“It’s finally time to make him pay,” he hisses against my face, his lips practically touching mine, his hot, rancid, alcohol-soaked breath making my stomach roll. “For three years I could not reach him in this palace. Then you came along.” He smiles cruelly, his mouth on the corner of mine now, and he licks the seam of my lips. I shudder, stifling my cry. “You chose him instead of me. She chose him instead of me. It’s always been him, him,him! He deserves to know what it feels like to have something he loves taken from him by someone else. He deserves to live in that sort of pain the way I have. I tried to dothis the easy way. I tried to make you mine, but now I have no choice.”
The pain and pressure on my neck dissipate as he pulls the knife back, and just as I suck in a relieved, much-needed breath, his hand swipes out, and the knife slices across my throat. Right over where the bruise had been those weeks ago.
Pain bursts through me, a blinding white jolt of lightning to my system, and I cry out from the shock of it. My hand clasps at my neck while sticky, warm blood immediately coats my fingers, but it’s not deep. A gash, he didn’t hit anything vital. I’m still standing and breathing, and my vision is all over the place and fuzzy, but that’s from the adrenaline, not the wound.
He’s letting me know it wouldn’t take much. Another slice, a bit deeper, and I’m finished.
So maybe now isn’t the time to let my mouth get me in trouble the way it’s prone to do.
“You always have a choice.”
“Do you love him? Truly?”
“Will it change my outcome if I answer truthfully? Yes, I love him, Samil. I love him very much. You are the prime minister. What happens to that now after this?”
He smirks, grasping my free hand and bringing me toward the window. “Look down there.”
I follow the tip of the blade as it points out the window. We’re on the third floor of the palace, but the earth on this side of the palace isn’t even. It’s rocky and sharp, the trajectory of the ground pitching drastically downward. Almost like a cliff. It has to be a hundred-foot drop at least.
“A fall like that could kill someone.”
I close my eyes and release an uneven breath. “You’re going to make it look like I killed myself?”
“Or an accident. Either way. But hitting rocks that massive and jagged from this height…the body will be unrecognizable. Pulp.”
“Samil, no one will believe that. Certainly not Sebastian. They’ll know you were here with me.”
“How? My car left half an hour ago. Right after he slid that pretty pink rock on your finger.” He taps it with the knife. “Did you know that there is an entrance off the side of the kitchen? An old root cellar that is always unlocked and never guarded? It leads into the kitchen through a forgotten door. I found it once on one of my stays. One of my favorite hobbies here is wandering about, searching for weaknesses in the palace. In the blind spots of the cameras.”
Fabulous. Speaking of the cameras, he must have done something to them because no one has found us yet and we’ve been gone long enough.
Then something occurs to me. Something that could save me.
“They might suspect foul play, but it won’t be from me. Poor Sebastian,” he mocks sardonically. “He’ll be ruined in grief. His perfect girl couldn’t handle the pressure of becoming queen. They’ll say a hundred different things. The beast king who hurt her. Who forced her here against her will.”
“Sebastian will know the truth.”
“But he won’t be able to prove it.”
My hand reaches into my hidden pocket, gripping my phone. I have a panic button on there. Tracking. All the things Javier installed on my phone that I gave Sebastian grief over. Unfortunately, I can’t take my phone out without alerting Samil to it. I’ll have to try this blind, but I need to buy myself time.
“You don’t have to do this.”
He slams me into the bookshelf, the knife playing with the skin of my chest until he loops it under the chain of my necklace and rips. The diamond goes flying, clattering somewhere on the ground, the chain along with it.
My fingers move, pressing in what I hope is my code. Thepanic button is at the bottom of my apps, stored on my main window. First, I have to get there.
“Are you saying you’d like to negotiate a swap?”
“A swap?”
“Him for me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He licks me. My cheek. My neck over my cut, tasting my blood. My lips. His thumb follows, rubbing over all of it, smearing my lipstick and blood. “I could let you live, Bella. I could let you be mine. But you’d have to let the beast go.”
“Meaning?”
