“All by yourself, are you?” He leers at me, getting his face much closer to mine than I like. His breath is yeasty with ale—so strong I could almost get drunk just smelling it. Not that I’d want to.
“No, my companion is in the other room,” I say stiffly.
I’d like to stay and hear more of what his friend, red-beard, has to say about the forest and the Sorceress, but now that I’ve been exposed as an outsider, I think it’s better that I go. I turn away but—to my surprise—the man reaches for me and catches me by the wrist.
“Where do you think you’re going, girly?” he asks, grinning wide enough to show two rotten teeth.
“I am leaving. Now,” I say pointedly. “Unhand me, if you please.”
This makes him laugh.
“Unhand me, she says!” he chortles and his grip on my arm gets tighter. “Like she’s a fine lady!”
“I am the Princess of Theravan!” I snap, losing my patience. “Let me go at once or you’ll pay the price!”
But my words—which would have carried weight back at my home Court—do nothing but make the man leer at me.
“A princess, are you? Well, why don’t you come with me and I’ll teach you a thing or two, Your Highness.”
And to my horror, he starts dragging me away from the light of the fireplace back to a shadowy corner.
22
VALEN
I’m having a fucking horrible dream. It’s about Irena—she’s standing in the middle of a forest, all dressed in white. She’s barefoot and the trees are crowding around her, getting closer and closer. They’re reaching for her with greedy branches like sharp wooden fingers. I can tell if they get her in their grasp, they’ll do something terrible to her.
Even though I don’t like her and I fucking hate her family, I can’t help feeling dread rising in my gut. Something bad is going to happen—something I need to stop. She needs me—she’s in trouble!
She…
I wake abruptly but the feeling of dread doesn’t go away—it only gets stronger. Fuck—does this have to do with the drop of my blood I gave her to revive her before our flight? I drank her blood, and she had some of mine too. Did we form some kind of bond?
I fucking hope not but I can’t ignore the tightness in my gut. I look around the room and sure enough—she’s gone. That’s when I hear raised voices from the other side of the bedroom door.
Fuck.
A possessive rage rises inside me. I might hate her, but no one has the right to hurt her—she’s mine!
I still have on the too-tight breeches the innkeeper gave me. There’s no time to put on the shirt.
I push my way out into the inn’s common room to see what kind of trouble my Princess has gotten herself into.
23
IRENA
“Come on with me and I’ll teach you a lesson no prince ever will,” the smelly, hairy man says, still dragging me away.
“Let go of me! Unhand me!” I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, but no one seems to care. They’re all just staring at me, as though it’s perfectly normal for a man to drag a woman away into a dark corner for unnamed nefarious purposes.
It’s not “unnamed nefarious purposes!” It’s rape! shouts a panicked voice in my head. If you don’t get away from him, he’s going to rape you, Irena! Go—get away!
I pull with all my might, but the man’s grip on my wrist is too strong to break. His companion—the man with the red beard—is watching with mild interest as he sips his ale, as though we are putting on a play solely for his benefit. Everyone else seems to be ignoring us.
“I heard what you said about the Lady of the Forest!” I shout at red-beard. “It’s her I’m going to visit—the Sorceress! She’ll make you sorry if you don’t tell your friend to let me go!”
This gets a reaction from the whole room that my ongoing attack and abduction failed to provoke. I hear gasps and mutters and someone says,
