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“Why?”
“Because he is a bastard unfit to rule.” His reply is coated with so much hostility it charges the air around us.
“Is that why you’re down here? Because you do not want him as king?”
Rafferty stares at the wall past me, his gaze haunted. “Something like that.”
“Flora knows green is a rebel color?”
“She does. While I believe she never meant for any harm to come to you, Flora can be quite vindictive, and it appears as though you got caught in the crossfire.”
“Of a fight that isn’t mine!” I retort, a bit louder than I meant.
“Taranus murdered Flora’s brother right in front of her. He removed her wings and bleached her hair as punishment. Trust me, Ember, she has every right to hate him.”
Every bit of anger I’d felt at the woman disappears nearly instantly. I have no siblings, but if I did and someone killed them, I wouldn’t give a shit whether or not a random person was caught in the middle. “Why is she still here?”
“Because I have no choice.”
I whirl as Flora steps down off the bottom step. Shit, I hadn’t even heard her! But based on Rafferty’s lack of surprise, he had.
“Why are you down here?” All of her earlier appeasement is gone down in the depths of this dungeon. As though she’s finally out of the presence of a king she refuses to bow to.
“I fell.”
“You look a mess.” She shifts her gaze from me to Rafferty. “And you’re likely filling her head with all kinds of rebellious notions.”
“Kind of similar to how you dressed her in green?” he asks.
“Taranus cannot control every aspect of my life, Rafferty.”
“You dressed me in rebel colors, knowing it would piss him off?” I ask, even as I understand why she did it. I need her to see me as more than a weak human because I imagine I can’t escape without her.
“Taranus would not harm you, that I was sure of. But seeing his future bride in green did piss him off.”
I ball both hands into fists. “I am not marrying him.”
“That’s not what he believes,” Flora replies as she moves closer to Rafferty’s cell. As she does, she unwraps a fabric napkin and holds it out.
The man behind bars stands for the first time, and my mouth goes dry as I cannot help but stare at the wall of muscle reaching for a napkin full of fruit.
“Can’t you conjure more than that?” I ask. Surely a man of that size needs more—
“The walls are lined with iron. My power does not work here.” She accepts the now empty napkin as Rafferty eats the fruit. Then, she turns to me.
When she crosses the distance, I instinctively take a step back. So far, I haven’t met a single person who cannot be seen as a threat in one way or another. Taranus literally murdered a man in front of me, Rafferty has been imprisoned, and Flora? Well, she seems to have her own brand of violence.
“I won’t hurt you,” she says.
“Says the woman who might as well have dressed me in red and put me in front of a bull,” I snap.
“I did not know whether or not you were a threat. Had you turned your nose up at the green dress, I would have known you were not on our side.”
“You let me wear it. Let me put it on even when you saw I had no idea what it meant.”
“I was curious.” She shrugs. “Don’t worry. I took my licks for allowing you to wear it.” Flora turns her back toward me and drops her left shoulder, using her right hand to pull the fabric down far enough that I can see thick, red wounds sticking out from the top.
My stomach churns, and my heart aches for the pain she must have suffered. “What did they do to you?”
