God help him, he didn’t know what to make of this situation.
Dipping a cloth in a pot of water, she cleaned away the blood from her leg, then grimaced and put one of her knives into the fire.
“Ahnna…”
She ignored him, eyes on the heating blade. When it started to glow, she donned a leather glove and extracted it. Without so much as taking a steadying breath, she pressed the glowing metal to the bleeding wound.
The sharp sizzle filled his ears, along with the distinct smell of burning flesh.
She screamed, her voice wild and furious and full of pain, and leapt to her feet. “Goddamn it!” she shrieked, and kicked the chair across the room before doubling over. “That hurts!”
James kept his mouth shut, as commenting didn’t seem prudent. Instead, he watched the fire while Ahnna wrapped a length of bandage around her thigh in his periphery. She righted the chair and sat again, elbows resting on her bare knees. Her hair clung to the sweat beading on the sides of her face, the cabin now hot enough that the icy lake seemed a distant memory. Her eyes focused on him. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because I saw you, Ahnna. I saw it all!”
“Except you didn’t, did you?” Her hands fisted. “You came upon the aftermath, and you saw exactly what Alexandra wanted you to see. She inflicted those injuries on herself in order to—”
“No one could do that to themselves,” he interrupted, straining as he tested the bindings on his wrist. “Alexandra has never lifted a weapon in her life. Never known violence. Never known pain. To believe she could do such a thing is irrational, but it is equally irrational to believe that she had the strength to overwhelm my father and killhim. Equally irrational to believe that the riding-boot prints left with his blood came from her tinyfuckingfeet!”
“Why are you defending her?” Ahnna shouted. “She has been awful to you your entire life, and you’ve seen firsthand how she schemes!”
“I’m not defending her!” James forced himself upright, ignoring the wave of dizziness. “I’m pointing to the factual evidence of your guilt and trying to understand why, even though everything points to you having done this, I still want to believe you are innocent. I hate that you have gotten so under my skin that I’ll absolve you of murdering my own father because you tell me to!”
Ahnna went still.
“I can’t be around you,” he snarled, the room spinning, his thoughts in a spiral. “Because from the moment you knocked me off that ship, you consumed me. Made me turn on everything that mattered just to have you, and I cannot let that happen again. I cannot put you before my family, and I will make things right by bringing them your head!”
Ahnna snatched up her knife and in a flash knocked him flat on his back. She pressed the still-hot blade to his throat. “Killing me isn’t justice, James. It’s just you erasing the evidence of your weakness.” A trickle of blood ran down the side of his neck, but he barely noticed the pain as his body reacted to the press of her nearly naked skin. “Alexandra is allied with Katarina. This is all a scheme to take the bridge, and if you stop me from warning Aren, my people will pay the price.”
James stared at her, his shock at the audacity of her claim doing nothing to temper his traitorous cock’s reaction to her naked legs. “An alliance between Katarina and Alexandra? Given the history between Amarid and Harendell? I don’t know whether you’re lying or you’ve lost yourself to delusion.”
Her eyes filled with anger but as her lips parted to respond, a cold draft of air struck James’s naked side, and a familiar voice filled the cabin. “Well, well, James. When they told me you were hunting Ahnna Kertell, this was not the position I expected to find you in.”
James’s head snapped sideways, horror sucking all the heat from his core.
Because standing in the doorway was Prince Carlo.
The Beast of Amarid smiled. “Such a shame you didn’t listen to the princess, my friend, because every word she said was true.”
21
Ahnna
Instinct took over and Ahnnaflung herself off James, uncertain whether the arrival of the Amaridians was her salvation or her damnation.
Only to freeze as a sword blade rested against her throat.
“Now, now, Princess,” the Amaridian man said. “Drop the knife. Mother said you are to be kept alive, which will be far easier if we are friends, no?”
Realization burned like acid through her veins, and Ahnna rolled her eyes up to look at the man who could only be Prince Carlo of Amarid. He gave her a toothy smile, but his gray eyes held no amusement. Held nothing at all beyond predatory interest. All the horror stories she’d heard about the Beast filled her head, and fear turned her heart staccato in her chest.
Carlo’s gaze flicked to James. “This is a pleasant surprise, James. It is said that Harendellians are terrible lovers—staid, boring, and uptight—but it seems your Cardiffian blood gave you more than amber eyes.” He huffed out an amused breath. “James Ashford likes rough sex.” His gaze drifted down to James’s crotch, and Ahnna blinked as she saw the hard ridge of his cock through his undergarments. “Likes it a lot, I see.”
Rather than correcting the misinterpretation of the situation,James said, “Envious, Carlo?” His tone was mocking and Ahnna silently cursed him, because this was not the time for male posturing. “You’re not the man you used to be.”
A low growl exited the prince’s lips, and he lifted his sword from Ahnna’s neck.
She rolled, coming up with her knife, which she threw at the soldier just beyond the threshold. It sank into his throat and he staggered back, clawing at it. Ahnna pursued, yanking out her blade and readying to fight the next opponent.
