“I took a page out of your book.”
He groans as his fingers prod the swollen red mark at this temple. “Trick Galen into giving you something? He’s always had a soft spot for you.”
“I want the names of those who helped turn Rhea over to King Dolian.”
“At least woo me first, pretty boy. After all,I’mthe one with all the information you need.” He leans his head back against the stone, laying his hands on top of his thighs.
“You’re the one at the mercy of a man willing to dowhatever it takesto get that information.” I straighten and walk towards him, towering a few feet away as I clench my fists at my sides. “You may have had the upper hand before, but do not mistake that as a sign of weakness from me.”
Stephan chuckles, the sound scraping along the cell walls as it echoes. “I quite like you like this.Feralfor her. Willing to risk it all.” Biting his lower lip, he tilts his head to the side as he stares up at me. “Love is a funny thing, isn’t it? It has the potential to make people tip over into either a better version of themselves or”—he gestures to me with his hand—“something worse. It can bring families closer together or brutally rip them apart.” His eyes narrow, deviant delight dancing on his lips. “It can force kings to risk everything just for a fuckingtasteof it.”
My chest heaves as a muscle at my neck thrums, and though I lift my lip in a snarl, Stephan’s taunting is undeterred.
“She lookedsoconcerned that night. It wasn’t hard, really, to convince them both that you were waiting for them. Poor Daje looked like he thought something was wrong, but Rhea—”
“Don’t say her fucking name,” I growl, breath trapped in my throat.
“She convinced him to go. The way you have her wrapped around your finger… Or, I guess,had—Ah!” My boot comes down on the top of his shin, his shout of pain stirring my magic inside of me. Faint as it is, I’m satisfied at the feel of it curling over my spine, eager and vengeful.
“Whodid you work with?”
“She cried out for you,” he grunts out between panting breaths, and I stomp my foot down harder. “Fuck!” Stephan’s hand attempts to wrap around my ankle, but I kick it away, the edges of my vision blurring.
“Give mefuckingnames!”
“Luring her away from the safety of your room was entirely too easy. Her eagerness to get toyouwas her downfall.” He laughs, his upper body twitching from the pain in his leg. “I watched them hold her down as she begged for you to come. And as her blood painted her hair and they pulled her ring from her finger, she kept fighting against them. All until they knocked her out. Then it was a frenzy. Each mage there wanted to carry her to the beach, but one was more adamant than the others. He made sure to keep hold of hernice and tightbefore handing her off to the siren bitches.”
I plant my boot into his chesthard, making his head ricochet off the wall. Crouching down in front of him with my hands on his chest plate, there is no kernel of rationality that I am entertaining now. They had fucking hurt her, and he had bore witness to it. Had lured her to danger. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll start hurting you in earnest.”
Stephan splays his hands on the ground by his hips to steady himself as he blinks slowly. “Even with names, there is nothing you can do,My King. It doesn’t change the fact that your magic is weakened—as is your body. It doesn’t saveherfrom enduring the king’s touch—”
The shout that rends from me is primal, a noise I can’t stop just as I can’t help the fist I send crashing into his jaw. Stephan’s head snaps to the side, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as it lifts in a jarring, macabre smile.Kill him. I hear the command in my head, but the voice isn’t mine. It’s something deeper, darker. Something that lures me like a siren call into that shadowy monster I’ve tried so hard to tame.Kill him, it whispers again, and I reach back for one of my blades. Stephan moves quickly, something clicking before pain lances across my wrist and warmth spills down my forearm. He swings at me again, this time something cutting into my shoulder.
“It’s okay, Your Majesty,” he growls, shoving me off of him. I lose my balance and fall to my knees, my heartbeat loud in my ears. “You couldn’t have known I have blades hidden in my vambraces.” Lifting his hand up, he shows off the crimson-stained tip of a blade hidden at the sleeve of his armor as he struggles to his feet.
Heaving a breath, I force myself to stand, my fingers scraping at the hilt of one of my daggers. Air stirs, but I’m too fucking slow to avoid Stephan’s fist, white exploding behind my eyes as it connects with my cheek. A metallic taste fills my mouth and drips into the back of my throat as a second hit comes directly into my side. “You’re a pathetic excuse of a king, just like your father before you. You’ll never be able to turn back the events that have already been set in motion. It’s beendecadesin the making, and while I think it is valiant that you are trying your damnedest to get Rhea back, the truth is that you will never see her again.”
My neck flexes as I grit my teeth, calling on my scraps of magic to begin healing my cuts as I barrel into Stephan, sending us both crashing onto the ground. We scuffle, metal hitting stone as I lose one of my blades. My muscles strain, the persistent throbbing in my head drowning me as he wraps a leg around myhip and flips us so my back collides with the ground and his knee digs into my chest. The air squeezes from my lungs as he leans in close, his hands framing my head.
“Well, maybe that’s not true. Your friends are on a quest to repair the Mirror, right?” I slide my hand back to the other blade strapped to my belt. “Perhaps youwillsee her again, though I imagine she’ll be on King Dolian’s arm like the pretty little fucking trophy she is.”
He licks his lips and pushes his knee harder into my chest, forcing a strangled groan to rise up my throat. I grasp at the dagger’s hilt, moving it up out of its sheath an inch before my fingers slip from the blood coating my hand. Black splotches begin to cover Stephan’s face, my throat constricting with the attempts to draw enough air in.Fuck. I shoot my other hand out to grasp at his neck, clawing into the skin there.
He growls as I draw blood, easing off of my chest just enough for me to get a quick breath before the pressure is once more crushing my sternum. Pain radiates out from my back, every muscle coiled tight, as Stephan brings the arm with the hidden blade right up to my neck, pressing into the skin. “I know the council has you on a tight leash, Your Majesty, and your laughably feeble attempt to overpower me has only made me angry. So, in return for not killing you, you will grant me a favor. I want my own room within the palace. I’ll keep quiet about this, both to save you embarrassment and because I can’timaginewhat Kallin will do if he knows. They’ve already got an eye on your sister, don’t they? Accusing her of treason and sleeping with a foreign king.”
What surges through me is too raw to be calledonlyanger. Planting my feet on the ground, I press into my heels and thrust my hips up in an attempt to throw him off balance. But,fucking gods,I’m too weak, and all it does it make him laugh as the blade nicks my throat.
“It’s pathetic, really, what you’re willing to risk for her. Especially when she’s been…tainted.”
“Shut thefuck—”
“He touched her.Claimedher. Right in front of everyone. And she let him. Though, what could she even do against him? Not when her magic is blocked and—” At the widening of my eyes, Stephan chuckles, and the sound shreds me apart. “That’s right. King Dolian somehow figured out how to make her magichisto control.”
No. That isimpossible. “You’re lying.” But even as I drop the accusation, my mind spins with the horrific scenario he’s laid out.Rhea at King Dolian’s mercy, her magic unable to protect her in the way it had in the past. Unable to heal her while she sleeps or comfort her while she’s alone.Each thought builds upon the previous one until I’m suffocating beneath their weight, cut off at the knees and forced to bear the consequences of my failures. They live within me, within my very blood, coating my veins in an icy culpability that leaves me numb to the small voice inside that is urging me to stop. To calm down. To wait for therightmoment to strike.
But I am fucking done with waiting. I stretch my fingers out again, the tips of them brushing the edge of my dagger’s hilt.
“You don’t have to take my word for it. I imagine, with the way he was touching her, that he’s already ravaged her in all of the depraved ways he’s wanted to. In fact, perhaps when the Mirror is fixed, you’ll see her swollen with the king’s heir—”
