AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If you think I can make a kingdom love you, Your Majesty, you overestimate my charm.”
“Do I?” She didn’t miss the sudden sharpness of his gaze, the new hardness in his tone. “Did you not once do the same for someone else?”
Ice crept down her spine. Memories she didn’t want pushed at her mind, but they were hers this time, and she couldn’t force an absent Song to take them away. “I have no idea what you mean, Your Majesty.” And he was wrong. What she had done at another’s behest had not been to create love. Not even a twisted approximation of it. “Thank you for the walk.” She bowed and turned.
“Did I get the throne right? And your room? Did they make you feel at home?”
She held her tongue and kept walking. Power clamped around her and it took her half a second to understand what it was supposed to do. Half a second to know that, as she should have been brought to her knees at Numair’s nameday celebration, she should be incapable of movement now.
She froze. But she’d taken a step before she did. Had he seen the hesitation between his command and her obedience? Would she walk out of this courtyard alive?
“There is an acquaintance of mine. An old rival, I suppose you might say. He’s missing something. The interesting part is, that something he’s missing looks a lot like you—a young, pretty, scarred little songbird.” Phantom fingers skated up the scars marring her back and she couldn’t stop it—she flinched.
The Jackal King laughed. The magic surrounding her spun and she forced herself to spin with it, to face him. Forced herself, when he crooked his finger, to walk to him. His fingers closed on her chin in a bruising grip, forcing her head up.
“What do you think Simian Hensa would give me, if I gave you back to him?”
Her vision blurred at the periphery, sound and sight narrowing to the rushing of her blood in her ears and the king before her.
He tapped his index finger against her cheek, as if in contemplation. “But perhaps the better question is, what would you give me to avoid going back?”
Never again. She closed her eyes as the words echoed in her head, over and over. Insistent. Undeniable. Never again. Never again. I said never again.
Never again would another person control her life. Never again would she bend. Never again would she break. Never. Again.
She opened her eyes. “Know this, Your Majesty. I will open my throat to the bone before I ever return to Renault County.” There was no longer any point in hiding. Not with him. “If you want me to do the impossible for you, find something better to threaten me with.”
“Perhaps I will.” His magic dissipated and she turned, walked three steps before he said, “I’m curious. How did you get out? Even Simian can’t leave that place. Not anymore.”
Without breaking stride, she said, “It’s simple. I died.”
She passed through the courtyard and into the solarium. It had grown markedly more populated in her absence, and its inhabitants now rushed to look as if they were engaged with each other, rather than in watching her and their king.
Someone spoke to her, but she didn’t hear the words. She didn’t care what that scene had looked like to any of these people. She only knew she needed to get out of this place before she tried to claw her way out of her own body.
She realized Numair was now among the solarium’s occupants when he took one look at her face and stood. Dahlia had literally been in his lap this time, and she tumbled sideways at his abrupt ascent.
He followed Clare without a word, until they were out of the palace, out of the stables, past the outer wall. Until they arrived at his home, and they’d dropped Hellack and Kialla in the paddock. And when he did speak, he didn’t ask her what had happened. He didn’t ask her if she was okay.
The Ferrian-cursed, brilliant man made a joke. “You may want to buy actual battle armor before you return to the palace. No doubt rumor has already spread that both my uncle and I have fallen madly in love with you. Half the court women may try to kill you.”
The laughter that burst out of her was unexpected. It took the edge off her anger, enough for her to remember how to speak. “Next time, you might try not dumping a woman on the floor to run after me.”
He shrugged. “She deserves far worse than being dumped on the ground.”
Then why are you sleeping with her? She wanted to ask. But she knew that was one of those questions she could never give voice to, in the same way he knew not to ask her what his uncle had said to her. Their new friendship was built on unspoken rules they both instinctively recognized the boundaries of. And she didn’t want to ruin it.
When they stopped outside the hidden door to his home she said, “I don’t think I can be inside right now.” She wanted to run. And run. And run. To run until her lungs and legs burned with the strain and her soul, if she had such a thing, left her body.
“Humor me for a moment. I have something I think will help. If it doesn’t, I won’t keep you.”
He led her up to the third floor, to a wide, airy room with a row of windows overlooking the paddock. The floor was covered in soft mats, and he led to her a corner, where a bag hung suspended from the ceiling. “What am I supposed to do with this?” She poked it and found it was heavy but semi-pliant, as if filled with sand.
“You hit it. And then you keep hitting it, until you feel better.”
So she hit. And she kept hitting, until the skin flayed from her knuckles and she left bloody imprints on the bag, and if she didn’t feel better she at least felt…quieter.
Chapter Fifty-Two
