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I don’t feel the heat of Prince Elden’s gaze on me, no—there is no heat, only the spear of what feels like icicles piercing through the flesh and bone of my face. Didn’t need to pinch my cheeks. Can feel my entire face turning red, now.
I feel ice in his stare, disgust,hatred. Most of all, outrage—and that’s confirmed in his low, growly voice as he turns his anger on his brother.
“What is this?”
“A temporary gift from the harem of Prince Ocean.” It’s almost like Prince Daein’s smirk lives within his light tone, as though he mocks or teases his brother. “I know how you loathe him.” He turns towards me, chucking a finger under my chin to lift my face (but my eyes remain downcast). “Stealing away his favourite lover for three months and gifting her to you seemed too sweet of an opportunity to pass up.”
Elden is silent. But that’s not for a lack of words. I’m certain he has many things he would like to say to his brother—that, I can feel in the whirl of red-hot rage whisking around him, ballooning up to flood the entire room with the heat of a blaze.
“I will not play your game, brother.”
Prince Daein, keeping his finger under my chin, only says, “I thought that once myself. And look where I am now.”
“Out!” Elden’s furious shout bellows throughout the room and—I’m sure—the atrium.
Steeling myself against it, I force my entire body stiff so that I don’t jolt with the fright pulsing through me.
Daein lets his finger fall away from my chin and, I notice out of the corner of my eye, he wipes his gloved hand on his breeches, as though he must absolutely remove the trace of me from himself. As though I amdirtyto him.
My inner snarl is my answer, thinking of the filth he married, but my place is to be silent, so silent I remain.
In a moment’s blink, the door is pushed open, and the cold from out in the atrium rushes inside. I hear the familiar bustling footsteps of slaves—and they home in on me. Grubby hands take my forearms, holding firm. But there’s a pause—a question in the air.
Daein speaks to his brother, “Three months, Elden. She cannot be harmed.”
“Then into the harem she will go, and there she will stay untouched.”
Relief ribbons through me.Untouched.
He will ignore me, my existence, for three whole months. And before I know it, I’ll be whisked off to my true prince, the one who left a sword in my heart, but who I adore to serve all the same.
The slaves make good on their orders.
It’s not a second after the command came from the prince that I’m dragged out of the room and rushed through the atrium.
My steps pick up pace and I soon lift my head—my eyes—to watch where we are going, the paths taken, and to look at the inky black walls that wear no paintings on them as they should do.
This place is haunted, barren almost, and yet I feel somewhat free within these walls now. I entered, suffocated, and now I stay but I can breathe.
Untouched. In the harem, three months, ignored.
I could not have wished for a better outcome, and so I did not wish at all.
And now hope is quick to blossom in my chest, a silly human emotion I am entirely ashamed of feeling, yet I do allow myself one thing … The smallest smile of gratitude to touch my black-painted mouth.
I am safe.
12
APRIL
Despite the sickness I feel towards my daughter, I haven’t dared tell Daein what she did. To tell him of her betrayal would bring upon her a punishment too severe for even how I’m feeling about her these days.
So I keep her secrets. I keep them and feel them swell into tangled balls of disgust and hurt and pain inside of my chest, where my heart once was.
The hatred is at its worst in moments like these—meals in the Hall.
It’s all I can do to not lunge at her moody, pouty face opposite me. So I focus my attention on Daein who sits to my left, at the head of the long table. He catches my gaze with a faint smirk before it slips away and he reaches for his chalice of purple wine.
