He changed tactics, speaking in a gentler voice. “Tamsyn.” He pushed the hair from my sweating face with his cold fingers almost gingerly. “There was a time I would have given you anything.Doneanything for you.” Accusation weighted his every word. As far as he was concerned, this wasmyfault. He’d loved me … and I’d betrayed him by being a thing most vile, most unforgivable. “Tell me the truth and this all ends.”
I moistened by lips, looking out at him through blurring eyes. “You should get on with it.”
His brown eyes flattened. He stepped back, cracking the piske on the air as though warming up for something big, something momentous.
I clenched my fingers around my bindings, bracing myself, guessing what that would be.
CRACK.
One of my ribs snapped, and I was no longer silent. I screamed. He was breaking me one bone at a time. There was no way I could last. No way I could hide my blood much longer. My masquerade would soon end.
I tasted death in my mouth.
Sparks popped and crackled in my throat. I smelled the smoke in my nostrils and blood thick as black char on the air. Even as I felt myself igniting, even as I could not escape my bonds, I struggled to suppress my instinct to defend, to strike, to let my fire out.
Sweat beaded my sweltering skin, and I shook, battered within and without.
Flames licked inside me to break free, burning at my walls, and I wondered if I could die this way, internally combust—or would it be Stig delivering the final death blow?
I clung to the tree, my body so hot I could smell smoking wood,taste the acrid coarseness against my lips. I dragged cold air into my lungs, desperate to quench the angry embers.
I tried to breathe through the fire … through the pain. Tears dampened my cheeks, and tendrils of steam lifted. I buried my face into the trunk of the tree.
Suddenly I was hit from behind, engulfed by the scent of strawberries—but this time it was not the piske striking me. A body rammed into me. Wild sobs, not my own, filled my ears, spilling against my neck. Fingers curled around my shoulders, clinging tight.
“Stop! Stop it! Leave her be!”
It all happened in a flash: Alise throwing herself against me, and the whip, already flying, landing.
Crack.
11
TAMSYN
IFELT THE FORCE OF THE PISKE, THE PRESSURE WITHOUT THEcutting pain. Alise took that, absorbed it into her slight body. Her scream stabbed my ears, reverberated through my bones. The fingers clutching my shoulders dug deeper, as though holding on to life.
“Alise!” Stig shouted, and then he was peeling her off me.
I twisted to look, watching as she collapsed into his arms, crying uncontrollably—sobs coming hard and fast, and then she stopped. Went dead still.
“She fainted!” a soldier cried.
It was the first time she had ever taken a whipping. All these years, I had done it for her.
Today she did it for me.
Stig rolled her over and examined her back with a stricken expression on his face. The deep bloody slashes marring her porcelain skin peeked out through her torn robe. Perfect princess skin no more. She would bear scars from this.
He hadscarreda trueborn royal princess. Broken divine law. The horror on his face was something I could have reveled in if not for Alise’s pain. When word of this reached the City, it would not matter that it was accidental. Stig was responsible for Alise’s safety. Papa would not be pleased. Stig knew that, and the fear was there in his face, mingling alongside his horror. Alise was his path to power, and he had just hurt her—no,whippedherbloody—in frontof his entire regiment. The story of this would reach far. Even the regent could do nothing to mitigate the damage.
With a stinging curse, Stig swept Alise up in his arms, shouting for the camp physician as he hastened away.
I was forgotten.
Stig’s captains rushed after him. A few soldiers sent me cursory glances, but the crowd dispersed, drifting off to their tents. Leaving me tied to the tree. Alone in the night.
My ragged breathing filled my ears, eventually evening out, the steam puffing from my nose and lips gradually dissolving. A hush fell over the camp.
