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Chapter 4 A Kingdom Of Bruises

If he couldn’t burn her out of his head, he’d fuck her out instead.
That was the thought. The intent. The excuse.
Mikko slammed Kimberlee against the bedpost hard enough to knock a groan from her throat. She clung to him like a parasite, legs around his waist, nails dragging harsh lines down his back.
“You thinking about her?” she whispered against his ear, biting down hard.
He didn’t answer.
Because he was.
And no amount of thrusting or bruising would scrub the taste of Espen from his mouth.
Kimberlee moaned louder. Performed louder. Her cries echoed off the stone walls like a damn performance. Mikko ground his teeth, shoved deeper, tried to imagine it was anyone else.
It didn’t help.
Because Espen never sounded like this. Never begged, never whined, never purred in his ear like a pet waiting to be fed.
No.
Espen had gasped once.
Once.
When he kissed her, uninvited, unrestrained. And it hadn’t been submission. It had been surprise. Hunger, maybe. Rage.
A sound that still echoed in his chest like a fucking curse.
“Mikko—fuck, gods, right there—!”
He grunted and finished with a growl, not even bothering to make it pleasant.
When Kimberlee leaned in, breathless and triumphant, he shoved her off without a word.
Her laughter followed him as he dressed. “Did it help?” she asked sweetly.
He said nothing.
She smiled, eyes cold. “Didn’t think so.”
🔥
The palace echoed with moans that didn’t belong to her.
Espen didn’t flinch. Didn’t pause. Didn’t even roll her eyes.
She simply closed the door to the war chamber behind her, heels tapping calmly against the corridor stone.
She had more important things to focus on than Mikko’s late-night rutting.
Like the ambassador from Dalryn who was convinced she couldn’t read a treaty without supervision. Or the new steward who still hadn’t figured out that she didn’t need a man to explain how to pour a fucking wine list.
She smiled at every one of them. Curtsied, flirted, disarmed. All while quietly rewriting every contract that came across her desk. Slowly building favor with nobles too old or too bitter to care for Mikko’s legacy.
She was patient.
She was lethal.
And she refused to give Kimberlee the satisfaction of cracking.
When the laughter from Mikko’s room spilled down the eastern wing, Espen simply walked the opposite way.
She passed guards who didn’t meet her gaze. Maids who whispered behind their sleeves.
Let them.
Let them think she was nothing.
Let them believe she didn’t notice the way Mikko stared at her across the throne room like she was filth clinging to his boot.
Let them ignore how his eyes always lingered.
How his hands always fisted when she spoke too sweetly.
Let them all watch.
She was watching too.
🔥
She wasn’t breaking.
Mikko stared across the council table at Espen, who wore violet silk like armor and held court with a soft voice that somehow commanded more attention than a raised sword.
She didn’t even look at him.
Didn’t acknowledge him.
After last night—after the sounds he’d made sure she could hear—he expected a crack. A flinch. A flash of something human.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker.
The king asked her about the envoy from the south.
She replied with calm confidence, every word polished and exact. She quoted export numbers. She countered the adviser’s projections with insight she shouldn’t have had.
Mikko watched the way her throat moved as she spoke.
Watched the way nobles leaned in, rapt, as if she were the future of this court and he was just the pissed-off legacy sulking in her shadow.
“You look like you’re constipated,” his cousin muttered beside him.
Mikko didn’t blink.
“I’m watching,” he said.
“Yeah,” his cousin murmured. “We all are.”
🔥
She didn’t know she was being followed.
Not by anyone alive, at least.
The shadow that clung to her movements was not the kind that flickered under torchlight or chased footsteps around corners. It was darker. Older. Born of curses, not candle smoke.
It watched as she laughed at a maid’s joke.
Watched as she bent beside her hidden dragon’s nest behind the library wall, whispering words only old bloodlines remembered.
It waited.
Patient.
Hungry.
And no one—not Mikko, not Kimberlee, not even Espen herself—noticed the air thickening.
Not yet.
🔥
He found her again that night, alone in the western garden.
She was kneeling by the moonwell, her hair unbound, light dancing across her bare shoulders as she whispered into the water.
He should’ve left.
Should’ve turned back.
Instead, he stepped closer.
“What spell are you casting now?” he sneered.
Espen didn’t turn. “Just trying to scrub the memory of your voice from the stones.”
“Careful,” he said, voice low. “You’ll need that tongue when the court asks how the royal bed is treating you.”
“Ah.” She stood then, brushing off her skirts. “Should I lie and say it was memorable?”
He stepped into her space, uninvited.
“You play dangerous games, Princess.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
“Then why are you always watching?”
Silence.
Breath. Tension. Something thick and sour in the air between them.
“I heard your mistress last night,” she added, voice steady. “Impressive. All that noise for something so… brief.”
His jaw clenched.
She smiled. “Did you need her louder this time? Or are you still trying to convince yourself it’s not me you see when you close your eyes?”
Mikko’s hands twitched at his sides.
She stepped past him, brushing his shoulder with hers. “Don’t worry, Mikko,” she said softly. “I won’t make it easy for you.”
He didn’t turn.
Didn’t breathe.
Because for the first time in years, he didn’t know if he was still holding the knife—or if she’d already cut him open without ever drawing steel.
🔥
She returned to her room without looking back.
Her dragon shifted restlessly in the shadows behind the hearth.
And beneath her bed, the velvet pouch pulsed with something stronger now—thicker. Closer to waking.
She stared at it.
At the magic that remembered who she really was.
Who she was meant to be.
And whispered:
“Not yet.”
But the darkness listening this time… whispered back.