A single heartbeat passes by before his voice raises and startles a gasp from my lungs. “I said, get! I took the honor of your braids the last time you lingered too long with a bride of mine. Don’t make me take the honor of your manhood next,” Ravar grumbles as he gazes cruelly out at the crowd.
My mouth can’t seem to close.
He took…he took away his brother’s most prideful possession? He took away his honor?
Why?
Roman’s attention never leaves me, and there’s a desperate look in his pretty gaze. Very distinctly, his index finger lingers on the glass to the right. His brow lifts.
Ever so subtly, I nod.
Leave. Just go before the Prince’s maliciousness creeps out again.
Roman turns with his scarred back lined with tension. And my attention finally falls to the wine glass.
Poison. That’s the best they can do?
Rather unclever really.
But what is my alternative?
Shoving this man to his death right here, right now?
No. He’s quick. He’d land on his feet like a vengeful cat filled with grace and toxic entitlement.
I can do better.
My mind circles as I think it all through, and as I do, I notice how close the hell fae are seated tonight. They don’t dine in a class of their own nearest the High Hell as they usually do. The several hundred of the dark horned creatures are directly below us.
None of them say a word.
My gaze shifts from one table to the next, and everyone seems alight with happiness as they chew merrily and drink heartily to the special occasion. Except for those deadly dark eyes that peer up at myself and the Prince every few seconds that pass by.
It’s a chill of anticipation to have them watch me when I already feel so watched by the man holding me tightly.
“The Night Witch has broken our wards,” he says to me on an empty whisper.
His face is vacant, but there’s so much thought behind his inky eyes.
“The Night Witch?” I ask with as much confusion as I can muster.
He nods.
“Why do we hate her, my Prince?” I force my fingers to remain steady as I push back the silky black locks from his face.
“I don’t,” he tells me with an exhale that carries oh so much weight with it. “I love her,” he rasps on a broken whisper.
Now the confusion is real.
“She was my soulmate. She was my one and only. I married into the crown. She was queen of this realm. But the magic here can be consuming. It’s too much for some people.” My heart pounds in rhythm to the heaviness of his every word. “It turned her into beautiful madness. She was pretty like you.” He glances my way, and I can’t even fathom how the darkness of the Night Witch and myself could ever be compared. “This morning after you left my rooms, a guard told me he spotted Creatchin in the halls for the first time in centuries. The cursed magic in her blood seems to have tainted her physically, but my man said he’d recognize her anywhere. He saw her. He saw her talking to you.”
My stomach drops.
My fingers dig into his shoulder instinctively, and it suddenly isn’t a question of whether I could shove this man from his ledge but…if he’d do the same to me.
“That was the Night Witch?” I ask in an even tone as I bite back every urge to look for Zilo.
His searching gaze picks apart every detail I give him. And fuck, I hope I give him what he wants to see.
