She looked different. Her pale golden hair, still piled high in a crown atop her head, gleamed in the torchlight. Her skin was glowing with a healthy pink hue, a stark contrast to her previous pallid complexion. She looked…
I remembered to breathe.
She was dressed in elegance now, fine fabrics that draped like they’d been chosen to please a king. Those expensive clothes, plus what Nisien had said about needing to try with a mage… Her arrival had Maeron’s fingerprints all over it.
My gut twisted.
Nisien turned, one eyebrow slightly raised in my direction. Damn it.
I refused to answer his look now. I had to escape that room, to avoid her intense examination until I was calmer and less of a danger to everyone nearby.
I bowed, stiffly. Stupidly. “I need to—” I gestured at the splintered door, though my hand shook with the last of the curse’s tremors. “I need to attend to this immediately.”
It was pathetic. Transparent. But it was the only excuse I had. With her so near, I didn’t know what the monster would do. I wasn’t certain if it wanted to tear her apart or hold her and never let go.
I turned and left, not bothering to call for a servant. I ran through the halls like a scared boy. This feeling was too dangerous.
Because if I’d stayed, if I let myself take one more step toward her, I might’ve fallen to my knees.
I needed a cage of stone walls and silence. A locked iron door and no victims at hand when the beast broke through my control. I needed toescape the woman Fate had cruelly placed in my path, but the Assembly wanted in Nisien’s bed.
I slammed my fist into the nearest stone wall once I was alone, cracking it in two. The pain its own sort of release. Another door broken, another threshold I couldn’t cross.
Isca.
Chapter 13
Isca
He remembered my name.
That shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
My heart trumped in my chest, still caught between the lingering pressure of Emrys’s fury and the giddy relief of Nisien shielding me like I mattered. I was used to being overlooked and even shunned in Caervorn, so the attention was an unfamiliar feeling.
But wasn’t that just as dangerous? To be noticed, steadied by one brother while the other stormed away, blue fire still crackling in his eyes?
With Emrys gone, Prince Nisien gestured toward the shattered door, seemingly unconcerned about the destruction of a piece that must’ve taken a skilled artisan months to carve.
“Doors are a particular enemy of his,” he said breezily, but I could sense a trace of old grief within him. “Don’t take it personally.”
Laughter would make me complicit, and silence would make me appear weak. So I settled for the safer middle ground. I schooled my features into polite amusement, though my pulse still raced. “Does he often…react this way?”
If Nisien noticed the change, he didn’t let on. “Only to the beautiful guests,” he answered, that grin disarming and practiced.
And damn it all, I blushed again despite knowing full well how dangerous it was to enjoy it. Did Nisien do that on purpose?
This is part of the job. Smile. Survive. Return home. You cannot get attached, Isca.
I was here to make things better. Treating Emrys’s destruction of a door as if it were nothing more than a toddler’s fit was absolutely not helping matters. With a deep breath, I steeled myself to address this now, to get started on my work immediately. “Your brother’s volatile nature won’t be changed by flattery, my prince.”
Nisien still wasn’t shielding his emotions from me, though I suspected he could do it given his casual show of strength earlier.
“Lady Isca,” his slow words hung heavy in the air, “we have much to discuss regarding Emrys, but you must know his unpredictable state is beyond his immediate control. He has a condition.”
Acondition? Confused, my mind swam in a sea of questions.
“Come, lady,” Nisien said, abruptly silencing my thoughts. He spun on one heel and started walking down the hallway past the destroyed door. Two guards who’d joined him on the stairs outside turned and waited for me to precede them. “There are sights far more pleasant than my brother’s back.”
