They streaked down her temples, disappearing into her hair, even as her body clenched around mine in the throes of climax. Even as pleasure contorted her features, those impossibly inhuman eyes overflowed with silent grief.
I froze, horrified, my own release crashing through me without permission. She was crying. Crying while I took her. While I forced my claim upon her just as surely as whatever beasts had marked her shoulder.
“Isabeau,” I choked, reaching for her tear-streaked face.
But the dream shattered like glass, reality rushing in to replace fantasy with cold sheets and the dark solitude of my bedchamber. I jerked upright, breathing hard, my sleep pants sticky with evidence of what my body had believed was real like last time. Sweat cooled on my skin as shame washed over me in nauseating waves.
She’d been crying. In my dream, my fantasy, she’d submitted to my desire while tears streamed from her eyes. What kind of monster did that make me?
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes until stars bloomed in the darkness.I’d been too harsh with her. Too demanding. Too focused on keeping her safe—no, keeping her mine—to see what it was doing to her. The dream showed me that truth with brutal clarity.
I needed to go to her. To apologize. To promise I would help her find whatever answers she sought, even if they took her away from me in the end.
But the competition began at dawn, and she was sleeping. Gaspard would be arriving with his hunting party, and Father expected me to greet our honored guest personally. There would be no opportunity to see Isabeau alone before the tournament commenced.
By the time I could speak with her, it might already be too late for my actions in her room earlier. The knowledge settled in my chest like lead, heavy with implications I wasn’t ready to face.
The bow felt wrong in my hands today, unfamiliar as a stranger’s limb. I flexed my fingers, trying to shake off the memory of Isabeau’s face when I’d told her she could never leave. The betrayal in those sad eyes haunting me even as I took my place among the other nobles. My words last night had made me no better than Gaspard.
“Mine,”I’d called her, as if she were a possession to be claimed rather than a woman who’d already suffered too much of men’s ownership. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I notched my first arrow, my gaze drifting toward the man himself, standingthree competitors away, preening like a peacock for his adoring audience.
Coventry.The name tasted sour in my mind.
Everything about him sickened me now. The way his perfect smile flashed white against his sun-bronzed skin. The effortless manner he commanded attention from the crowd, accepting their adoration as his natural due. The casual strength with which he drew back his practice bow, muscles rippling beneath fine silk that probably cost more than most villagers earned in a year.
This was the man who had taken Isabeau when she had nowhere else to go. The man who had used her, broken her, nearly killed her. And here he stood in my father’s tournament grounds, honored guest and celebrated champion, while she remained locked in a tower room because I’d become everything I claimed to despise.
“A fine day for competition, is it not, Your Highness?”
I turned to find Lord Everett’s son beside me, a gangly youth whose name I couldn’t recall, struggling to maintain the formal old English his father insisted upon at court events.
“Indeed,” I replied, grateful my voice betrayed none of the turmoil roiling beneath my skin. “May the best marksman prevail.”
“Thou art certain to place well,” the boy said earnestly. “Though none expect any to best Lord Coventry. Father says he hath not missed a shot in three tournaments.”
My fingers tightened around my bow. “Records exist to be broken.”
The tournament grounds sprawled before us, a vast expanse of manicured grass enclosed by fluttering banners bearing the crests of Durand’s noble houses. Stands had been erected for the highborn spectators, while commoners pressed against the wooden barriers that separated them from their betters. Thesmell of fresh hay mingled with sweat, leather, and the sweet scent of mulled wine being passed among the audience.
At the far end of the field, servants in royal livery positioned the targets. Circles of tightly bound straw faced with painted canvas. For the first round, they’d be placed at a respectable distance, but as competitors were eliminated, the targets would be moved progressively farther away until only the most skilled remained.
Father sat on a raised dais beneath a canopy of royal blue, Mother beside him, both resplendent in formal attire that shimmered in the morning sunlight. Theron lounged in the chair to Father’s right, a goblet already dangling from both men’s fingers despite the early hour. The bruise along Theron’s jaw from my fist had been unsuccessfully disguised with powder, a detail that brought me a flicker of satisfaction despite everything else.
“Archers, make ready!” the master of ceremonies called, his voice carrying across the field.
I took my position on the line, conscious of Gaspard several places to my right. I hadn’t spoken to him directly yet. Hadn’t trusted myself not to drive an arrow through his throat the moment pleasantries were exchanged. Better to maintain distance until I could control the rage that threatened to consume me every time I pictured his hands on Isabeau.
“Prince Alain seems distracted today,” someone murmured behind me, not quite quietly enough. “Mayhaps he spent too much time with his forest maiden last night.”
A ripple of laughter followed, quickly stifled when I glanced back with an expression that had made seasoned warriors step down. The rumors had spread quickly after Isabeau’s arrival, despite my attempts at discretion. Court gossip traveled faster than wildfire and burned twice as hot.
I turned back to the field, forcing myself to focus on the target. Distance, wind direction, the weight of the bow in my hands. All familiar elements I’d mastered since childhood. Yet concentration eluded me, my mind returning again and again to the tower room where Isabeau remained under doubled guard after her attempted escape.
I owed her an apology. More than that, I owed her freedom.
The thought struck like a knife through my heart, nearly causing me to drop the arrow I’d been nocking. Freedom. The very thing I’d denied her while claiming to protect her. What kind of savior locks his rescued maiden in a tower? What kind of man becomes the very monster he claims to despise?
“First flight, prepare to loose!” the master called.
