The dungeon cell opened, and Max didn’t have the strength to lift his head. He could no longer pull at his wrists, his entire arms reinforced with chains.
Gideon swore, alerting Max to his presence. He came alone.
“Why?” he breathed. His youngest brother was never in the know, and Max preferred it that way. He did everything in his power to protect him.
Max couldn’t answer.
“All of this, because you won’t marry the princess?”
Max’s silence was answer enough. He hated ignoring him, but eventually, Gideon needed to learn things on his own.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he hissed.
Max coughed as he struggled to breathe, fighting to form words. “I marry her, cast Sin aside, war. I don’t marry her, war.”
“Or, you know, you could just marry her. Save us all this bullshit. But no, youlovemaking things difficult, don’t you?”
Max fought through the pain to meet his brother’s gaze, making him flinch at the sight of him. “I refuse. You want peace so badly? You marry her. I would see the kingdom burn to ashes before I stood beside anyone else but Sin.”
“I’m not the heir,” Gideon said through clenched teeth.
“By the time this is over, you just might be, little brother.”
“Don’t fucking talk like that.”
Max spoke a little louder. “I’m going to die in this fucking cell. So, get her to safety.”
Gideon’s eyes slackened at his unspoken words.
“When this is all over, it’ll be you or our mother on that throne. I trust you’ll make sure my mate doesn’t meet a bad end.”
“I don’t know where she is,” he breathed.
Max nodded. “Find Audrira. She can track her with her clothes. Find her, and get her to safety. Take her to our mother.” He barely finished his demand before he started coughing, making the chains clink together. “She’s still alive. I can feel it. She’s in pain, but she’s alive. Go now, before it’s too late, and it’s all for nothing.”
“And what about your father?” Gideon asked, but Max was already unconscious.
Sin
Sin awoke in an unfamiliar room. The stench of rot clawed at her senses, a gagging mixture of sour decay and something damp, like a tomb long abandoned. Her throat constricted, and she fought the bile rising up, blinking against the pitch darkness that seemed to swallow her.
Sold, they had told her upon dragging her from beneath Max’s bed. She remembered the way her heart had clenched, that brief hope she had dared to hold onto—shattered. The betrayal left her feeling hollow, the realization that her fate was never truly in her hands. The king did not honor his promise to his son, which Sin knew she should’ve seen coming. Right as things were looking up, her future not so bleak, it was ripped away from her. Just like any trinket she found and tried to keep for herself. Vivienne didn’t allow her to own anything except two tattered dresses.
Sin tried to recollect all the things that happened to slaves that were sold. Countless times, Vivienne had informed her of horror stories to keep her obedient. From the breast ripper to rape, the possibilities were endless. A slave in the posh castle, those things would never be welcome, which is why they had servants. But she wasn’t in the castle anymore, and the male voices arguing outside caused her throat to close up in fear.
Sin did the only thing she could. She reached into her mind and crushed every emotion she could grasp. She squeezed themuntil they vanished. Squeezed them until they couldn’t be seen anymore. And the ones that were impossible, like rage, she let overwhelm her. Allowed her rage to consume herself until she was numb.
She had done this countless times when Vivienne punished her. To maintain that numbness, Sin stared at the ground in front of her feet as the door opened, and in came the two male voices, the ones who took her from her mate.
NUMB, she internally screamed.
“Well, well,” the voice shifted, turning feminine. Sin lifted her head, recognizing her stepsisters in oversized travelers’ clothes that hung loosely over their gaunt, malnourished frames.
Their faces were haggard, with dark shadows under their eyes, and the smell of sweat and dirt clung to them like a second skin. These were not the privileged girls she remembered—they looked haunted, feral, and filled with a hatred that simmered just beneath their eyes.
“How?” Sin breathed.
“We took a page out of your book, big sister. Only we were much smarter,” Ricina sneered, her fingers fumbling with a ring in her hand. “We’ve been hunted for months—starving, hiding like rats—all because of you. You killed our parents, and now you think you can just get away with it?”
