AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Two buttons?”
I sighed. “One.”
He made a happy noise in my ear, fiddling with my shirt to show off the marks he’d left around my neck and throat last night. My brother was going to kill me when he noticed them.
“How’s Dima?” I asked, mostly for the distraction that conversation offered.
Starling blew out a breath and shrugged. “The same he’s been since we got here. The southern tower is tall enough for him not to be able to hear the minds of even the guards at its base, so he’s happy as long as no one goes up there.”
“Andisanyone going up there?” Ren rested his chin on the top of my head, and I could imagine the disapproving look he was sending the healer’s way. “Considering I ordered him to be left alone?”
“I thought he might be lonely,” she said. Another shrug. “He wasn’t.”
It felt shitty exiling Dima to the top of a tower like a storybook princess, but Starling was right. He seemed to enjoy the solitude, and it granted the man significantly more home comforts than he’d had up on the mountain near Stavroyarsk. Even her visits as his healer weren’t appreciated, and he’d straight up told me to fuck off when I’d ventured up there to say hello. No one else knew the identity of the strange man sequestered in the tower, and that was how we intended to keep it.
“Your Highness?”
I felt Ren tense where he was pressed against my back.
“What is it?” he asked carefully, and I glanced at the guard hovering in the open doorway to the antechamber where Parvan stood with a wary hand on the hilt of his sword. It was too early for Ren to be called to the ceremony…had something happened? If anyone else tried to come after my prince, I’d tear them to fucking pieces.
“It’s Elías and Luis, my prince. And…” The guard faltered, biting his lip. “And Jiron.”
We were out of the room before he’d finished speaking, tearing down the corridors and staircases with reckless abandon until we pulled up short outside the second receiving room. The door was closed but Luis and El stood before it in civilian clothes, snapping to attention as Ren drew close.
“Your Highness!”
They tried to bow. The prince and I tried to hug them. What followed was an awkward mess of limbs and soft laughs as the men attempted to maintain decorum and Ren playfully admonished them for failing to do so, while being the cause of it in how tightly he was embracing them.
“Jiron?” he asked.
The guards glanced at each other.
“When he didn’t meet back up with us as we’d agreed,” Luis began cautiously, glancing at the door, “we went looking for him. We…found him.”
“Where?” My voice was quiet, barely a whisper, and it was drowned out by the dull thud of my heart.
“A rebel encampment in north Quareh,” answered El. “Heavily guarded and well stocked. We were able to convince a few disgruntled locals to help clear it out, and Luis and I led the assault.”
“Elías led it,” Luis corrected. “I just went where he pointed me. Thankfully, that was at the throats of the fuckers holding Jiron.”
Ren reached for the door handle.
“Your Highness, you should know…they had him for weeks,” Elías said softly, his own voice wavering in a way that I’d never heard before. He blinked, and his mouth flattened into an agonised line. “The rebels had other Blessed in their ranks, and while he’d killed their tracker, they tortured him for your location until he was at the edge of death and then had their healer bring him back. Over and over again.”
Forweeks. Fucking hell.
The prince stared at El, not speaking.Unableto speak.
I lay a hand on his shoulder and he seemed to come back to himself, pressing down on the handle and stepping inside.
Jiron stood at the window with his back to us, his huge form comfortingly familiar in its shape and yet…wrong. His shoulders were hunched, his head was bowed, and his fingers were twisted and mangled where they hung at his sides.
“Jiron,” Ren whispered.
The man turned. Amber eyes met ours, flickering between us without any recognition. His face was criss-crossed with thick lines: gruesomely scarred, evidencing either the limitations or the callousness of the rebels’ healer.
Fuck. No.
