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Not tricksters like her brother. She didn’t know that world.
But she was about to learn.
The moment he started to take a sip, she thrust the bottle at him and lunged for the inner door to her bedroom.
The sound of the tumbler falling, glass shattering, and mead sloshing barely reached her ears before his iron grip clamped down on her arms. She shrieked without meaning to, then twisted, trying to free herself from his grasp.
He wrenched back her arms, pushing her further into the suite. The same way she’d been running. Her shoulder sockets screamed, and her cry was louder this time.
The sight of her pain had always only driven Alekur to inflict further tortures. She’d learned that long ago, but her voice belonged more to her body than her mind at the moment. There was barely any thought in her head, anyway. Only pain and him pushing her farther forward.
He flung her body onto the ivory quilt of the bed, which was lucky, considering the floor was stone. She tried to tuck into a ball, but he wrenched one arm against the small of her back, then the other. Rope dug in at her wrists, tight as bands of iron but brutally rough. Her ankles were next, and she fought him despite the futility of it. Perhaps she delayed him a second or two, but mostly, it simply earned her the reward of hearing his delighted laughs. He wasn’t satisfied until he’d fastened both to a bedpost.
He was as cruel as he was thorough. If she could have gotten to her feet, even while tied, there were scissors on her dresser. She could try to cut the bonds. As it was, she didn’t see much hope for moving at all, let alone cutting her way out. Wiggling? Gnawing?
Perhaps the animals—but no. He was closing the shutters, bolting them with a smug smile. “Oh, no, your little friends aren’t getting you out of this one.”
There had to be a way. Had to be. Alekur couldn’t win. She had to find some way through it. If she didn’t, she’d die here.
Her arms ached, but she put all her effort into blinking away the tears of frustration that were far more intense than the pain.
By Nefrana. She’d been so close.
And yet never really close at all. She shouldn’t have waited so long. It had been fear, really, that had kept her here. Fear and love. Why had she delayed? Was she waiting for a signal? For a rider from Kavanar? She should have thrown caution to the wind, not worried about a map, just picked a day and a direction, and started running.
She’d known what Alekur wanted—what the queen wanted—for a long time. She could’ve run any time, but she’d hung on, let them tighten their noose.
But how could she leave? It wasn’t as simple as getting a horse and taking off. Fears from her past rose to the surface of her mind, like a rising tide she couldn’t escape. She’d nearly died, that first time she’d ever mounted a horse.
The creature had been a glorious black stallion, new to the castle and fit for a royal, the stable master had said. A king himself. She’d barely coaxed the stallion a few hundred yards before Alekur—true to form—had pointed his own, much steadier mount straight at her, galloping full speed.
The anger and alarm in the stallion had coursed through her veins, their minds connecting briefly, and she was lucky she’d survived the fall after the horse threw her off and into the dirt. Her bones had ached for weeks. Later, she’d seen the stable master struggling with the same massive beast, doing his best to calm the anxious creature. If he couldn’t handle the stallion, why had she been expected to?
The experience had shaken her to her core, though, and had kept her from ever trying again, keeping her distance from all horses really, as much as she adored most animals.
Conquering that fear seemed insurmountable, but so did crossing the continent on foot. Now, in hindsight, she wondered… Had that been Alekur’s intent all along—to scare her away from horses, to keep her trapped under his thumb? Or had it just been his usual sadism?
Still, it wasn’t Alekur’s fault she hadn’t run. At least—not entirely. It had been hard to accept that the time to leave it all behind was now, to risk her life out in the big, wide world, to never see him again… No, she wouldn’t hang this delay on Javarin. It had been her decision to make, and she’d miscalculated it. She’d been afraid.
And now she would pay the price.
Alekur gave the ropes around her wrists a good tug, sending a shot of pain through her shoulders, muffling her cry of pain against the quilt. Smiling, he stood back, hands on his hips as if admiring a hard day’s work.
“I hope you’re happy,” she spat at him.
“Oh, I am.”
“I don’t want to be queen, you know. And I never will. Your animosity toward me is ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
The way he scanned her as she lay there sent a chill into her belly. She’d tried her best to avoid his attention, his appraisals, anything, but the darker fears that had crept into her thoughts some nights reared their heads now, slipping into the forefront of her mind, out into the light.
He stepped closer and ran a finger from her cheekbone toward her chin. She jerked her face away, not that she could really escape him.
At this, he grinned again.
“It’s not baseless,” he said simply, to her surprise. “If you’d like to be naive about it, by all means.”
