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The clink of metal echoed as cold steel wrapped around Rush’s body, the faceless figures ripping his arms behind his back until his shoulders screamed in pain. He shook his head to clear his vision. To see fuckinganything.
As orange dust fell from his lashes, he could make out the silver star gleaming on one man’s chest.Starnight.
That bitch… What had she done to him? A cloaking spell, perhaps, to hide herself and the fuckers who now bound him. But the smoke, the way it clung to him, he’d never seen anything like it. How did Starnight even acquire a sorceress?
Rush’s knees buckled as the men thrust the hilt of a sword between his shoulders. Shoving him down until the mud soaked through his trousers. Cold and wet. Feeling flooded back into his knees, and he attempted to move again, to stand, but his muscles refused to cooperate.
“Tie his ankles,” one of them said to another.
Rush tried to focus on their voices. To ground himself. Pull himself into the present and fully assess the danger he was in. To get himselfoutof it and slaughter them all. He searched inside, digging deep, for his beast. Where he usually rested was weighted like a boulder. A dark barrier disconnecting them from one another. Was this what Sorcha felt when Pax took her dragon away before drowning her? Rush had been prepared for Pax trying something similar to him but nothing like this.
“Wh…” Rush’s voice faded. Lost.
Gods damn it!
His knees sunk deeper into the mud, washing away more of the dust and returning the sensation to his legs. He squeezed his eyes shut and threw himself forward. Hands clutched one of his arms and the momentum of his body sent him tumbling sideways into the muck.
“Hold him,” a man ordered. “The prince is coming.”
The prince.Rush clung to that bit of information. Clawed his mind out of the fog as his pulse pounded.
Someone yanked his chains, hoisting Rush to his knees once more. Air hit the cold mud along his side, sending a shiver through him. If only the lake or a pond was here to rinse all the powder away.
Fuck!
The figures standing around Rush parted, allowing a lithe one to slip through. Unlike the others, no Starnight emblem shone on his chest. Instead, he was clad in the black uniform of a Moonstone guard.
“You summoned me, King of Sin.” Pax’s voice burned through the remaining haze of whatever spell had been cast. “It’s too bad we’ll have to postpone our chat for a bit. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to collect my betrothed.” Pax laughed as he sauntered away, the sorceress following at his heels, while Rush raged and writhed in his bindings.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aura
Aura went to the bars of the window and tried to pry them apart to no avail. “I wish I was a sorceress,” she muttered. “Then I would turn Rush into a piece of furniture as soon as he returned.”
She’d been in her room for two days. Since locking her in, Rush had come back to see her once, without opening the door she might add. Although before that, she could’ve sworn she’d heard his feet pacing outside her door as though controlling the urge to open it. A while ago, she’d watched him disappear out of the palace’s side gates and wasn’t certain how far he’d ventured.
Releasing a sigh, she looked toward the bed where she’d rode him to bliss—where both their bodies had been slick with sweat—that now smelled of his addicting smoky scent. When she’d let him fill her with his cock, she’d been angry with him, her blood on fire. But beneath those layers, sorrow had rested there too, for what he’d been through, for what had truly happened to Sorcha. Because ofPax. Then she’d hated him again after he locked her in this room. But did she really? It would be the last time, he’d said. If he walked through the door at this very moment to set her free, what would she do? Slap him or run into his arms?
“Perhaps both,” she grunted.
The door opened and she spun around to find Astor casually walking in with a bowl of steaming soup in hand.
“Eat,” he said softly when his gaze fastened on hers. “The guards said you haven’t been touching your food.”
Each time the guards had opened the door, she’d attempted to fling herself past them but hadn’t even made it out into the hallway. On her list of things to do if she got out of this forsaken room would be to learn how to properly fight and wield a blade. Instead of marriage, she should’ve focused on that, but she’d believed there’d been no need. She’d been wrong. Yet she’d been wrong about a lot of things.
“I’m not hungry,” Aura lied as she took the soup from him. She had wanted to eat, but her thoughts consumed her every waking moment.
“The king is doing this for your safety. He cares about you.”
“Cares about me indeed.” She frowned, bringing a spoonful of the tomato soup to her lips. The zesty flavor caressed her tastebuds as it slid down her dry throat.
Astor sighed. “In his own way, yes, he does. You uncovered his secrets. Surely you must understand him somewhat.”
“He locked me in here.Again.”
“Aura, he was left with no choice. If you didn’t have this spell cast on you, he wouldn’t have kept you in here. Do you think he doesn’t know the effects of what he’s done? Believe me, he does.” Astor paused, biting his lip. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but he’s tried to break the spell. He couldn’t. Don’t ask me anything further. Just take it that I owe you something after you told me Hana’s favorite flower.”
