My eyes widened, my arms trembling. There was so much blood. More than there ever had been before. I was caught somewhere between a gasp and cough as my whole body shook.
My father reached for his neck, rubbing at his throat and hissing in pain. “Healers are on their way to you now. I’d leave that in while you wait, unless you prefer to bleed out.”
Blood coated my hands until it was slipping through my fingers, dripping down my legs.
“You will appear at Court tomorrow. You will say yes to the betrothal of the bride I choose, and you will Godsdamned act like you’re happy about it,” he yelled. “Especially when Lyriana’s engagement to Arkturion Kane is announced. One longing look between you two, one hand held too long, one single fucking moment to suggest you aren’t completely enamored with your new bride, and all of this goes away. Everything Lyriana negotiated for you will end. Andshewill pay the price foryourinsolence. I promise you her suffering will reach heights your imagination has never dreamt of. Unless you do exactly as I say.”
Something was coming over me. My stomach had been torn in half. I was in agony. Every inch of my body felt like it was being tortured. But somehow, I was sitting up, because some other force was taking over—something greater than me, something bigger. It was ancient and God-like. A memory of a vision of power.
And then I was standing, feeling my weight in my feet, my body almost like a stranger’s. I moved to the bars, half-crazed with pain and fear, half led there by a magic and a determination I didn’t yet understand.
“I have a message for you,” I said, my voice foreign, lower, louder. Full of power.
My father’s chin twitched, his eyes widening.
“If you hurt her, if you harm one hair on her head, there will be nowhere safe for you. Nowhere you can hide. Not in this lifetime. Not in the next. I will hunt you to the bowels of eternity. You will not know life free of my wrath. I will hunt, and I will take, in agonizing slowness, every life you’re born into, until you know nothing but fear. Until your pain is so excruciating, you cease to exist.Me sha, me ka.”
My father had an odd look in his eyes then, and for a second, I could swear he was shaking, looking at me as if he’d never seen me before.
All at once, I felt the power leave me, my body drained. This was the second time he’d stabbed me like this. The first time was when I confronted him in Bamaria, when I’d stolen the key to Asherah’s tomb. He clearly meant to make up for last time.
“Be careful,” he said, “making promises like that. Even you don’t know how many lives you have left, Auriel.” His shoulders had hunched, and his breath was heavy as he glared.
I fell back onto the bed, gritting my teeth. “How did you know?”
He stepped back, his face grim in the firelight. “A vorakh told me, when you were still in the womb.”
“I was seen in a vision?”
“Many times.”
“By who?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Your mother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LYRIANA
I stared at the crackling flames in the fireplace. A green wool shawl was wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I was still in my formal Glemarian dress—the dress Imperator Hart had selected. The dress Kenna had laced up. It was tight, and constricting, with far too much material. Everything about it, the boning in the bodice, the thick layers of skirts, felt as much like a prison as Seathorne itself.
The fires rose higher, the heat wafting toward me in thick, warm waves. But I couldn’t stop shivering. Couldn’t stop replaying everything Imperator Hart had said, couldn’t stop feeling the nahashim sliding against my skin, crawling over me. Under me.
Threatening to go inside me.
The wind howled and a nearby gryphon squawked angrily as snow fell against the frosted pane of my window. Beyond the glass, small torches lit the mountains on the horizon.
Suddenly, there was a violent knock on the door, but I remained still, unwilling to answer it. Unwilling to respond, or move. I’d been promised a meeting with Rhyan hours ago. Promised a respite after being tortured, after being forced to sign Imperator Hart’s contract. But instead, I’d suffered a visit from Lord Dario who wanted to be sure I hadn’t climbedout the window, or some other inane escape attempt. Then a short while later, I entertained another visit from him in which he shoved half a dozen soturi inside to stare at me and learn the details of my face. The same thing happened a quarter of an hour later. And then a half hour after that.
I was tired of being ogled and stared at, all so I could make a better prisoner, all so the features and the shape of my body could be memorized. Noticed. And if need be, captured.
But the worst part of it all, the most humiliating, and the hardest to bear, was when they took turns lifting the sleeve of my dress so that they might recognize my tattoo. I knew it was just my arm. Nothing intimate. But I couldn’t stand to be naked after Vrukshire. Could barely stand to be seen. Even by Rhyan. At least, at first. It wasn’t the nudity that bothered me, it was the touching and manipulation of my clothes—the feeling of being powerless, and out of control, even over my own garments. The fear of being exposed and helpless. I’d nearly panicked several times, forcing my gaze out the window, pointedly watching the snowfall as I breathed deeply.
And then, as if that weren’t enough, Dario tried to see if the fire would turn my hair red. He’d seen the effect of the sun on me when we’d landed at Seathorne that morning. He’d been quiet about it, but the rumors of my hair’s solar transformation were all over Glemaria, and he wanted to make sure the soturi knew damned well if they saw someone in the daylight with my likeness, only with bright red hair instead of brown, that it was still me. And if they saw me with either hair color, I was to be watched, and reported on. And if attempting to escape, restrained.
The knock came again, rougher this time, more urgent. “Lady Lyriana,” Dario yelled gruffly.
The door swung open. I squeezed my eyes shut.No. No. No more.My shoulders shook, and I pinched the edge of my sleeve, tightening the closure of material around my hand …
