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My head bobbed to indicate I understood her. If I spoke, it would come out as a groan. It was a moot point once she bound my arms and ankles to the chair, then gave me a wooden spoon to bite on.
Poet sank into the seat behind mine, rested his chin on my shoulder, and encircled my waist. Whether to restrain or comfort me, I wasn’t sure.
“Two frisky little ferrets walk into a whorehouse,” he began into my ear.
The older woman doused a cloth with liquid, then pressed the material into the slash. I wailed between my teeth. And I wailed louder as the needle dug into my flesh, and I marveled how that child dreamed through the shrill noises.
A spike punctured my flesh, followed by a tugging sensation. Another searing pain probed my leg. Then another.
The woman’s bent head fogged at the edges. The blood on her hands blurred.
My body shivered, freezing and baking all at once. My limb throbbed like a hammer.
I needed to move. I needed to get out of this chair. I hated this chair.
My fingernails dug into the armrests. My teeth gnashed on the spoon, the pressure threatening to crack my molars.
I squirmed and arched backward into Poet, my temple grazing his jaw. He restrained my hips and whispered another naughty joke, and something akin to a laugh and a sob escaped me.
A blade stabbed into my leg. A guttural noise flooded the room.
Right before I fainted.
12
Poet
I remember her whimpers against my throat. Oh, how I remember.
She’d taken the pain like a warrior, laughed at my racy joke like a nymph, and then swooned like a princess. Such a relief, for each time she unleashed into the spoon’s handle, I had gripped her tighter and cursed fate.
Destiny was appealing in verse. But in reality, it was nothing but a clever deception, a delusion at best, derailing plans swifter than a punch in the face.
The Royal’s eyes had vanished into the back of her head. That was it.
Old Jinny had threaded the final stitch. At last, I’d carried the unconscious female to my bed, tucking her in and nestling the duvet beneath that determined chin. Often, she’d proven herself to be divinely unpredictable. So because we were alone, I did something phenomenal. I knelt beside the sleeping woman and stared at her.
Truly stared at her.
And this was how I began to feel …
*
Like a fool. For all that I toyed with people, I’d overlooked her exquisite profile and, most importantly, failed to appreciate her integrity. I hadn’t foreseen the lengths to which she’d go to help someone she despised. This stifling princess took a leenix blow to protect the very jester she scorned, the person she trusted the least.
No longer busy censuring my very existence, a tempestuous side had emerged. Prickly as a bramble, yet she had blood and courage pumping through her veins.
Also, she dreamed with color tinting her skin. A ripe pink crept across her parted lips, as though she were on the verge of an unconscious moan.
How much darker could that stubborn mouth become? How much wetter?
I snapped the bloody fuck out of it. As much as I had loathed Briar’s pain, I hadn’t gotten to finish my last joke whilst Old Jinny mended her. A tragedy, since I’d fancied speaking into the Royal’s ear, provoking chuckles between the tears.
I had hated seeing her in pain. But I’d enjoyed making her laugh.
It hadn’t been a chore to comfort her. Indeed, the latter had been a privilege. For a moment, knowing Briar needed me felt as extraordinary and agonizing as being needed by Jinny and Nicu.
Nicu.
