Luca again stared at the rafters of the high ceiling. Somewhere, in the daylight above, Amarande was thinking of him. He was sure of it. “As long as I’m without my princess, my life is pain. Threaten me, torture me, starve me, but you will never see the worst of it.”
“Our capacity for pain is endless; that’s what makes us human,” the prince answered, his tone almost academic. “Physically, mentally, emotionally—there is more than one way to make you wish you were already dead.”
“A life without love is no life at all.”
“Spoken like a boy lulled enough by false promises to think he had a chance to begin with.”
Taillefer set whatever he’d taken on a small pedestal table, his body blocking it, before leaning down. He’d placed thick gloves on his hands, though they were cut in a way that left him dexterous enough to pull the straps across Luca’s chest a notch tighter. Too tight. Much too tight. Luca’s skin immediately blanched, circulation cut off at the edges.
“You, my friend, are under my care. Which means you don’t have a chance now.” Taillefer leaned in, flaxen hair falling upon his smooth brow. “But, trust me, you never did.”
The prince reached behind him and pulled out a vial made from crystal-clear glass. Inside was a milky green liquid that stuck to the inner wall of the vial when sloshed. “This is something new I’ve designed, inspired by that charred homeland of yours. Dry, cracked, burning—the Torrent is a bout of infection about theearth, if you ask me. Pairs nicely with the Warlord’s beloved fire pits, no?”
“Burn me. I don’t care. Scars are nothing.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare disfigure that lovely face of yours.” Taillefer smiled and reached behind him, holding up a second object. A plant. Fat clusters as big as a fist of small white flowers.
“Hemlock?” Luca asked, recognizing the flowers as those that had been around Taillefer’s neck in the meadow. “I am to be poisoned, then.”
“Brilliant guess, but no. This is an imposter for hemlock—giant hogweed’s the name.” Taillefer held it aloft. “It won’t kill you, but it burns like a newborn star. Graze your hand on the sap and you’ll look like you plunged it in a fire on purpose. Get it in your eye and you’ll go temporarily blind. Oh, and the scars—black, with pain that stays as long as the color. Makes that asp wound of yours look like a paper cut.”
Placing the plant away, he raised the vial again. This time, Luca watched more closely. “This is pure, distilled giant hogweed. A thousand times more powerful than the sap found within the plant’s leaves.”
A thousand times.That could eat right through skin. Reveal the muscles and sinew underneath. Bore through bones.
Yes, Taillefer was mad.
“Stupid name, though—giant hogweed. Perhaps I should coin something flashier? Fire sting? Fire flood?” Taillefer thoughtfully watched it roll and stick against the glass inches above Luca’s face. “It’s bright green—fire swamp, maybe? Get it?”
Luca said nothing.
“Perhaps you’ll have a suggestion after you’ve experienced it?”
Taillefer flicked the bottle, and Luca’s eyes automatically snapped shut, protective. This made the young prince snort. “I said I wouldn’t maim that face and I won’t. You’re as good to me disfigured as you are dead.”
The bottle went again to the pedestal table. “That said, I would like to get right to work—discovery waits for no man, least of all one who must prepare for a wedding in mere hours.” The prince collected the plant and raised the green-and-purple stem, so that Luca could easily see where a cut had been made. The stem was hollow, oozing the poisonous sap. “We’ll start with just the sap and work our way up from there, shall we?” Luca didn’t respond. “Let’s see. Because this is a matter of the heart, how about we just open you up right about here.…”
Squeezing the stem as he went, Taillefer dragged oozing sap in a line down Luca’s sternum the same length as a grown man’s hand. He pressed in, scratching his way across the flesh like he was heavy-handed with a quill on parchment.
Luca tensed against his binds, veins popping from his skin, tendons firing. The reaction was so swift, so intense, that the taxidermic snake flicked off his shin and plunked to the floor. His teeth ground shut, his eyes, too, the pain bald and bold, coursing through him as his skin melted and blistered. As promised, he was opened up. A gaping, raised line cleaving the skin of his chest in two.
Prince Taillefer watched it with reserved reaction.
“Interesting. That was much quicker than I expected.”
Breathless yet heaving, Luca couldn’t wedge his mouth open for a response. The prince turned again to his worktable and came back with a leather-bound journal and a pencil. Ready to document the next phase. “Let’s see if your blood reacts the same as your skin, shall we?”
Luca tensed again, as much as he could, knowing it would not be enough. It couldn’t be. Not if Taillefer decided to make ashes of him from the inside out.
The prince uncorked the vial and, with careful fingers, lowered it until the lip of glass hovered tight against the wound festering along Luca’s sternum.
“Let’s start with one drop, shall we?”
The sticky liquid took its time leaving the vial, long enough in fact that Luca’s eyes sprang open, something about the pause giving him the courage to look. His vision cleared just in time for him to see a pale green drop roll across the lip and fall a hairsbreadth into his open flesh.
His jaw unclenched and he screamed then, so loud he thought it might shatter the whole of him. So loud he thought Amarande might hear. Or his mother in the heavens. Maybe the stars themselves if they weren’t blind.
Prince Taillefer, though, wasn’t moved, slowly and carefully resealing the bottle, placing it on the table behind, his eyes never leaving Luca’s reaction. His hand began running in looping script across one page and then another.
