Her blind deception the.., p.1
Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection Series Book 2), page 1
Her Blind Deception
Hailey Jade
For those who don't love easily.
And for those who aren't always easy to love.
Copyright © 2023 by Hailey Jade.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Book Cover by Franziska Stern @ www.coverdungeon.com
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
What did you think?
Also By Hailey Jade
Chapter 1
Rhiandra
The day had been one of cloying humidity and blinding sunlight, making my dress stick to my skin and my hair wilt. I was glad to see it die now, making a bloody mess of what horizon I could see from the carriage window. It seemed an omen of some kind, that much red, tightening the sense of foreboding draped around my neck like a string of pearls.
Leela watched me steadily as the carriage swayed, her brows pinched together.
‘Stop looking at me like that. I feel as though you’re expecting me to turn into an ogre,’ I grumbled, crossing my arms and scowling out the window.
‘It’s not my place to make judgements, ma’am,’ she said slowly, ‘and I’ve no right to criticise your decisions--’
‘Then why do I feel like you’re about to?’ I interrupted. ‘Just sit silently and make sure my hair is perfect when I step out of this carriage.’
She continued her steady stare, her frown deepening, hardly reacting at all to the words I’d just slapped her with. After a few moments filled with only the crunch of the carriage wheels against the road, she spoke again. ‘You’re afraid.’
I pressed my lips together and looked back to the sky. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
She left me alone with the twisting turmoil of my thoughts after that, but she continued to watch me with that expression of concern that galled me so. I didn’t like that she thought I was making a mistake. It made me consider that she could be right. But it was too late to turn back now, to make a different decision. Far, far too late.
The buildings shrunk and warped as we moved down the hill toward the edge of the city, going from proud, upright structures gleaming with paint and polish, to crooked, sooty hovels squashed tightly side-by-side. The carriage took a turn down a tight, gloomy street and shuddered to a halt before a squat little sanctum. Leela peered around us as we stepped down from the carriage, lifting her skirts away from her shoes to keep them free of mud.
‘I know you’re wanting this kept secret for now, but this place…’ She let the end of her sentence dangle when she caught the look I shot her. She’d been dismayed at this plan from the beginning, at the secrecy, at the haste. Why would I marry someone without permission from the council? Especially now, amid the flurry of the search for Princess Gwinellyn, when I was already mired in so much suspicion and rumour. It would be like kicking the hornet’s nest.
But try telling that to the man waiting just beyond those doors.
‘Do you want me to wait here?’ The question came from Cotus, who was driving the carriage. The ex-swoon dealer didn’t look comfortable in his new uniform yet, constantly tugging at the ruffled collar and trying to keep his ruddy curls from escaping his cap. His brow rippled as he eyed the sanctum, probably still trying to figure out what we were doing there.
‘No. Drive around and loop back. The carriage draws too much attention. You’ll likely wind up getting robbed if you wait here.’ I tried to keep my tone teasing, and that seemed to mollify him a little as some of the creases smoothed out of his face. But he would be sullen again soon. I knew he was a little infatuated with me, and I may have leveraged that when I’d convinced him to help me kidnap Gwinellyn and dump her in the Yawn. But he was in too deep now to cause any trouble.
We stared at the sanctum as I worked up the courage to go in. In this neighbourhood, only a few streets away from the suvoir where I’d spent so much of my old life, sanctums tended to be poverty-stricken relatives of those found higher up the hill, and this one was no exception. The stone was grey and stained with lichen and damp, the windows were either thick with grime or boarded up completely, and there were empty alcoves where once there would have been sculptures of the Sacred Seven. A perfect fit, really. A joke of a sanctum for a farce of a marriage.
Shaking off my misgivings, I took a deep breath and headed for the door. ‘Let’s just get this over with.’
A cold gloom sat thickly over the interior of the building, sending a chill creeping down my arms, but it was in better condition than I expected. A priest shuffled forward and I gratefully turned my attention to him, hoping I could get a hold of myself before I had to stand before the altar. If I was going to do this, I was going to set the tone from the very beginning. I was a force to be reckoned with. I wasn’t going to be manipulated and threatened into submission.
Never mind if that was how I’d wound up here in the first place.
‘Your Royal Highness,’ the priest said as he bobbed forward in a bow. ‘I must say, when this young man sought my services, I didn’t believe him. But here you are.’ His voice was warm as he squinted up at me from beneath absurdly bushy eyebrows, his face creased with a smile.
‘Thank you for your discretion,’ I said. ‘You’ll be well rewarded for it.’ To my surprise, he waved my words away with a wrinkled hand.
‘No, no, no. Marriage is an agreement between two people and the gods. It is not a thing for an old man to go blabbing about, no matter who is standing before the altar.’
How ridiculous. A bought silence was far more reliable. Besides, who in the Trough would turn down a bribe? I flashed him a smile. ‘Perhaps I can make a donation, see to some renovations?’ I said, glancing at the boarded-up window.
He followed my gaze and chuckled. ‘Oh, the thing about windows is they just keep breaking.’
I was prickled by a shard of irritation that I tried to keep off my face. ‘Then maybe your personal rooms could use refurnishing?’
His smile faded, turning sad. ‘If you feel that strongly about it, the Sisters of the Soil administer food and care to the poor and their funds are always thin. If royal money is to be spent, it would be better used there than on rugs and curtains.’
He gave a brisk nod that left me feeling strangely chastised and headed to the altar. It was neatly kept, perched in a shaft of filtered sunlight that illuminated a bronze icon of Aether with a powerfully muscled torso and legs completely obscured by clouds. His hands were outstretched, a bowl of water balancing on one palm and a stone of amber in the other. I had always thought Aether looked quite smug with his own power, and this icon was no exception.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom enough to pick out the other person smug with his own power standing in the shadows. And this one was certainly no god.
Draven watched me with the same shrewd, unflinching intensity that always set me on edge, and now it carried with it the added irritant of memory. I had to consciously stop my hands fidgeting. Too bad there was nothing I could do to stop the blush that flooded my face. Idiot, idiot, idiot. I had schooled myself for this moment, had chanted cold and aloof to myself all morning. A blush was neither cold, nor aloof.
A smile kicked up the corner of his mouth and I forced my eyes away from him. It was then that I realised he wasn’t alone. A man and a woman stood beside him, watching me steadily. The man was short, thick-limbed and bristly haired, and there was something familiar about his face. The woman was much taller, with close-cropped spiral curls, skin as rich as soil and a face soft with curiosity. Draven began to head towards me, drawing my attention back to him. He offered me his hand.
‘Shall we?’
‘Who are they?’ I jerked my head in the direction of his companions.
‘Witnesses,’ he purred, shooting a look at Leela.
I folded my arms. ‘I thought we were trying to keep this quiet.’
‘All the more reason I shouldn’t,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s just get this over with.’ But before I could turn to the altar, he held out a flower. It was a red tulip, its petals glistening with dew, springing tall and bright from the grip of his fingers. I blinked at it for a moment, waiting for it to be exposed as a trick, perhaps to reveal a mouth full of teeth and take a bite out of me.
‘Brides carry flowers,’ he prompted, and I carefully accepted it, my fingers brushing his as I took the stem.
‘Unusual choice,’ I said, staring down at it. Not exactly traditional.
‘Isn’t it?’ He offered me his hand again, and I warily accepted, allowing him to lead me towards the priest waiting at the altar.
‘Welcome, friends,’ the old man began, nodding to the witnesses before turning his gaze on us. ‘I’m delighted and humbled to preside over this ceremony as the eyes, ears and voice of the gods. Marriage is a representation of humanity’s divinity, a replication of the union between Aether and Madeia.’
The priest sprinkled first soil, then water over our clasped hands as he droned on about Madeia’s fertile body and Aether’s blessings of sun and rain and air, and as he spoke I eyed Draven, my heart beating a constant warning within me, my skin thrumming where he touched me. Part of me wished he was ugly or stupid or fumbled in bed. My attraction to him made me vulnerable, and for all his talk of partnership, I knew my vulnerability was dangerous. Because I had lied to him. I’d told him Princess Gwinellyn, my stepdaughter and heir to the throne, was dead. If he ever discovered my deception, I would pay for it dearly.
As he slipped the ring onto my finger, he smiled like a hunter who’d snared a rabbit in his trap, and I felt uneasy. Already, this marriage felt nothing like my last one. Even when Linus had been at his most aggressive, I always believed I had the upper hand. There was power in being desired by someone I felt nothing for.
This was different. Draven got under my skin.
When the priest finished his lines, Draven held onto my hand for a few moments longer, dropping it as his companions approached him, and I scanned them suspiciously. Neither spoke to me, and they drew him away to talk in a murmur too low for me to hear. It might have infuriated me, but I was feeling jittery and not at all myself, especially when I looked to Leela. She was hanging back, but her gaze was sharp and fixed on my new husband.
Watching Leela watch Draven gave me a sense of vertigo. Perhaps there was a tiny slither of me that thought I’d made him up, that he didn’t exist beyond those secret, shadowy moments he’d spent in my life, or perhaps that I walked two worlds that never intersected. In one, I was queen of Brimordia, powerful and beautiful in ways most could only dream. In the other, I was just another maisera at the mercy of a man with more power than me. Seeing those two worlds collide meant I was somehow both at once, and it made me dizzy.
Everything moved fast after that. I felt suddenly like the room was too small, the stone walls too thick, and I escaped back outside to gulp down a few deep breaths, seeking some calm.
He followed me, of course, like a shadow at my back, and I was painfully aware of his every movement, the fall of every footstep, though I tried to pretend I hardly noticed him. As I stepped into the street, I realised I had no idea what was supposed to happen now. A secret marriage. How was I supposed to proceed? There were no normal traditions to follow, no feasting and celebrating and congratulations. I wanted to take the lead now, early, so he didn’t think he could. But I hadn’t thought this part through.
‘What are you stewing over?’ he asked as we walked the path to where Cotus was approaching with the carriage.
‘I’m worrying about how I’m going to pay for your insistence that we do this immediately,’ I said without pause. ‘If you’d been patient, I could have smoothed it over with the court first.’
He sighed, then caught my hand, tugging me to a stop. Before I could guess at his intentions, he wrapped an arm around my waist, swept another beneath my knees, and lifted me from my feet.
I shrieked and threw my arms around his neck to steady myself. ‘What are you doing?!’
He grinned wickedly. ‘Stealing you from your thoughts. I want them all to myself today.’
‘Put me down!’
‘No.’
I briefly caught sight of Cotus’s expression of shock before I was manhandled into my own carriage and deposited on the bench. Straightening up, I scowled at the man who’d put me there. He swung the door shut and hung out the window as Leela hurried over, her eyes wide, her fists bunched like she intended to swing punches.
‘Why don’t you climb up next to the driver?’ he said.
She flashed a look at me. ‘I’d rather travel with my mistress.’
‘It’s alright, Leela. Sit with Cotus,’ I said, glaring holes into the back of Draven’s head. We had things to discuss. Her brow furrowed, but she nodded and Cotus helped her onto the seat beside him.
The carriage lurched into movement, and there I was, sitting across from Draven.
My new husband.
With painful clarity, I thought of him the night he’d convinced me to take his deal, when I had lost myself in wanting him. None of my assumptions had been right. Having him hadn’t lessened my response to him now, to his proximity, to his gaze on me in this tiny carriage, to the way his legs splayed across the seat, bumping into mine no matter how far I retreated from him. The air was laden with those memories, hanging over me like smoke, like the carriage was burning down around me and every breath was laced with danger.
His fingers tapped against his thigh as we eyed each other, a steady rhythm against the sway of the carriage. Tap, tap, tap.
‘Come here,’ he said finally, the command a lash against my skin, turning me hot with its surety.
‘No.’ My reply was immediate. Instinctive.
‘No?’ he repeated, his eyebrow raised, the corner of his lips curling.
I crossed my hands, one over the other. ‘We have things to discuss.’
‘We could have a discussion.’ He leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees, consuming the distance between us inch by inch. ‘Or I could unlace your dress and find out how far down that flush in your cheeks reaches.’
I shuffled back on the bench seat, my heartbeat a heavy thud in my chest. ‘Don’t be obscene. We’re in a carriage.’
‘One with very small windows.’
My gaze flickered to those windows, noting that we’d hit the busiest road in the Trough, where there were so many carriages and people milling about that our pace had slowed to a crawl. Beggars would be peering in with pleading faces and empty hands at any moment.
‘I know what you’re trying to do.’ There was a slight waver to my words, but the jolting of the carriage surely disguised it. ‘It isn’t going to work.’
A smile stalked the edges of his mouth. ‘Oh?’
‘If you’ve married me because you think you can play me at my own game, you’re a fool.’
He cocked his head, and the smile crept a few steps closer. ‘And what game is that?’
‘Seducing me into doing whatever you want me to do.’ I kept my face carefully blank, my tone matter-of-fact. Nothing would betray the hot, squirming feeling in my stomach. ‘You clearly think you’re very clever, and maybe you are, but you must have a comically high opinion of yourself if you think that will work with me.’
His jaw ticked, and he shifted until he was leaning against the wall of the carriage again, the smile gone. ‘My dear, if you think that is the extent of the game, then you don’t know what game you’re playing.’
I clenched my teeth against a quick response, stewing on something that would cut him down a peg, but he didn’t seem to be waiting for my reply. He was peering out the window. He grabbed the door handle and took a hold of my hand, and before I could brace myself to resist, he’d pulled me from the carriage, and we were stumbling onto the road.
‘Are you mad?!’ I spluttered as mud splashed up my skirts from the hooves of a horse clomping the other direction.
He didn’t answer me, only called out to tell Cotus that we’d be right back, then yanked me between two wagons lumbering past and slipped us off the street. I flashed a glance back over my shoulder to catch Leela and Cotus looking at me with twin expressions of shock, Leela half-risen to standing, like she was about to follow us, before Draven jostled me down an alleyway. I snatched my hand out of his.
