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“Here’s your bastard prince.”
I choked out a cry as my brother forced Ren down to his knees in front of Welzes, keeping hold of his collar. My lover had his hands bound behind his back and he shot a hateful glare up at Valeri before turning that same pissed off expression onto the Quarehians standing before him.
There was something dark smeared around his mouth, staining his chin and the front of his shirt. He didn’t eventryto speak, and perhaps that was when I should have known something terrible had happened.
“Renato,” Zidhan Welzes purred, looking delighted. The Lukian man adjusted the gold crown on his head for no reason other than to draw attention to it, his fingers lingering over the jewels embedded in its surface. “You’ve led us on a merry chase, dear boy.”
Then he winced, glancing at the nobles gathered around the room. “And yet, considering what he cando,Prince Valeri, I find it disturbing that you’ve brought him here.”
My calves were bathed in hot agony, and I couldn’t put any weight on my legs at all. Someone was holding me upright, their grip firm on both my upper arms, but I wasn’t looking at them. All I could see was Ren, and the man pretending to be Quareh’s king as he leered at him on the floor.
“You needn’t fear,” my brother assured Welzes, looking down at Ren disdainfully as though he was dirt under his boot. “The little snake cannot weave his manipulations while he’s missing his tongue.”
No.
I stared at the thick mass of blood around my prince’s mouth, chilled to the core.
In turn, he glared silently at a smug Welzes, his bloodied lips pressed defiantly together. Val reached down to pry open his jaw, ignoring his furious efforts to shake him off, and the gasp that echoed through the gathered court reflected my own.
“Ren!”
Brown eyes found mine across the room, angry and hurting.
I blinked and…
“Ren?”
The same eyes stared back at me through the dusky gloom, only these were a lot closer. Mere inches away.
And while there was pain buried in their depths, there was none of the fury that he’d worn in…in…
It had been a vision.
“Thank fuck,” I said, nearly sobbing as I reached for the man lying next to me. Ren gave me a bemused smile, his fingers dancing across my skin as if assuring himself that I was real.
I rubbed a hand over my eyes and tried to shake off the remnants of my prescient magic that so often felt more like a curse than a gift. I hadnotneeded to be shown my lover bound, captured, and mutilated like that, especially not so soon after the reality of almost having to watch him die from the arrow that had pierced his shoulder when we escaped the Márosian palace a few days ago. “You still have your tongue?”
Ren batted his eyelashes at me, brimming with mischief and not at all put off by the oddness of the question. His tongue darted over his bottom lip: enticing, sensual, and promising to inflict a whole host of wicked things on me.
Hisunseveredtongue.
“Sí.Want me to prove it to you?”
He dipped his head to my bare chest and captured my nipple in his mouth before I could stop him, grazing his teeth daringly against the skin. While it helped to chase away the lingering fogginess caused by the horrific vision, I was under instructions to keep the prince as still as possible.
So I gently – and reluctantly – pushed him back down onto the blankets that served as our bed down in this draughty basement, sheets billowing around us where they hung from lines stretched between the walls. “As thankful as I am that you’re not really in the hands of my fucking traitor of a brother, you’re still healing.”
Ren tensed under my touch. “Your brother? Mat, what did you See?”
“He delivers you back to Welzes,” I said bitterly, hearing my voice breaking on the words. “After everything that happened with the tournament and Kolya…I really thought Val was on your side.”
My prince was quiet for a long moment. “You said yourself that the Sight isn’t absolute. What you Saw might never happen.”
“But it might.” I shook my head. “I’d thought about reaching out to him to ask for help, but we can’t take that chance. Not if he’s working with that fucker claiming to be Quareh’s king.”
“That…doesn’t seem like your brother.”
“As a person? No,” I admitted, absently tracing shapes on the blanket between us. “But as the heir of Temar? He’ll do whatever he thinks is best for his people.”
