened. Her responses seemed to matter. Even when they disagreed. Maybe especially when they disagreed. He would probe deeper into her opinion then, but never seemed to be seeking an error in her thinking so that he could disregard what she said; instead he seemed to be searching for common ground and a path forward.
Never had she felt so respected.
Every night, she slept long and deeply—and awoke feeling rested. She couldn’t remember ever doing that before. Even in the rose chamber, which was spelled to make her content, something within her was screaming for escape and knew her contentment was false, and she awakened feeling exhausted and tired of the life she was living.
But while sleeping in his arms, nothing felt false. Perhaps because she felt safe. And she was more than content.
Echo had always wondered what happiness felt like.
Apparently, it felt like this.
She hoped it would not vanish the moment they left the ship.
* * *
They disembarkedat a small port that sat a few days’ ride south of Crolum’s royal city. Bane lifted her up onto his horse and then settled into the saddle behind her, promising to teach her to ride as they went.
The streets were empty. The buildings were abandoned. No children playing. No people working. No dogs barking. Everything was utterly quiet, but for the cawing of the seabirds and the distant sound of the sea.
The undying beasts had been like locusts. But instead of devouring vegetations, they devoured meat. They’d not even left corpses to rot. All that remained were bones, and they littered the little town like confetti.
Bane’s voice was a low burr against her ear. “Cold?”
He must have felt her shiver.
“No,” she whispered.
“Uneasy?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. She felt safe. But she also didn’t.
“It is the quiet,” he told her. “It makes our blood burn.”
That was how he often described the venom within him. As if it was a fire within his veins.
“Could it be because we’re in Crolum—we feel the magic that created the curse and it’s unsettling?”
“I think more likely it’s the quiet. In the forest, when everything becomes so silent, it means a predator is near. And it’s easy to tell our minds that the predators are gone. It’s not so easy to persuade our natural instinct there’s no need to worry when everything is quiet.”
She suspected his natural instincts were stronger than hers. “How much do you think the venom has changed you? Deep down, I mean.”
“I don’t think it changed anything deep down. I think what it’s done is drag everything deep down nearer to the surface.”
Oh.But she was unsure how to respond to that.
Perhaps her silence made him uneasy, too, because he rushed to reassure her. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
She did. But she didn’t fear what burned within him.
She feared what burned within her.
* * *
That night,they stopped at an abandoned inn where only the public rooms had been stained with blood and littered with bones. After supper, Bane took her hand—as if they were still bound by the ribbon—and put a finger to his lips in a signal for quiet before leading her through the darkened kitchen.
The shutters by the oven were wide open, overlooking the small overgrown garden.
He pointed to his ear, and she smiled as she listened.
Crickets. Frogs. And a rustle from the garden that after several minutes of waiting, proved to be a drove of hares.
The scourge had not killed everything.
“There are likely more animals still in the woods and fields,” Bane said softly. “But we’ll have to make laws prohibiting hunting until the lands and the forests recover. If they want meat, they’ll have to bring livestock.”
“Or fish.”
He nodded. His gaze dropped to