“Succession...” she repeated.
But she was winded. She could feel it as if he’d reached in, scraped her raw, and then sucked everything she was out.
And in return, what was left was that familiar knot in her chest.
It swelled, then pulsed.
“You are a doctor,” he said in the same darkly calm way. Still lodged deep inside her, his shoulders wide enough to block the light, as if he’d taken over the whole world. As if hewasthe whole world. “Surely you must have noticed that we have never used anything that might prevent nature from taking its course.”
And Anya’s brain...blanked out at that, more or less. Still, she heard him. She knew that he was talking about birth control and that she ought to have thought about it.
Why hadn’t she thought about it?
Because she hadn’t. It had been a month, she was indeed a doctor, and she had never even raised the subject in her own mind. No matter how many times they came together like this. No matter how many times she’d felt him flood her with his release.
Why haven’t I thought about it?she demanded silently.
But no answers presented themselves.
There was a curious look on his hard face. “You look so shocked. I assumed it was what you wanted. You surely knew, and when you did not raise the topic, neither did I.”
She couldn’t quite catch her breath. Or move. “Why would you...?”
“I told you I wanted to marry you.” He did something with his jaw that might as well have been a shrug, though there was nothing careless in it. “I am not a man of half measures. Of course if I wished to marry you, that would mean children to follow. You can tell me that you did not know this, if you like. But between you and me,wife, I don’t believe it.”
And there was a truth in his words that she didn’t like. Especially not now, when she felt as if he had stripped her of everything, leaving her with nothing.
Nothing but that terrible knot that seemed to grow twice its size in a moment. Then three times its size in the next.
Worse, it hurt.
“You told me I could have whatever I wanted. You promised that no matter what it was, you would make it happen.” She shook her head, horrified when she felt tears spill over, but completely unable to do anything but let them. “What do you call this?”
“Practicality,” he said, there against her mouth, a bitter kiss. “We can none of us be anything but what we are, Anya. Remember that. It will save you pain.”
Then he was moving. Anya struggled to sit up, some part of her thinking she ought to leap to her feet, chase after him,dosomething.
But she couldn’t seem to move.
“What if I’m not practical?” she demanded of him as he stood there beside the bed. “Will you throw me back into your dungeon? It is called the Queen’s Cell, after all.”
“Now I know why,” he threw back at her. “You decide if you want to be my Queen or you wish to be my curse,habibti. And I will respond in kind.”
And then she watched, in shocked disbelief, as he left her.
On their wedding night.
When he had just finished telling her how little she truly meant to him.
She stayed where she was, trying to breathe. Trying to think of how best to keep fighting—
Until she heard the sound of a motor turning over outside, and she understood.
He wasn’t simply leaving the room. He was leaving, full stop.
The message was clear. As long as she insisted on loving him, there could be no stopping him.
When the panic attack hit her that time, she honestly thought that it might kill her. Or maybe she wished it would, this time.