“Then let’s hope it doesn’t kill you first.”
Ella’s curiosity piqued, and she pushed him—just a little.
“For a man so sure of himself, your instincts are surprisingly dull.”
He only watched her, head tilting with that predatory stillness, and then he closed the space between them, his hand sliding slowly down the curve of her arm before catching her wrist against the stone, neither tight nor gentle, a reminder of how easily he could darken the moment.
“I told you not to lie to me,” Jakobav murmured, the words skimming her skin like the edge of a blade and sending her pulseinto a stuttering, traitorous rhythm, every nerve pulled toward him rather than away.
He leaned in, eyes catching the torchlight. “Then explain why your magic reeks of flame and flowers every time you breathe, as if it were stitched into your blood.”
Her stomach clenched. She didn’t answer, didn’t dare move.
Jakobav shoved off the wall with the certainty of a wolf that had driven its prey into a corner. “You don’t have to say anything yet. But keep lying, and you will die before you find what you came for.”
She swallowed hard and refused to give him the satisfaction of fear. “Why haven’t you turned me in?” she asked instead.
Silence held, then he stepped closer, so near that his gaze seemed to cut straight through her, and when he spoke at last, his voice fell low enough to feel like a vow. “Because something in you tastes like it was written into my blood, and I always claim what’s mine.”
He left, his boots echoing, the cedar-and-amber scent hanging in the corridor.
Ella pressed back against the rough stone, pulse still racing as she let him have this moment. He had dominated the space, twisted her wrist, pressed steel to her skin, and stripped her down to silence, but that did not make her prey.
At full strength, she could have taken ten men twice his size, and one cocky prince was not going to break her. He might move as if circling a wounded animal, but she’d come here with teeth bared and a plan. She had not entered Dravaryn by accident. She’d expected a dungeon, torture, and having to claw her way out to find whatever relic the fates had promised.
Instead she had a prince who seemed far too interested, and a body that refused to cooperate, but he didn’t know the truth. He didn’t suspect Orchid’s lost heir stood before him, didn’t know the prophecy had already wound her path into his fortress.
His ignorance was now her advantage.
Ella straightened, fury cooling into focus. Although he might think of her as a secret to unravel, she was the one holding the match, waiting, patient and ready to strike.
7
LOCKED EYES
Later that day, the healer arrived like a storm wearing boots. The heavy oak doors groaned open, spilling him into the chamber in a whirl of clinking vials and swaying fabric, as if the fates had personally summoned him, or perhaps simply because he had sniffed out an audience.
The wide-brimmed hat went first, feather flashing violet as it caught the torchlight, and then the scent followed close behind: juniper, cloves, and something stranger, wafting into the air like mischief.
“Well, well, well,” the man said, his grin belonging more to a trickster god than a medic. “If it isn’t the Prince of Gloom and his mystery guest. Didn’t know you were collecting strays again, Jakobav.”
She hadn’t noticed when Jakobav returned. He was simply there again—silent as a shadow—and gods, it set her teeth on edge.
He stood near the hearth with his arms crossed, his expression a dam holding back something dangerous.
“She’s still injured, Bryn,” Jakobav said flatly.
“I know that, princeling,” Bryn replied cheerfully, dropping a basket that rattled like a box of knives. “I’d like to think my healing is aging like fine Fae wine, because I’ve never been more certain someone was about to die. But you insisted I save her anyway. And look, I did.”
Jakobav’s jaw flexed, a muscle ticking as though the healer had revealed more than he had intended to be known.
“Oh, forgive me,” Bryn said, sketching a mocking little bow. “Did I trample all over your grand amusement? Ah well. You know what they say about best-laid plans…” His grin turned feral, teeth catching the firelight. “They rot faster than corpses.”
Jakobav’s gaze cut to him, cold enough to still blood in the vein. It would have flattened a lesser man. Bryn only hummed, unfazed, and set about unpacking his basket.
“She’s not one of ours. You can smell the southern dirt on her.” Bryn sniffed the air, eyes glinting. “Or is that blood? Hard to tell with foreigners.”
Ella stiffened, refusing to flinch beneath his inspection. The healer had already saved her life and was likely the one who had stripped away her blood-soaked clothes that first night, then dressed her in something clean.
