The whip slithered off her throat, and she reached for the raw, tender skin as she said, “Right now, Sebastian is collecting today’s debts, but I know what’s coming due next week. Teague would be happy to have those collected early. And you know Teague’s network of employees. You could handpick a team for him to take into each additional kingdom. Someone to handle theft—”
“Procurement.”
“Whatever. Someone to handle enforcing—”
“I know what roles need to be filled.” He stood and began pacing the floor beside her. “I just don’t know if you should be trusted.”
If Ari should be trusted? That was pretty hard to stomach coming from the man who’d abused his son and helped kill Cleo.
The anger within her flared, a hard, brilliant heat that filled her with visions of grabbing the whip from his hand and using it on him instead. When he turned to face her, she smoothed out her expression and tried to keep her fury out of her eyes.
“If the information I give you proves false, you’ll know within the hour,” she said, and hoped desperately that old, ailing Maarit hadn’t taken it upon herself to do something totally out of character and clean Ari’s study. “You’ll need to avoid the housekeeper, though.”
“That old woman?” He laughed unpleasantly. “Teague sent his carriage back to take her to the palace for the trade summit.”
“More likely so the palace physician could try to coax a few more years out of her. Still, be careful. She’s sneaky, and she has a way of showing up when you least expect her. Strange that a man like Teague is so devoted to a human, isn’t it?” she asked because maybe Jacob knew something that could help her. She remembered the way Maarit sometimes smelled like the fae magic in the tea she’d given Ari. The way she sometimes seemed to move faster than she should be able to move. Maybe Maarit was fae. Maybe she was Teague’s mother. Ari shuddered at the thought. Or if Maarit was human, she’d been the only one in Súndraille to gain his complete trust. Either way, she was adding “get Teague’s secrets from Maarit” to her short list of ideas for how to take down Teague.
But first, she needed to relieve herself and eat whatever she could coax Jacob to bring her.
He crouched in front of her, his eyes boring into hers. “So what do you want in exchange for information about next week’s debts? Be very careful what you ask for, Princess. If I don’t like your answer, I’ll just beat the information out of you instead.”
“And then you’d only be proving to Teague that you’re nothing but a blunt instrument.” Her eyes widened as his raised a fist toward her face. “Besides, I don’t want anything that would get you into trouble. I just want a privy bucket and some food.”
And some privacy so she could look over the contract hidden in her chemise. She didn’t kid herself. She wasn’t going to be unshackled from the wall until Teague was ready to kill her. She needed time to think, time to plan, so that when Sebastian returned, she’d have a way for him to help her finish Teague.
There had to be a way to finish Teague.
Jacob held her gaze for a long moment, and her skin ran cold in anticipation of a blow from his fist, but then slowly he said, “I’ll get you your bucket and something to eat. Where’s the list of debts?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as I have the bucket and the food. It would be stupid of me to give away my one bargaining chip before I get what I need in return. And you’ll just whip me if the list isn’t where I say it is, so you have nothing to lose but a little bit of your time.”
He grunted and stood. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t try anything stupid while I’m gone.”
“What could I possibly try?” She rattled the chain against the wall and raised her eyebrow at him.
He coiled the whip back onto the hook at his belt and strode from the cage. As soon as the door shut behind him, Ari snatched the parchment from her chemise, unfolded it with shaking fingers, and began to read.
FORTY-FIVE
THE SUN WAS drifting toward the west when Sebastian reached the edges of Teague’s property. His father was disappearing into the villa, which meant either Teague was already back from the trade summit and was with Ari, or his father had left her alone while he got himself a meal.
Sebastian slowly opened the door to the cage. The princess was alone, standing with her back to him, hunched over something as if she was reading. A plate of mostly eaten toast sat at the edge of her mattress, and a privy bucket was set up in the corner.
Words didn’t exist that could hold the depths of his agony and guilt. He held his body rigidly still, as if exerting that tiny bit of control would somehow stop the chaos that raged within. Panic cut him off from reason. His thoughts were fragmented and distant. All he could see was the light leaving Kora’s body. All he could hear was the frantic thudding of his heart against his rib cage—a thudding that sounded so much like Kora’s body hitting the floor that it made him sick.
He was coming apart at the seams, and there was no remedy. He’d been an island for so long, he no longer knew how to bridge the distance he’d put between himself and others.
He desperately needed Ari to be his bridge.
He must have made a noise, because her head whipped up, and she met his gaze.
“Sebastian, are you all right?” Worry puckered her brows as she quickly folded whatever she’d been reading and stuffed it down the front of her dress.
He wanted to tell her what he’d done. He wanted the painful exorcism of putting the horror into words. But when he opened his mouth, all that came out was “Ari.”
Her eyes widened as he stumbled toward her.
She reached for him as he slid to his knees at the edge of her mattress. Falling to her knees in front of him, she gathered him in her arms and pulled his face against her shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, fisted his hands in the back of her nightdress, and hung on like she was all that was keeping him from drowning.
“You’re going to be all right. No matter what happened. I promise.” She kept softly repeating the words as he shook. As he tried and failed to put words to what lived inside him. With one hand, she pressed firmly on the center of his back, on the scars that had slowly stripped him of any expectation of ever being loved. With the other, she cradled his head to her shoulder, her lips pressed against his ear as she filled his chaotic thoughts with the steady constant of her voice.
“Ari,” he whispered, and then the words were there, terrible and stark. He told her about the things he’d had to do as Teague’s collector. How he worried that the line between himself and his father was blurring. And then he told her about Kora, and it was all he could do to speak past the awful pressure in his chest. All he could do to find the air to breathe as he let the truth tear its way out of him.
When he’d finished, spent and exhausted, she still held him. Her breathing was steady and calm, a lifeline he grabbed onto with desperate strength, though he still trembled. The warmth of her skin chased the chill from his, and when she spoke again, her lips hovering beside his ear, her words cut through the remaining panic and became a foundation he could stand on without fear.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to be hurt so many times, Sebastian. That’s not fair to you. It makes me want to stand in front of you and fight everybody off, just to give you the space to see that you’re worth so much more than you believe.”
Gently, she lifted his head from her shoulder and framed his face in her hands. “You are nothing like your father. Nothing inside you makes you want to cause pain to others. You have more courage than anyone I’ve ever known. Sometimes having courage means the hardest tasks fall onto your shoulders, and those leave the biggest scars.”
He held her gaze and made himself say, “I don’t know my way back from this.”
Her expression softened. “I do.”
“How?” He breathed the word. Filled it with the pained hope that her words had given him and trusted her to somehow have the answer.
She smiled—
the confident, knowing smile he loved best—and said, “Remember what you said to me when you cooked me breakfast and then almost kissed me?”
“What did I say?”
She leaned closer, and it was suddenly hard to steady his breathing. “You said you knew the way to my heart.”
Her eyes warmed when he remained silent.
“Want to know a secret?” she asked, and he did. He really, really did.
“Yes,” he whispered as her lips hovered above his, a mere breath away.
“I know the way to your heart too. I know your silences and your smiles. I understand you when you’re still, and I hear the things you don’t know how to say. You aren’t facing any of this alone, Sebastian.” She slid her hands into his hair, and all he could think about was the way she smelled like buttered toast, and things waiting to be discovered, and home.
He tilted his head back to look into her eyes. “I shouldn’t say this to you.”
“Oh, you definitely should.”
He shouldn’t. It was impossible. It was crazy.
It was also true, and he wanted truth with the princess.
With Ari.
He gathered his courage and said quietly, “I love you. I know that’s inappropriate because you’re the princess, and I’m—”
She covered his mouth with hers, and everything disappeared except the way she tasted and the incredible heat of her lips moving against his. He pulled her closer, desperate to erase any sliver of air between them. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and kissed him like he was the answer to every craving she’d ever had.
When she pulled back, he gazed at her face—at the flush of pink on her golden skin and the disheveled tendrils of hair escaping her braid. At the vulnerable look in her dark eyes.
“Sebastian?”
“Yes?”
“I love you too.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. He was still horrified. Still grieving. So was she.
But they weren’t facing any of it alone.
He’d told her the truth. She knew who he was and what he’d done, and she was still by his side. He drew in a deep, easy breath and kissed her again as the crashing, churning panic that had driven him into her arms subsided into something Sebastian hadn’t experienced in years.
Peace.
FORTY-SIX
KISSING ARI WAS like following a map to the places inside himself that he’d given up on ever finding. It was peace and comfort and fire that warmed him in the best possible way. The stifling walls of the cage fell away, the stone beneath his knees disappeared, and all that existed was Ari. The way she leaned into him. The curve of her hips beneath his hands. The little breaths that caught in her throat as she pulled him closer.
“Is it strange to feel happy and sad and angry all at the same time?” she murmured against his lips. Whatever he would’ve answered was lost as she kissed him again.
When he finally broke the kiss, the walls of the cage closed in on him again, and he realized he was kneeling with his back to the door.
A door his father could reenter at any moment.
His scars tingled, and he glanced at the closed door before looking back at Ari again.
Ari caught his expression and said, “Jacob is making a copy of the list of next week’s debtors. He’ll be in the villa for a little while.”
“Why is he doing that?” He ran his fingers over her cheek and brushed tendrils of her thick hair behind her ear, even while panic began coiling inside him.
She was still a prisoner. He was still bound by his contract to do unspeakable things.
And his father—the man responsible for so much of Sebastian’s pain, misery, and fear—could return at any moment.
Maybe he could just ignore his father like he’d done that morning.
His father was as likely to accept that as he was likely to let Ari go. Sebastian had two choices—he could leave the villa and escape the coming confrontation, or he could stay by Ari’s side and face the man who’d haunted Sebastian’s nightmares all his life.
“He’s copying the list because I convinced him that Teague was going to leave someone in charge of Kosim Thalas while he expanded his business, and that if Jacob wanted the job instead of you, he needed to collect on next week’s debts, among other things. I traded the information for a privy bucket and some toast, but really I traded it so I could have time to look over the copy of Teague’s contract that I stole.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but there was something dark beneath it—anger and grief that he hadn’t heard from her before.
He shook his head, half in admiration and half in disbelief, and tried to pretend he could keep the panic at bay. “Is there anything you can’t talk your way out of?”
“The chain around my ankle.” She turned her head to look at the hook embedded into the wall behind her, and Sebastian sucked in a breath at the gouges in the tender skin on the side of her neck. Bruises the size of fingertips were gathering beneath her skin in purple and blue. It looked like someone with large hands had tried to strangle her.
Those bruises hadn’t been there this morning.
The rage he kept deep within him flared.
She turned back to him. “Time to talk about my new plan. I could kiss you all afternoon, but that isn’t going to stop Teague, and I think I know how to— Why are you looking at me like that?”
His heart thudded against his chest, and it took everything he had to speak calmly. “What happened to your neck?”
She held his gaze for a long moment, and he knew the truth before she said, “Jacob wanted to make sure I knew he was in charge.”
His jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. “Jacob.”
She nodded and then wrapped a hand around his arm. He looked down and realized he’d clenched his hands into fists.
“Jacob just works for Teague. If we stop Teague, we stop Jacob. We stop everything.”
“Why do you call him Jacob?” he asked as the rage slithered from his belly and lit his chest on fire.
The taint of his father’s cruelty had touched her. Left marks on her. Just like it had left marks on his mother. On his brother. On him.
Her eyes were fierce. “Because I’m not going to give him the honor of calling him your father. He’s an abusive, violent monster—anyone who could hurt a child is—and he has nothing to do with the loyal, kind, protective, selfless person you became. He’s Jacob, my babysitter, and as soon as we’re finished with Teague, he’s finished too.”
“Is that so?” His father spoke from the doorway.
Instantly, Sebastian was on his feet, standing between his father and the princess. The rage that had lit a fire in his chest crashed against the surge of panic that hit at the expression in his father’s eyes.
Sebastian knew that look.
The whip was coming.
“Wish I could say I’m surprised to hear you planning treachery, but you were always weak like your brother.” His father reached for the whip and paced toward Sebastian like a cat circling its prey.
“Don’t you dare speak of my brother.” Sebastian’s voice shook. His scars burned as he rolled to the balls of his feet.
His father’s eyes narrowed into mean, angry slits, and he cracked the whip. It snapped through the air dangerously close to Sebastian’s face, but he didn’t flinch.
This time, Sebastian wasn’t running. This time, he wasn’t going to balk at discovering just how like his father he really was.
This time his father was the one who should be running.
“Your brother warned one of Teague’s debtors in time for him to skip town before we could collect his children to be sold as payment on his defaulted loan. Parrish deserved what he—”
“He deserved to be beaten to death by his own father?” Sebastian’s voice rose, and the fire in his chest spilled into his veins, chasing the panic into the corner of his mind.
His father’s face was grim. “An example had to be made.”
&nb
sp; Sebastian took a small step forward, and his father stopped pacing to frown at him. “Is that the excuse you used when you beat me for not wanting to eat rotten apples when I was four?”
“Ungrateful for the food put in front of you—”
“Or the time you knocked out Parrish’s front teeth because he’d shut the front door too loudly while you were sleeping off another bout of drinking?” Sebastian took another step forward, the words rushing out of him like they’d always been there. “Or when I didn’t fetch you more ale fast enough to suit you? Or when Mother cooked carrots and you were in the mood for beets? What about the time you—”
“Enough!” his father yelled, eyes wild, and the whip snapped toward Sebastian.
Ari cried out a warning, but Sebastian was ready. Lashing out, he grabbed the end of the whip, wrapped it around his wrist twice, and yanked his father off balance.
The whip hung suspended between them as his father braced his feet, met his gaze, and pulled.
Sebastian hung on, the whip digging into his wrist. “You’re done hurting people.”
His father laughed and looked at Ari. “This the kind of man you want, Princess? All talk and no action? He ever show you his back? You ought to see it sometime. Proof that he’s a coward. Proof he’ll never erase.”
Shame, slick and oily, pooled in Sebastian’s stomach, but Ari snapped, “What a pack of lies. Sebastian is one of the bravest people I’ve ever known, and the scars on his back remind me that even though you tried so hard to break him, you failed.”
His father’s lip curled, and he raked his eyes over Ari’s body. “Mouthy and fat. Thought my boy would’ve had better taste in girls.”
“Leave her alone.” Sebastian’s voice was quiet even as the fury within him rose up to choke him with its strength. “Leave me alone. In fact, just leave. Get out of Kosim Thalas and never come back.”
His father jerked on the whip, but Sebastian held it steady.
“You don’t order me around, boy.” His eyes were wild, spittle flying as he yelled. “People tremble when I enter a room. Streets clear when I walk them. This is my town.”