“Vendetta? You think this a mere vendetta?”
He danced his fingers underneath the pads of her toes. “What else would I think it? An infatuation?”
Outrage exploded over her features, but to his delight, she also squirmed.
Ticklish. She was fucking ticklish.
And so he did it again, just to annoy her.
“Infatuation?” She yanked at her foot. “Get your hands off me!”
He let her go and held his hands up. “As my lady commands, though I will note that you put your foot in my lap.”
She glared at him, and despite the fact she was tied to the chair, she somehow exuded menace. “I will kill you, Marduk. I will never stop coming for you. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter how thick your dungeon walls may be, or how long you lock me away for, I will keep coming until I finally have what I want.”
Marduk slowly crossed his arms over his chest. “Dungeon? What kind of male do you think I am?”
Her arched eyebrow answered that question with exquisite explicitness.
“I’m not going to lock you away,” he said slowly. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to talk.”
“So you’re going to simply set me free?” The devil had a smile like that.
His eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’ll fly you home and dump you on your father’s doorstep, all tied up. I’ll even put a pretty bow in your hair.”
It was as though he’d set a match to the tinder of her fury. “Don’t you dare.”
“If I could trust you to behave, then I wouldn’t have to.” Pushing to his feet, he started pacing. No matter how much he wanted to stay and play with her, this was the worst time to deal with a scorned female. “You’ve become a problem. I was content to allow us to part on ill terms—”
“A problem?”
“Yes,” he growled. “A problem. I have important issues to deal with in regards to my court and my family. I can’t afford to be watching over my shoulder for you at every second.”
“You should have thought about that before you crossed me.”
“I never sought you out. I never intended for any of this to happen—"
“You mated with me. You chose me, and then you fled the second you could get a chance, with your tail tucked between your—”
“I didn’t have a choice! Your father insisted I choose between his daughters—”
“I have two sisters!”
“And you’d have preferred that I break Aslaug’s heart? She was half in love with me already. I couldn’t choose her. You were the one who warned me years ago not to break her heart. Siv could barely look me in the eye—"
“So you chose to ruin my life instead?”
Marduk drew back. She’d rarely raised her voice to him. No, Solveig was an icy chill creeping through a room; a stealthy frost that could freeze the life in your veins before you even knew it was happening.
But this….
His temper roused, and he leaned forward, grabbing the arms of the chair she was bound to. “You speak of me ruining your life? Then perhaps you should have some damned accountability for your own actions in what happened. I had no intention of returning to your court. I had no intention of ever seeing you again. Ten years ago, you told me to fly away, curl up in a cave, and die. And so I flew away without ever looking back. But you were the one who brought me back to your court—in chains, might I add—and you were the one who backed me into a position where I had to make a choice. And now, here you are again, forcing your way back into my life. So yes, I could have chosen Aslaug. Yes, I could have chosen Siv. But if you want the truth, Solveig, you were always going to be my choice. Because this isn’t finished between us. This is never going to be finished between us.”
“I brought you back in chains because I meant to kill you,” she hissed, and he tasted the sweetness of her breath.
Marduk’s chest heaved. They could go on like this all night if he allowed it, but he reined his dreki in tightly, swallowing hard. “Then why didn’t you?”
“What?”
“You had me on my knees in the middle of a cell. You had your knife at my throat. You were going to do it. You wanted to do it. You had every opportunity in the world to kill me, and yet you hesitated.”
As she did now.
Thought danced through her eyes, and then she shook her head. “I wanted to make you suffer first.”
Really? He captured her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “You don’t truly want me dead, do you?”
Solveig’s eyes narrowed to thin slits, but he pressed his finger to her lips.
And gods, it felt so good to get his hands on her.
“If you wanted me dead—truly wanted me dead—then I would be buried in a grave on some mountainside somewhere. But you brought me back in chains. You wanted to gloat. You wanted…. Hell, I don’t what you wanted from me. Did you want to punish me? Did you want to humiliate me, as I once mistakenly humiliated you—?”
“Mistakenly?”
All the old words came into his head—the same arguments they’d been having for years. I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was saying. It was a stupid little poem that ran off my tongue after an entire day of drinking—
But he stared at her, and he knew that none of the old arguments meant anything.
Ten years ago he had insulted her, and everyone at her court knew of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead.
Solveig drew back as if slapped. “What?”
“All these years and I’ve never said that to you. And I am. I’m sorry I hurt you—”
“Don’t you dare.” She tugged at her ropes.
“What’s wrong? Does it ruin your little revenge scheme?” Marduk scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m tired of fighting with you.”
“You’re lying.”
The edge of his temper roused. “If there’s one thing I don’t do, it’s lie. You want the truth? The full truth? Then here it is: I didn’t know why my mother had sent me to your court until it was too late. Your father offered one of his daughters to me, and it was a complicated situation to extricate myself from without causing a political storm. I didn’t want to be mated to anyone. I didn’t intend to choose any of you. But I didn’t wish to offend your father, and the longer I waited, the tighter the noose around my neck became. I should have ended it before it began.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He didn’t quite have the words.
None of it made any sense. He’d lingered at the Sadu court for weeks, playing Harald’s game and trying to avoid promising anything that might tie him to one of Harald’s daughters.
He should have put his foot down the day he realized what game was afoot.
He should have been honest from the start.
Except he’d taken one look at Solveig, and she’d wrapped smoky tendrils around him, leaving him questioning everything in his life.
“It was a bad time in my life…. And my pride was hurt,” he admitted. “I nursed my wound with ale and let my bitterness brew within me. I said something stupid in front of too many dreki warriors. And when all was said and done, instead of doing the right thing and apologizing to you in front of your court, I was already gone. But I didn’t flee your court because of you.” He let out a shaky breath. “My mother sent me to your father’s court to remove me from her own. My brother, Rurik, had been exiled years ago, and I’d only just come of age. I knew there were rumblings within the court that she should step aside from her regency and allow me to rule. I knew her heart. My mother would never allow me to set foot on that throne, but it wasn’t until your father greeted me with news of my forthcoming marriage to one of his daughters that I realized she had plotted to remove me in a way that would keep the dreki within my clan from revolting.”