She felt a surge of his bitterness through their bond. Glancing at his wrists, Emyr said flatly, “You ensured that my telepathy is so limited that it would be impossible even if I wanted to. Replacing some memories and putting protective mind traps is one thing; brainwashing is another. If I could brainwash you, I would have simply made you like my son or made you leave him alone. I would have made you release me. But alas. I had to work with the limited power I have.” He sighed. “Stop looking at me like I’m the monster here. It gets quite tiring, my love. You hardly have the moral high ground, when all I did was protect my son from getting murdered by you.”
Dalatteya laughed. “Please. You don’t care about your son, Emyr. All you care about is for your line to continue and you hate the idea of Aslehn’s son taking your throne.”
A muscle worked in Emyr’s jaw. “Don’t speak that man’s name,” he said evenly.
She scoffed and turned away, knowing that it would only infuriate Emyr.
After a few moments, she heard him set his book aside and get to his feet.
Then she felt him behind her, his tall, powerful body pressing against her back as his strong arms wrapped around her waist like a vise. She loathed how right it felt. How perfect.
Emyr brushed his lips against her neck. “I’m not like you,” he said. “I never understood why you cared so much for that man’s brat. I certainly didn’t care for the children I had with my wife. I didn’t contribute to their creation beyond jerking off into a cup, so I don’t know why I should love them.”
Dalatteya had known that. She had known that Emyr had never even slept with the queen-consort, which was the reason the woman hated Dalatteya so much. Truth be told, Dalatteya had almost pitied her. She couldn’t imagine being bonded to a man who wouldn’t even look at her, much less kiss her or touch her—being bonded to Emyr who didn’t want her. Dalatteya would have pitied her if the woman hadn’t tried to poison her multiple times and hadn’t nearly killed Samir by mistake. The queen’s behavior was doubly irrational, considering that she had no claim to Emyr beyond a document that said he was hers. He’d never been hers. Emyr had married her because he had to. Dalatteya knew she had been the only woman in his bed since he was eighteen.
Emyr’s hand cradled her stomach possessively. He kissed her neck again and said hoarsely, “I would love my children if they were yours and mine.”
She shivered. It wasn’t the first time Emyr had expressed the thought over the decades, but she had always refused to stop taking her contraceptives. When her husband had been alive, the father of her child would have been immediately obvious, since she rarely shared Aslehn’s bed. She had refused to make Aslehn suffer the additional offense of seeing her pregnant with the king’s child.
But a part of her had always wondered what it would have been like, to bear Emyr’s child—to bear any child. Samir was the product of artificial gestation in a genetic center, and while she loved him more than anything, she still would have liked to have carried him under her heart. But she had been deprived of that, because she had known Emyr would never have allowed her to get pregnant with another man’s child—he resented Samir’s existence as it was.
“My doctor has said I’m not fertile anymore, so you can stop entertaining those thoughts,” Dalatteya said coldly, as if the news hadn’t been a little disheartening to her.
“Has he?” Emyr murmured, trailing his hot mouth over her neck, her ear, his large hands sliding up to knead her breasts. “So you’ve stopped getting your shots?”
“They aren’t needed anymore,” she said, gasping as he pinched her nipples.
“They were never needed,” he said, biting her earlobe and cupping her between her legs.
She moaned and didn’t resist as he bent her over the desk and hiked her skirts up.
Chapter 23
Emyr’ngh’zaver
(18709-18750)
A caring king, a loving husband and father
May you rest in tranquility
His father’s grave was in the center of the royal graveyard, among the other deceased monarchs of their clan. Contrary to the custom, the queen-consort’s grave wasn’t beside Emyr’s. Warrehn vaguely remembered wondering about it when he had been ten, but back then, he had been too consumed by grief to make inquiries about who had given the order to bury the late queen in a different part of the graveyard.
He had a feeling he knew who. It would be just like Dalatteya to keep them apart even in death.
Warrehn sat down on the bench in front of the grave and stared at his father’s proud profile blankly. He still remembered that day so clearly. The “tragic news.” The “my condolences,Your Highness.” Dalatteya’s pale face with wide, unfocused eyes, her lips twisted in a strange expression that seemed like something between a smile and a sob. Her hand tightly gripping Samir’s small hand.