Dylan is sprawled against the stone wall, his cheek cupped in one hand. He blinks at me in the dim light as I step forward and crouch in front of him.
“I have some questions for you, Dylan,” I sneer. “Please tell me you won’t cooperate so I can make this a little more fun.”
“Fuck you,” Dylan groans.
“What’s that?” I growl. “You tried to fuck my wife?”
Fear contorts his features at my words, and he shakes his head. “It wasn’t what it looked like! Come on, man.”
I scoff. “So you’re telling me you did not drug and assault a princess of the realm?”
Dylan straightens, somehow managing to look down his nose at me from his position on the floor. “She wanted to be there. She came tome, trying to get away fromyou. She’s always wanted to be with me.”
Without warning, I throw a punch into his cheek, bone crunching beneath my fist.
Dylan screams pathetically. “You broke my jaw!” His voice comes out garbled.
“You know what we do to rapists here?”
“I barely touched her,” he cries out.
I yank him up by the collar of his shirt and throw another punch into his gut. He spits blood, and I pull his head back by his hair. “What did you give her?”
“Hells if I know,” he whines, bracing himself for another hit.
“Where did you get it?”
“She’ll kill me,” he rasps.
I laugh darkly. “Not if I kill you first.” For Dylan, I might be willing to make an exception to my moral code.
His eyes flash with fear as he stumbles over his words. “You . . . you can’t. The king would never allow it.”
“Watch me,” I threaten. “Where. Did. You. Get. It?”
He puts his hands over his face, cowering into the wall. Hurting him isn’t even satisfying.
Pulling my dagger out, I tip his chin back with the blade. “If you won’t speak, perhaps you don’t need your tongue.” I press the blade in and drag it up his cheek, drawing a thin line of blood. “Or perhaps I should cut out your eyes for daring to look upon my wife?”
There’s a frenzied panic in his eyes, and the scent of urine fills the air. Pathetic.
“Lady Astoria,” he spits out with more blood. His confirmation is enough to have her brought in for questioning, but I will still need to play my cards right.
Unable to stop myself, I throw another punch to Dylan’s gut, and he doubles over, falling to the piss-soaked floor. It takes all my self-control not to use my dagger and carve him to pieces, but as much as I hate it, he is owed a fair trial.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. It was a mistake,” he cries. “She made me do it. I didn’t have a choice.”
I stomp on one of his hands, and he screams again. The satisfying crunch of bone should disturb me, but I’m angry. “You disgust me. You’ll be lucky if you’re sentenced to a quick death for attacking the princess, for daring to touch what is mine.”
Dylan lies in a puddle of his own blood and piss and whimpers pathetically as he cradles his broken hand.
“You’d better hope she wakes up from this unharmed, or I’ll be back, and I won’t be so nice.”
I knock on the cell door, and the key clicks in the lock.
“Call for a healer in a few hours,” I order the guards. “He needs some time to think about what he’s done.”
“Yes, sire,” the guard replies, locking the door back up.
