Page 59 of Marrying the Savage

The room goes quiet except for the sound of the sea below.

My throat tightens for reasons I don’t appreciate.

Damir threads the cord through the ring once, then again, with surprising patience for a man who shot my fiancé less than an hour ago. His hands are large, the ring larger still, absurdly oversized for me even before the thread is involved.

“You can’t be serious,” I say.

“I am often serious.”

“That ring is enormous.”

“Yes.”

“It will look insane.”

“Yes.”

“It’s going to look like I stole jewelry from a statue.”

This time, he does smile.

Barely.

But definitely.

“Come here.”

“No.”

“Sofia.”

I sigh dramatically because if I don’t make a joke, I may feel something, and feeling things in Bluebeard’s cliff house seems unwise.

I step closer. He takes my left hand, and my pulse behaves stupidly. The contact is not intimate, not compared to his mouth on mine, his teeth at my neck, his hand at my waist. But somehow, this feels more dangerous. He’s not kissing me. Not trapping me. Not dragging me away from bullets.

He’s holding my hand with terrifying care.

He wraps the thread around my finger, adjusts the ring so it rests against the base, then ties the cord carefully enough that the massive signet sits securely despite being cartoonishly too large.

It looks ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

The ring covers half my lower finger, dark and heavy against my skin, the thread looped around it in an improvised knot that should look temporary and absurd.

It does.

But it also looks like something else. Something old. Something claimed from ashes and tied to me because I said I had no ring.

My chest tightens.

For some reason, that annoys me more than fear would have.

I stare at it.

Damir’s thumb brushes once over the thread, checking that it holds. “There,” he says.

I swallow and look up at him. He’s closer than I realized. His eyes are on my face, not the ring. Pale. Steady. Impossible to read.

I should make another joke. I should ask whether his family ring comes with a curse or a complimentary death threat. Instead, I look back down at the ridiculous, enormous ring tied to my finger with black thread.