“Well now.” Ballanor nodded slowly, looking Val up and down. “It seems to me that he was merely guarding our esteemed new princess. As instructed.”
A titter went up among the men in the corridor as they enjoyed Grendel’s discomfort. His eyes narrowed into black slits of malice, and Val knew, with cold certainty, that he had made a lifelong enemy of the prince’s favorite.
“Come, my friend.” Ballanor laughed as he clapped Grendel on the back. “We discussed this. You can’t touch this one. Not yet, anyway. But I tell you what, I’ll save a piece just for you. You know that you’re my right-hand man,” he smirked, “in everything.”
A raucous laugh went up at that pronouncement, and even Grendel snorted, slightly mollified.
Surely the prince couldn’t have meant what that sounded like? Val gripped his hands tighter behind his back, keeping his face blank.
“Come, let’s find something else to amuse ourselves with,” Grendel declared, secure in his power once more.
“Or someone!” a voice added at the back as the men shuffled back down the corridor, and Val let out a slow breath of relief that they were gone.
“See that we are not disturbed,” Ballanor commanded with a smug look as he let himself into the princess’s room and slammed the door behind him.
Val turned his back and guarded the door, preparing himself for a long night of turning away Ballanor’s drunken friends. But they didn’t come back. And no amount of guard experience could have ever prepared him for the rest of that night.
It started with the prince’s voice, loud and irate. Growing louder, increasingly outraged. The words were mostly indistinct through the thick oak, but he could make some out. Whore. Bitch. Northern cow.
He swallowed hard and tried not to listen.
Something crashed with an ominous tinkle of breaking glass. Then there was a muffled thump, almost like a body hitting a wall and a stifled feminine whimper.
Gods. Val wanted to be sick.
He had been brought up to treat women with respect. To believe that anyone weaker than him should be protected. And he had no idea what to do. Should he intervene? On his prince’s wedding night? How could he stand guard over whatever atrocity was happening in that awful room?
He was a captain of the Blues; did that even mean anything? Acid churned in his gut, burning its way up his throat as he swallowed down his need to vomit.
If he left his post to get some help, would Grendel come back with his friends? The comments he’d made suddenly took on an even ghastlier meaning than he had imagined. Could he take that risk?
And who could he possibly report this to? The king? Was there any chance that the king would take the side of a soldier over his son’s? Could he take the chance when he would most likely be turned away anyway and Grendel might be back at any moment and make the situation infinitely worse?
No, he didn’t dare leave. There was nothing he could do except endure those horrible, muffled noises. If she screamed. If she called for help, even once, he would defy his prince and intervene. No matter the consequences.
And then it was over. Nothing but silence behind the door. How long had it been? A few minutes since Ballanor had arrived. They were the longest minutes of his life.
He gripped his sword until the pommel bit into his flesh painfully, counting seconds.
The door opened, and Ballanor stumbled out, disheveled and sweating. He gestured back into the room. “Clean that up. Let her maid in if you must.”
The prince slicked his hair back off his forehead and wiped his hands clean on his tunic, leaving a dark streak of blood on the rich fabric, before walking back down the corridor to look for his friends.
As soon as he was gone, Val flung open the door. And nearly went to his knees.
A vase was smashed, shards glittering dangerously on the carpet. A painting had fallen off the wall, its frame smashed. And in the corner of the room, curled into a tiny, bleeding ball, almost naked except for a few flimsy strips of what remained of her wedding gown, was the princess.
He closed the door, wishing he could lock it, but the locks were all on the outside.
He stepped closer as she shivered, eyes wide and shocked, flinching bodily with each step he took into the room. Never in his life had he felt so helpless or so horrified.
He lowered himself to kneel in front of her and kept his voice low. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She stared at him in silence, as if she didn’t understand.
He put out his hand toward her, slowly, hoping to show her he was unarmed, but she whimpered and shrank back from him and he paused, hand still hovering in the air between them. He’d seen his share of horrors on campaign, but nothing that tore at his heart quite like this.
Her face was already swelling, blue-black fingerprints mottling her pale shoulders, blood dripping from an array of shallow cuts over her legs and from her nose, and she was shivering relentlessly.
