Page 37 of Queen of War and Ruin

Iknow I’m going to regret opening my eyes.

My head already feels like it’s being pounded thin on a blacksmith’s anvil, and the shreds of memory filtering through my aching brain are horrible enough to make me want to scream.

Petrys is going to kill me, some numb, distant part of my mind whispers. I can already hear him cursing me out. That was idiotic, irresponsible, and dangerous, he’ll say, like he’s spitting out a string of insults. You need to stop drowning your problems in bad wine and start⁠—

But Petrys is in Vsenrog. The voice in my mind falls silent, and I try to swallow the bitter heaviness in the back of my throat. I can’t go back to Vsenrog now, not with the blood of Prince Syvan on my hands.

How am I ever going to get cursed out by my brother again?

Shit. I force my eyes open and try to remember where in the nine hells I am.

My face is pressed into a pile of straw. Well, it could be worse. I roll over onto my back, groaning as my hangover actively tries to kill me.

“I’ll be damned,” a man’s voice rasps from above me. “You aren’t dead after all.”

I blink, shielding my eyes against a very rude beam of sunlight. The guard who found me last night and dragged me in front of the prince is leaning against the wall next to me with a dagger in his hand.

Great. Just the way I always wanted to die—hungover and stabbed in a pile of straw after making a complete ass of myself.

I glance to either side. She’s not here. I can’t decide if that’s a relief or not. My memories of last night are a hazy disaster, but surely I didn’t cry. Not in front of my wife. The one person in all of the kingdoms who actually matters.

I sit up, gritting my teeth as the pulsing agony in my head pushes forward. The man chuckles, like watching me suffer is the most fun he’s had all morning. I spit onto the floor, then look at the rows of stalls in this barn. There are plenty of horses here, right? Surely this run-down hunting camp wouldn’t mind if I rode out on the little gelding who brought me here?

I look up at the man holding a dagger and force myself to smile.

“I’ll give you twenty gold if you let me take my horse and get out of here,” I say.

The gelding isn’t technically mine, but who needs to know that little detail? Not this asshole. He snorts, then spits on the ground in front of me.

“You don’t have twenty gold,” he says.

Shit. I don’t have any gold, as this bastard probably knows.

“What about a hundred?” I ask.

“What about you suck my ass?” he retorts.

I grin at the bastard, and he grins back. Someone calls from the open barn door. He turns toward the voice. This would be my chance to escape, if I could force my body to move. Instead, I just let my head drop to my hands and pray to whatever gods might still be listening that my memories of last night aren’t true. That my wife wasn’t here, in the straw with me, holding me while I fell apart like a coward.

“What?” the man with the dagger calls.

I wince. Does he have to be so damn loud? The horses nicker and snort as someone walks toward us.

“You heard me,” the man walking down the barn calls. “He’s coming with us. To Ethiria.”

“What?” I ask.

“Why?” the man with the dagger asks. He looks almost as surprised as I feel.

The messenger shrugs. I spit again, trying to get the taste of sour wine out of my mouth. Then I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and turn to the two men who are watching me with nearly identical expressions of disdain.

“If Elrick wants his sister to marry the prince of Ethiria,” I finally say, in a voice that sounds like a rusty gate, “then why drag me along?”

I turn to the man with the dagger. He was there last night; he knows Elrick the asshole wants to marry Lilias off to the prince of Ethiria. But he’s staring at the messenger with his mouth open.

“I have no fucking idea,” the messenger says. “Elrick didn’t look too happy about it either.”

Maybe I’m a hostage? But wouldn’t they have at least tied me up if they were treating me like a prisoner? Hells, I still have all my daggers on me.