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And then his tongue was on my cheek. Licking me slowly.
“To do with as I wish. To have however I wish. Would you like that, Morgan?”
I trembled then. My body shuddering from his touch, desperate to get away.
I tried to clench my hands into fists, but could only succeed in finally feeling a speck of sensation in my fingertips. Feeling was returning, slowly. But much too slowly to help me help myself.
Florian’s eyes burned down into mine. “For all your feeble protests, I think you would. I think you crave this, just as much as I do.”
He leaned back, sitting upright.
“I left you some tokens of my affection the other day.” He nodded to the headboard behind me. “Yet I see you’ve scratched one out. That wasn’t very nice, Morgan.”
Lazily, he reached a hand down to the bed beside him and picked something up.
A small dagger, the steel glinting in the firelight.
“No, that wasn’t very nice at all.” He spun the dagger in his hand, then leaned down to me again, holding the tip of the dagger directly over one of my eyes. “Promise me you won’t destroy any tokens of my affection again.”
He hovered like that, the point of the dagger all I could see from one eye. His face filled the view from my other.
I could not nod my agreement even if I had wished to. And I did not. I wished to take the dagger from his hand and stab him in the heart. I longed to see his blood pour from his chest. That was the only token of his affection I desired.
My heart was racing. If only the rest of me could move as quickly as my furious heart.
“Since you so cruelly rejected the mark I left on your bed, I suppose I have no other choice but to leave you a token somewhere else, Morgan.”
The knife was lifted away from my eye. I blinked slowly.
Florian was inspecting the knife. He lay it flat on his palm and looked at it as if still deciding what to do next.
“This next part... It won’t be pleasant. I wonder if that drug I put in that disgusting concoction you call ‘medicine’ will numb pain as easily as it numbed the rest of your flesh. I suppose for your sake, I should hope so.”
For the first time since waking up, I glanced at the door. It was closed. Probably locked. A servant must have given him a key. Or perhaps he had stolen it.
I understood then. There would be no happy ending. Not here, not tonight. Not for Baudwin, and, as it turned out, not for me.
Hazily, I thought of Kairos Draven. What would he make of someone like Florian?
He would make mincemeat of him, I suspected. He would tear the flesh from Florian’s bones with his sword, and leave him in pieces on the ground for the scavengers.
Violence became Draven. He wore it like I wore my hooded cloaks.
But he wasn’t here now. Not when I could have used such violence. And so such thoughts were pointless.
There were no Royal Guards here. It was just me.
And I was not getting out.
I watched as Florian positioned the dagger over my left arm. As he began cutting away the fabric of my tunic, I closed my eyes, praying to the Three that whatever drug he had slipped into my drink would take me far away again.
