“Just what?” He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click that somehow sounded more final than a slam. “Just deciding to break your neck climbing down two stories on bedsheets like some character from a children’s tale?”
Heat rose to my cheeks. When he put it like that, it did sound ridiculous. But desperation had clouded my judgment, driven by the knowledge that Gaspard would arrive tomorrow for the tournament. I couldn’t be here when he did. Couldn’t face him again, not after everything.
“Do you have any idea,” Alain continued, crossing to the window in three long strides, “how quickly these would have unraveled under your weight?” He yanked on the makeshift rope, and sure enough, one of my hasty knots gave way immediately. “You would have fallen and broken something important, if not killed yourself outright.”
“I had to try,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Alain laughed then, a harsh sound with no humor in it. “Try to kill yourself? Because that’s what this is.” He gestured to mypathetic escape route. “A death wish dressed up as a desperate bid for freedom.”
“You don’t understand.” I clutched the bag closer to my chest like it might shield me from his growing anger. “I can’t be here when he arrives. I can’t.”
“When who arrives?” Alain’s head tilted slightly, confusion momentarily overtaking his rage, but it also felt like he already knew. “What are you talking about?”
“Gaspard.” The name tasted like poison on my tongue. “Your father’s friend. The one coming for the tournament.”
Something shifted in Alain’s expression, a flicker of understanding that was quickly subsumed by a darker emotion I couldn’t name. “What does he have to do with this?”
I looked away, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. How could I explain? How could I tell this prince who had saved me, cared for me, read to me through fever dreams, that the man he would host at his tournament was the same man who had broken me in ways that would never fully heal?
“He knows me,” I managed, the words inadequate for the horror they represented. “From Thorndale. If he sees me here...”
“You’re afraid of him,” Alain said, not a question but a statement of fact. He moved closer, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if struggling to contain something violent within himself. “Why?”
The question hung between us, so simple yet impossible to answer without tearing open wounds I’d tried desperately to stitch closed. My silence stretched too long, and Alain’s patience snapped.
“What did he do to you?” he demanded, voice rising. “Tell me, Isabeau. What did that man do that has you willing to risk your life climbing out a castle window rather than face him?”
“Everything!” The word burst from me, raw and wounded. “Everything a man can do to break a woman who has nowhereelse to go. Is that what you want to hear? That he took me in after my father was sacrificed? That he made me his pretty little slave, for his bed and his ego? That when I finally fought back, he nearly killed me, and that’s how I ended up in those woods in the first place?”
Alain went utterly still, his face draining of color. For a heartbeat, I thought I’d reached him, that he finally understood the urgency of my situation. Then his expression hardened into something cold and terrible.
“So you’d run back to the beasts rather than trust me to protect you,” he said, voice flat. “Back to the creatures that chained you in that dungeon. Back to whatever left those marks on your shoulder. Because that makes perfect sense.”
Frustration burned through me. He wasn’t listening. Couldn’t or wouldn’t hear what I wasn’t saying. That I needed those beasts, that they were princes cursed by darkness, that they held pieces of my soul just as I held pieces of theirs. That without me, they would continue to suffer in a hell dimension I could barely comprehend.
“It’s not about trust,” I insisted, taking a step toward him. “It’s about necessity. About destiny and magic and things I fully cannot explain to you because you’ve been raised to destroy them. But I know what I have to do.”
“And what about what I need?” Alain asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “Does that matter at all in your grand escape plan? Did you even think about what it would do to me to find you gone? Or worse, to have the guards discover your broken body beneath this window?”
Guilt twisted in my stomach, unexpected and unwelcome. No, I hadn’t thought about him, not really. I’d been focused solely on my mission, on my princes, on escaping Gaspard’s notice. The realization that my disappearance would hurt Alain hadn’t factored into my calculations.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it despite everything. “But I can’t stay. Please try to understand. Gaspard will recognize me. He’ll tell your father what I am, or worse, he’ll claim me again. And your brother...” I trailed off, unable to voice the discomfort Theron’s predatory gaze had inspired at dinner.
Something ugly flashed across Alain’s face at the mention of his brother. “What about Theron? Did he say something to you? Do something?”
“The way he looked at me,” I murmured, wrapping my arms around myself. “Like I was something to be consumed. It reminded me of...”
“Of Coventry,” Alain finished, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I’ll deal with my brother. And as for Coventry—” He cut himself off, seeming to come to some internal decision. “You think I can’t protect you from him? That I would let anyone harm you under my own roof?”
“It’s not that simple,” I argued, desperation rising again. “Your father calls him friend. The king would believe him over me, a stranger you dragged from the forest with unnatural eyes and unexplained abilities. If Gaspard claimed I was his runaway property—”
“You are not property!” Alain roared, the sudden volume making me flinch back. He noticed and immediately modulated his tone, though the rage still simmered beneath the surface. “You are not property,” he repeated, softer now. “Not his, not anyone’s.”
Except yours, I thought but didn’t say. Because in this moment, with his eyes blazing and his body coiled with possessive fury, Alain looked every inch the man who believed I belonged to him.
“I need to leave,” I said, forcing strength into my voice that I didn’t feel. “Tonight. Before he arrives.”
“No.” The single syllable fell between us like a stone.
