My heart jumped around in my chest like a frightened rabbit. What did Rylan think he was doing?
“Are you threatening me? What are you going to do? Have me hanged? Run me through with a sword? Go right ahead, Your Royal Highness,” Rylan sneered back, spreading his arms out wide, as if waiting for the prince to shove a sword through him then and there. I was suddenly very glad we hadn’t been given any weapons.
“I’m standing right here,” I tried to cut in again, but it was as if they couldn’t hear me.
“Of course I’m not going to have you killed. I’m the only reason you’re still alive — I’m the one who convinced Eljin to bring you along.”
Rylan had the decency to look slightly ashamed.
“What do I have to do to prove to you that I care about her? You want me to answer her questions?” Damian turned to face me, his blue eyes fevered. “You want to know what happened to my mother?”
I stared up at him with my heart in my throat, wondering if it would have been better if they’d continued to leave me out of their argument after all. Damian was a thundercloud, ready to burst open at any moment.
“I didn’t answer your question because I didn’t want to talk about it, not because I don’t trust you or care about you.” He glowered down at me. But behind the fierceness of the expression on his face, I could sense a terrible agony. When his eyes finally met mine, the torment I saw there took my breath away. I realized I didn’t want him to answer the question — not like this.
But it was too late.
“You want to know what happened to her? My father murdered her in front of my brother and me to teach us a lesson when I was eight. He poisoned her tea for months to weaken her and then he cut her down in cold blood five feet from me. That’s what happened to my mother.”
An awful silence fell on the room.
“Satisfied now?”
My throat constricted, and my stomach twisted in horror. Rylan stood as if frozen, staring at the prince.
“Damian, I’m … I’m so —”
“Don’t say it,” he cut me off. “You wanted an answer, you got one. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He strode over to the door and pounded on it. “Eljin, you let me out of here right now unless you want my knife in your gut.”
The lock slid back and the door swung open. Eljin seemed about to make a joke, his eyes crinkled at the corners, but when he saw the thunderous look on Damian’s face, his eyes grew serious. “Of course. Come out. There’s no one out here right now.”
And with that, Damian left, slamming the door behind him.
DAMIAN DIDN’T COME back the rest of the night, and Eljin wouldn’t tell me where he’d gone when he brought us dinner.
“But I thought we all had to stay in here to keep up the guise?”
“No one will see him; they assume he is in here.”
“But where is he?” I pressed.
Eljin gave me a piercing look. “You’d better eat your food before it gets cold. You’ll need your strength for tomorrow.”
And then he shut the door in my face.
“Alex, I’m really sorry. I only meant to defend you. I had no idea —”
I held up my hand. “The damage is done. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Rylan nodded miserably, and started to eat. All I wanted to do was force the food down and go to sleep, so I could try and forget this day had ever happened.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Long after I heard the rhythmic breathing indicating Rylan had drifted off, I was still awake, staring at the wall, with tears leaking out of my eyes.
I woke up bleary-eyed and aching all over. I felt almost worse than before I’d gone to sleep. But then I rolled over to see Damian lying on his cot. Relief flooded through me. I don’t know what I’d been afraid of, but seeing him there released a knot of tension I hadn’t even realized was beneath my sternum until it was gone.
He’d shaved before coming back, and the smooth line of his jaw held only a hint of a shadow now. I watched him sleep with a deep ache in my chest. What kind of life had he had? I’d seen my parents killed in front of me. We’d only been spared because we were so young. But to have watched his own father kill his mother in front of him? It was unfathomable.
I stood up silently and moved across the room toward him, the stone floor cold on my toes. I shivered in the brisk air of morning. I still wasn’t used to waking up to a chill.
When I reached the cot Damian was stretched out on, I knelt down. Glancing at Rylan to make sure he was still asleep first, I lifted my hand to Damian’s hair and smoothed it back from his face. It was thick and so soft, I wanted to keep running my fingers through it.
He stirred in his sleep and then he startled awake. He reached up in one quick movement and snatched my arm, his eyes wild. When he saw it was me, his grip relaxed slightly, but his brow furrowed as he looked up into my face, watching me. My hand was still in his hair, his fingers encircling my wrist. The moment drew out, filling the space between us with tension.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered at last.
Our gazes met and locked. I felt myself getting lost in his startlingly blue eyes. In the early morning light, they reminded me of the sky on a clear day. Such a shocking contrast to his dark hair and lashes, his olive skin.
“I’m sorry, as well.” His voice was low, sending a tremor through me. He let go of my arm to reach out and hesitantly stroke the skin of my cheek. “Neither of us has had an easy life, have we?” When I didn’t pull away, he ran his fingers through my hair and then cupped the nape of my neck, his thumb rubbing along the line of my jaw near my ear.
“No, we haven’t,” I breathed. My heart pulsed erratically beneath the cage of my ribs.
“I don’t want to keep secrets from you, Alexa. But I’m the crown prince of Antion, and my kingdom has to come before my own desires.”
I knew he was right, and I knew it was selfish of me to expect him to tell me everything. I knew how overwhelming the burden was that he carried. The last vestiges of my anger melted away.
“I never want to see you look at me the way you did yesterday ever again,” Damian said.
I couldn’t stop staring at his mouth. I could feel every nerve in my body yearning, reaching out for him. But I held back, waited.
“Can you understand why I had to do it? Can you forgive me?” His thumb stopped moving on my skin. I searched his face and saw only regret. Regret and something else … something that made my breath catch. “Could you ever trust me again?” He paused, and his fingers tightened on my neck. “Or … love me?”
The intensity of his gaze made me tremble. He was a man, but I also saw the little boy hidden deep inside — the one who’d watched his mother murdered in cold blood in front of him. The one who’d lost his beloved brother to a hired assassin. I looked at him and I saw a prince who wanted to save his nation.
I saw a man who was completely alone with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Damian, I — I already do love you,” I whispered as a tear slipped down my cheek. “For better or worse.”
It looked like his eyes glistened but before I could be sure, he pulled me to him and his mouth was on mine and all I could think about was the feel of his lips, his hand in my hair, the intoxicating smell of his skin, and my heart trying to burst from my chest. I wanted to lose myself in his kiss; I wanted him to take me in his arms and never let me go again. But I was all too aware that Rylan slept across the room from us. I forced myself to break away.
When Damian gave me a questioning look, I nodded over at Rylan, who was thankfully still asleep, snoring softly.
Damian sighed and pressed his lips to the groove where my jaw met my neck, just below my ear, sending a shiver of want through me. “Someday, this will all be over and we’ll be truly alone,” he said softly into my ear, his voice hoarse.
I nodded, unable to speak as he continued to kiss my throat, his lips soft on my skin. At last, when I could barely breathe, I took him by t
he shoulders and pushed him back. He smiled wickedly at me, a teasing glint in his eyes.
“Are you sure you want me to stop?”
I stared at his mouth, my heart still pounding. I almost said no, but then I remembered Rylan.
“Yes.” I sighed.
He chuckled softly, but then his face grew serious. “Did you mean it?”
I knew immediately what he was referring to and my heart lurched in my chest. “Yes.”
“Say it again.”
I stared into his beautiful eyes for a long moment. “I love you, Damian,” I finally whispered.
He closed his eyes, as if holding my words inside of him. “And do you trust me?”
“I … I’m not sure. I’m trying to,” I answered honestly.
His hands tightened around my arms. I couldn’t decipher the look on his face. After a pause, he said, “Then I will have to prove that you can.”
Before I could respond, Rylan moaned. I stood up hastily, and backed away from Damian. He lifted an eyebrow, his eyes piercing. But I couldn’t explain it to him — not then. I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t want Rylan to see Damian holding me in his arms. I’d admitted to him — and myself — that I loved him. But things weren’t that simple.
There was a knock at the door and then it opened and Eljin walked in. Rylan’s eyes opened and he slowly sat up in bed, his hair sticking out on one side.
“Sun’s up,” Eljin said. “Let’s go. It’s going to be a long day for you.” He looked right at me and I nodded.
I was afraid he was right.
AFTER HOURS AND hours of nonstop sword fighting and hand-to-hand combat, I was hot, sweaty, sore, and exhausted. I still hadn’t gotten any answers to my questions, and I still hadn’t managed to get one blow past Eljin’s magical shield. He’d told me that to succeed in beating a sorcerer in a fight, I had to be faster than his ability to draw up the shield, or strong enough to push through it. After an entire day of his blocking every single attempt, I didn’t see how either option was possible.
Damian and Rylan had watched for part of the day, and then decided to start sparring as well. I found myself distracted, watching them fight, and Eljin landed a hard blow to my ribs, knocking the air out of me.
“Distractions often prove fatal. A good lesson to learn in a practice room,” he said, his expression mocking above his mask.
I hated that mask. I hated him. I was better than this. I didn’t make fatal mistakes. And no one defeated me. With a fresh surge of fury, I flew at him once more. I attacked so hard and fast that he couldn’t keep up with me. I felt him preparing to draw up a shield, and my anger increased. I wasn’t going to let him do that again. Not this time. I faked left and felt the surge of magic. With a lightning-fast move, I flicked my sword up to the right instead, grazing his cheek, and yanked the mask right off his face.
At first, it didn’t dawn on me what I’d done, because all I could do was stare at his mutilated face. But then the heavy silence in the room was broken by a shout of excitement.
“She did it!” Rylan whooped. “You got past his shield!”
Damian gave me a nod of approval, smiling grimly, as Eljin reached out and grabbed the black scrap of fabric from the end of my wooden sword. If it had been a real blade, I would have cut off his ear.
“I think that’s enough for today,” he said angrily as he put the mask back in place, hiding the scars that lined his jaw and twisted his mouth into a grotesque mockery of lips. He tossed his sword to the ground and stormed away. “You all stay here.”
The echo of the door slamming shut behind him was the only sound for a long moment.
“What happened to him?” I finally asked, unable to enjoy my victory with the memory of his scars in my mind.
Damian sighed as he walked over to the wall to set down his own sword. “General Tinso and his wife were from Blevon, but he was stationed at a border village when Eljin was a child. When my father declared war on Blevon, he announced it by raiding the border villages. General Tinso was on duty on the other side of theirs when it was attacked.
“General Tinso’s wife — Lisbet’s sister — was also a sorceress, and she tried to protect her son. But she wasn’t strong enough to hold off so many soldiers at once. After they killed her, they tried to capture Eljin. He fought back, but he wasn’t trained yet — he was too young and couldn’t block all of them. What you saw on his face is just part of the scars he got that day. General Tinso and his men were eventually able to fight back and force the Antionese army to retreat, but it was too late for Eljin’s mother. At least Eljin was able to keep them from killing him, too.”
“Why didn’t Lisbet heal him?” I stared at Damian, my stomach churning. Because of me, they’d both had to reveal their painful pasts in fewer than two days. I was really on a roll.
“She couldn’t; she was at the palace in Antion.”
“The palace? Why?”
“She was my mother’s lady-in-waiting. She came with my mother when she married Hector.”
“And Jax?” I hardly dared ask. I knew, even before he answered me. I didn’t know why I hadn’t put it together before now — the reason Jax’s blue eyes looked familiar. They were the same as Damian’s.
A dark shadow crossed his face. “He’s my half brother. My father’s bastard son. Lisbet should have left after my mother was killed, but she stayed. She hid for years, trying to watch out for my brother and me. Iker found her when I was eleven and took her straight to the king. My father raped Lisbet and had her thrown out with orders to kill her if she showed her face again.”
A wave of nausea rolled over me, threatening to make my stomach heave. Was there no end to King Hector’s atrocities? He was bloodthirsty and a rapist, a man who had forced our nation into a war that had lasted most of my life — and for what? What did he hope to gain?
“Even after that Lisbet didn’t dare leave us boys at the mercy of the king. She was determined to stay and help, even though she’d have been killed if she was caught. Victor and I helped her hide in the abandoned wing of the palace and she began to take bloodroot to hide her presence from Iker. The only other person who knew was Cook, and she’d never tell because Lisbet healed her daughter years ago.”
“That room you took me to …” I trailed off, remembering the dark hallway and the fear I’d felt, the sense of being watched.
Damian nodded. “I was going to see Lisbet. My father has been growing steadily more suspicious of me, which is partly why he assigned my guard to be with me at all times. And he was having me followed, on top of that.” He sighed and shoved his hand through his hair. “I had to assume that all of you were loyal to him, not me, especially since I always acted like such a brat, to deflect suspicion that I could possibly be plotting to overthrow him. But by then I’d begun to hope that maybe I could trust you. And Lisbet had sent me a message that I needed to come see her right away. Since I’d been ordered to have a guard with me at all times, I took a risk and picked you.”
“The boy that came through the secret passage — that was Jax, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Damian’s expression was inscrutable. “It was a test, to see if you were truly loyal to me.”
“Now do you see why we had to fake an abduction to get him away from the palace?” General Tinso asked from the doorway, startling us. “We have to stop Hector’s reign of tyranny. We have to put Damian on the throne. But there was no way to do it with him stuck in the palace, being guarded day and night, with Hector’s pawn constantly on his tail.”
So many missing pieces were beginning to fall into place, my head was spinning.
“I told you I’d answer your questions when the time was right,” Damian said, looking straight into my eyes. Just the force of his gaze was enough to make my legs feel weak. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
Rylan had remained silent the whole time, listening, until now. “But you decided to trust Alex and me for some reason.”
“I once ov
erheard her tell someone that it didn’t matter if she liked me or not, her duty was to protect me and she always kept her word. That was when I started to hope I could trust her. When she was assigned to guard my door, I knew it was providence. And I even hoped that if she got to know the real me, she’d come to like me someday.”
I flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry you heard that,” I said.
“Don’t be. I didn’t like that version of myself, either.” He turned back to Rylan. “Alex’s ability to fight gave me new hope. With my father’s guard dog always nearby, no one, not even a sorcerer, could get close enough to kill the king.”
“Do you mean Iker?” I asked. I’d barely thought about him since we’d left the palace. Honestly, I’d rarely thought about him when we were in the palace unless he was in the room. “He’s creepy, but how could he stop a sorcerer?”
Damian and General Tinso glanced at each other before Damian looked at me, his expression grim. “Iker isn’t just an advisor to my father. He’s his bodyguard. I would have killed the king myself long ago if I’d stood a chance of getting close to him without Iker stopping me first — and I think they know it. Why do you think my rooms are on the opposite side of the palace from his? Why do you think I was forced to spend so much time there — basically imprisoned in my own room?”
I shook my head, almost feeling the urge to laugh. They were all afraid of trying to kill King Hector because of Iker? “Are we talking about the same person?”
“Alexa.” The seriousness of Damian’s voice made the smile slide from my face. “Iker is a black sorcerer.”
“A … a what?” My heart dropped. “But Iker is from Dansii, not Blevon. And — and your father hates sorcery. He has sorcerers killed!”
Rylan looked as shocked as I felt when I glanced at him.
“No, he only hates sorcerers who fight against him. He spread lies about sorcerers so that our people would be terrified of them and support his decree that all sorcerers be killed in Antion, ensuring that no one will ever be able to challenge him or stop him.”