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I drew swift breaths through my nose until the rancid mix of blood and acid soothed. With the back of my hand, I swiped my mouth. A red streak was left behind. More than one earth fae let out a gasp and stepped back.
Even the king and queen gave me more space.
They feared my blood. I blinked and wiped my hand on my trousers. My leg burned as though the bones had turned to liquid fire when I sat back on my heels. To stand would level me as a threat. It would place me as a foe, an equal.
For Livia, I’d remain on my damn knees in the hall of my enemies for as long as it took. Wherever my father was in the Otherworld, I had no doubt he was boiling in shame.
Thorvald could kiss my ass.
“I didn’t harm them.” The words came out in a low rasp, hardly distinguishable over the heavy draw of breath.
The earth bender tilted his head to one side, a wild, feral sort of look on his face. He lowered to one knee and used the curved blade of his axe to tilt my chin. “Give them back to me, Bloodsinger, and I will end you swiftly. Each moment you postpone, I add another day to your torture. You think your blood frightens me?” He leaned close,voice low. “You have forced me to face my greatest fear already. Nothing about you frightens me.”
When he tore the axe away, it sliced my skin. True to his word, the king didn’t flinch at the sight of my blood dripping onto the floorboards. The only hint he gave that my blood was unsettling at all was the way he held out an arm, shielding the queen from getting too close.
“I didn’t harm her,” seemed to be the only words I could scrape out.
“Then return her, Ever King,” the queen said, her face hard and lovely as polished marble.
Over the shoulder of Livia’s mother, I caught the dark gaze of a broad fae with similar brown skin to the earth bender and the same midnight hair.
I would never forget the face of Aleksi’s father, the one who’d threatened me over the body of his consort, not believing I’d agreed to heal his dying lover.
Now Alek’s father looked at me with a conflicted sort of hatred. I’d saved his mate, yet in his eyes, I’d also robbed him of his son.
“Don’t look to my brother. He won’t stand for you anymore.” Valen leaned in close again. “You destroyed any debt for what happened during the war by taking our children.”
“I do not come for battle, King. I—”
“If you’ve come to barter a ransom, you will not find it,” he snapped. “You will give me my daughter, then I will take your head.”
Valen shoved my chest, knocking me onto my back. In the next breath, he reared over me, one knee pressed against my heart.
Shouts rose in the hall. Angry, sharp.
I coughed against the weight of the king. I could practically see the rational thought leave his mind as a dark kind of madness took hold, a sort of wild expression where he likely planned how to reopen every scar and pluck every bone from my body until I was nothing but flesh and gore.
“Uncle Valen,stop!”
Valen, still pressing me into the floor, held a blade half raised over my skull. My eyes opened, but I did not dare breathe, certain any movement would draw out the call for blood in the king’s eyes again.
“Don’t kill him!”
All gods. Aleksi.
The prince shoved through the crowd, a small unit of warriors at his back, two of whom had a hold on Tait.
A strange bit of relief bloomed through my chest at the sight of my cousin’s dirt-smudged face. Tait tilted his head as if silently inquiring on the damage done to me.
I was alive. That was the best we could hope for in the moment.
“Alek!” The prince’s father shoved through the crowd.
From my angle on the floor, I could make out Jonas and his brother. The prince, who moments ago had been ferocious and filled with venom, dropped his chin, hiding his face. He closed his eyes, and if I had to guess, the man felt a great deal.
He simply did not want anyone else to see it.
I lifted my head just enough to watch Alek’s long arms embrace his father fiercely. He clapped his back.
