Page 24

“If her usefulness is over, Majesty, I’ll take her back to the warrens.”

The soft rumble of his voice was ice skating on sharp blades across my psyche as we both tracked the King as he moved around the room.

“Who said her usefulness was through? Hmm?”

Dangerous venom was dripping from him as he walked around with his cock spilling out of his open breeches. He looked like an obscene fallen angel, his trumpet proudly announcing his intent.

Metal ground against wood and leather strapping as the King pulled a well-used crossbow out of a cabinet near the sleeping dog and kin’tha. Fear lanced through me as I whipped my attention to The Raven, needing someone to tell me what to do.

The Raven’s brow twitched slightly, and he mouthed, Run, and darted his eye to the door he had indicated led deeper into the Ard Rí’s personal apartments.

Scrambling to my feet felt like I was moving in quicksand, limbs gobbled up by yards and yards of fabric. The slippers that had been placed on them were too slippery on the stone, and I slid, barely catching myself against the settee in my flight toward the doors. I was kicking the last one off by the time the King was turning to level the bolt at me.

This is it, you dumb bitch, a little voice whispered in my ear.

I was about to be the next Michigander to die by crossbow shot. What did it say about my home state that I wasn’t even the first this year? It said we were fucking crazy. That’s what it said.

The solid thunking twang of the bolt zipping free of the crossbow happened only a breath before the pain bloomed from the apex of my shoulder. Blood instantly began winding its way like a brook down the front of my dress as the King reloaded.

I wasn’t sticking around to figure out why he was such a shit shot for a king living in a medieval world, where it was perfectly normal to own daora and have a fucking crossbow.

I ripped the heavy, carved oak door open, sending agony licking through my arm, but I didn’t pause to wince. I was running before the doors had even spread wide enough to admit me, having to shove myself through the gap. The corridor that welcomed me stretched on for what seemed like dark miles of grey-blue stone.

I heard the muffled sound of The Raven mumbling to the King about a hunt being ill advised in the palace and the King responding something about The Raven getting old. And then it was the slow tap of the heels of the King’s boots rapping against the stonework.

I was throwing open doors to a library, a study, a dining room, a room bathed in sunlight. Opulence I had never even considered possible in a single house, let alone in what was considered a single person’s quarters, flew past me as I searched for a place to hide.

The King was counting off numbers at the doors like some depraved game of hide and seek but hadn’t yet breached the hallway.

The next door I threw open looked like a woman’s bedroom. I didn’t even think. I threw open the three doors beyond it, slammed the last one closed, and high-tailed it back to the woman’s bedroom. I left the door ajar and prayed my gambit worked out as I slid under the bed, letting the bed skirt fall back. I checked to make sure that not a single fold of the massive gown stuck out and then started taking slow, deep breaths as I listened.

The King announced the number fifty and began moving down the hallway. He wasn’t stopping at the open doors but was methodically stalking past them as he made his way through the long corridor.

My plan was simple, hope he went into that last room, which looked like a storeroom of boxes stacked up nearly to the ceiling and a bevy of furniture under white draped sheets. Once he was in the room, I would make a run for the other end of the corridor and, hopefully, out of this madman’s quarters. If I was lucky, I might even make it all the way down to the warrens, where I could hide properly.

Not that I thought any of the daora would hide me from the Ard Rí, as the stakes for them would be too high, and I had not been around long enough to buy even a thimble full of loyalty let alone risking a death-sentence-level loyalty.

I slowed my breathing as I waited for the exact moment I could make my move. And when it came, I ran on tiptoes as fast as I could. It was working. My plan was actually working!

My hand was mere feet from the handle of the entrance door when my calf exploded in vicious, burning torment as a bolt embedded itself deep into the flesh. I screamed, the sound catching in my throat and dying behind my tongue. Nothing came out as I collapsed to the floor, dragging myself ever forward toward my goal. Just a little bit farther, and I could maybe get free.

White-hot pain exploded behind my eyes as the King’s boot came down on the wound in my calf, and he leaned his entire weight on my narrow leg.

“Tsk-tsk, little daoire. That was barely five minutes of sport to make up for that sad excuse of a blow job.”

If sound could penetrate my mouth, I would be shredding my vocal cords on them. Instead, all I could show for the soul-eviscerating agony that was clawing through my leg and up my back was gasping huffs of air trying to breathe past it.

“Majesty . . .” The Raven warned with all the power of a cotton ball on the wind.

The King ignored him. “There is punishment in this court for failing to accomplish the one purpose you have in this life, daoire. Do you know what it is?” He didn’t wait for my answer, and the malice and madness in his voice told me I might, in fact, not survive this encounter. “You give until you do please your King.”

He pulled me away from the door by my braid, vertebra in my neck popping with the strain of his force. I twisted to look at him, and I wish I hadn’t. He was so beautiful, wearing the face of a holy angel with a brilliant smile flashing pearly white teeth. He wasn’t mad, wasn’t angry, wasn’t even losing control of himself. He was laughing like a frat boy at a kegger.

That angelic smile was the last thing I saw as his fist slammed into my face. My world narrowed to the ear-piercing screams that had nowhere to live but in my head as the King beat me. Sometime after both of my eyes had swollen shut and my nose had ceased drawing in air, I heard the crack of something wooden and thick being broken. Men argued, and for those seconds, I could live in the aching anguish that my existence had become. It was only a mere handful of seconds of reprieve, though. And then I found out what that sound was as it came raining down on me.

The meaty muffled crack of my arm breaking as I tried to protect my head from the bat or pole he was lavishing me with haunted me. And when that sound rattled through my jaw and sank into my teeth as my skull split open, I was granted the blissful black arms of a false death.

I fell into the velvet wings of that empty void of consciousness, floating above the soft fleshy thuds, until they, too, ceased, and the space was occupied only by the distant voices of two men raised in a heated argument. What were they arguing about? One was upset that the other had spoiled the party, and another was the crack of lightning across an open plain with anger and was cursing the other.