Chills ran down her spine at the way he said that word, like her tameness made her even more interesting to him. The little she’d managed to eat over the course of the evening surged its way up her throat, but she swallowed it back.
Her uncle, who was barely containing his fury at the princess’s earlier rebellion over her brother’s clothes, grunted in disgust. “Not nearly as docile as I’d like her to be.”
Uncle’s special guest chuckled. “Training them is ninety percent of the fun.”
Stefan squeezed her fingers.
“You’ve put on quite a spread for me tonight,” the guest said, his voice suddenly business-like. “Does that mean you’re willing to negotiate?”
The princess breathed a sigh of relief that they were no longer talking about her in that way that made her skin crawl.
“Later. When the children are gone.” Uncle’s voice was a warning and a dismissal all at once, and the princess could not escape the table fast enough.
“I look forward to seeing you again in a few years, Irina,” the guest murmured as she reached the door. She barely suppressed a shudder as she escaped.
“You know who that guy is, right?” Stefan asked as they made their way back to their wing of the palace.
The princess shook her head. “All I know is that he gives me the creeps.”
“And he should. He’sClanuritoo … but he doesn’t deal in substances, like Father.”
The princess looked up at her cousin, that cold feeling that had been making its way up her spine in the dining room marched out to her fingers and toes. “What does he deal in, then?”
“People.”
A storm hit the palace in the early hours of the morning. The princess hadn’t managed to sleep, her head full of thoughts of her uncle’s guest. He had been handsome, with his salt and pepper hair and his neatly trimmed beard. How did a face like that hide such evil?
A high-pitched wail came from down the hallway as lightning lit the princess’s room, followed by a boom of thunder so close it set her teeth on edge. Her heart hammered. Had that been Andrei screaming? Was he frightened by the storm? Was that sound his bare feet racing down the hall past her room, or just the lingering rumbles of thunder?
But then the too-familiar rhythmicthump,thump,thumpof her uncle’s boots followed. The princess cowered in her bed, praying he wouldn’t come in, hadn’t decided to punish her tonight while he was full of?uica, which always made him extra violent.
The footsteps passed her door and continued, fading into nothingness as the storm raged.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I Might Die
IRINA
Iscreamed. Clawed at the blankets that wrapped around me too tight, like Stefan’s arms. Bile rose in my throat, I swallowed it back. The storm outside raged, but a completely different one seethed in my head.
“Shh … I’ve got you,” a voice whispered. Another ragged scream tore from my lungs, muffled by the tangle of blanket. Arms wrapped me up with just the right amount of pressure.
“That lightning was close, but we’re okay,” the voice continued, a deep, soothing lilt.
“Don’t leave!” I gasped, my throat raw from my screams. I wrestled my arms free of the blanket, clinging to Henry. “Just don’t leave me.”
His hand found my hair, fingers combing through the strands. “I won’t leave you, Catnip.”
I focused on those words, on the warm comfort of him as the yacht rocked again, cresting a wave, and the thunder growled, and something that I’d never let out, not in ten years of holding the guilt, the grief, inside, loosened in my chest, in the protective embrace of a man who was everything I needed. Everything I wanted.
I cried for my dead brother. Great, big, gulping sobs, and eyes thatfilled again and again. And words started coming out of me. Words I’d never told anyone.
“I k-killed my brother.”
Henry’s hand stilled, but he said nothing. I kept talking.
“Andrei died because of me,” I rasped. “My brother drowned, and I hid in my room and let it happen.”
