“You’re pathetic.” I throw my saber to the ground and lunge at him with my full body weight. My fist screams in pain as I land a blow to his sternum, but I draw my arm back and hit him again. “You have two wives and neither one wants you.”
He rips off his own mask and hurls himself forward, forcing me backward onto the mat.
Bram lands one good punch across my face, but he’s a poor student—and I’ve been the better fighter since I caught up to him in height, years ago.
I use my legs to hook his ankles, throwing him off-balance, then drive my entire body weight upward to get him off me. I have him pinned in seconds, his wrists under my knees.
“Do you understand what this kingdom has turned into while you were off in England, treating everything like a toy you can break? Lydia and I have held the Otherworld together with our bare hands and you don’t even care.”
Bram’s eyes flash and in an instant, I’m tossed back against the mat. My lungs ache as the air is knocked out of them and I struggle to catch my breath. A few ribs are probably cracked, but I don’t care.
Bram stands above me, grinning, and I recognize this look on his face. It’s the same one he had that day when I was fourteen and he fought my bullies for me. I realize now, it’s the violence he loves.
“You used magic, that’s not fair,” I groan. “Fight me like a man.”
Bram kicks me with the toe of his boot. “Maybe I should force you to your knees, make you beg.”
Of my own free will, I rise to my knees and tilt my throbbing face up toward him. “I will do anything for her. Let them both go and I’ll stay here as your regent, forever. I’ll let you beat me to a bloody pulp every day. Would that make you feel big?”
Bram curls his lip in disgust as he looks down at me. “You’re not fun to play with anymore.”
He waves his hands at the guards flanking the doors and they step toward me. “I’m finished,” Bram snarls as he walks away. With his back toward me, he snaps his fingers, and I am knocked unconscious.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Iron bars have been bolted in front of the pale purple door to my room. They’re rough-hewn and ugly, particularly monstrous against the feminine backdrop of my chambers. The wall has cracked in the places they were attached, like it was all done hastily, but they’re solid, and I suppose that’s what counts.
I hurl my body against the door a few times in an attempt to dislodge them, but they stay as immovable as granite, leaving me with nothing but bruised confidence and an equally bruised shoulder.
The diamond-paned window won’t break, no matter how many objects I smash against it. Eventually, I’m not even throwing them as a means of escape, but because I can’t quiet this raging storm inside of me and it feels better to scream my voice hoarse and destroy these beautiful objects than to lie down in bed and wait for my own death.
My floral teapot shatters against the window. I use every bit of my strength on my tiaras, which ricochet and leave dislodged gems scattered across the carpet like raindrops. I break the glass shelves they once laid upon with a single mighty swing of a rack from my wardrobe, wielded like a sword.
I look down at my broken left hand, disgusted at the sight of my wedding rings. My fingers are bruised and swollen, but I pull and pull, ignoring the screaming pain until they’re finally off. In one fluid motion, I toss them into the fire.
I stare at the pearl ring on my index finger a beat longer, breathing heavily. How strange it is to look back at my six-year-old self with so much ire. How could someone so small have wrought this much horror? How could I have steered my entire life on a collision course with disaster and not even known it?
A shower of sparks goes up as I toss it into the fire as well, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
I rage until I’m damp with sweat and my voice is entirely gone, and then I lie amid the broken glass and stare up at the ceiling so long I start to see fuzzy shapes in the darkness.
The guards knocked me unconscious before they locked me in here, so I do not know what has happened to Emmett, my sister, or any of the others.
I have to grapple with the possibility that they are all dead. Well, except for Lydia. Bram will not have us deny him his final show.
For two days, I live in the wreckage I have made. I’m forced to wear shoes at all times because of the broken glass on the carpet.
I try to reach within me, to find that magical latch that unlocks the door back to England, but I can’t do it. It’s like it’s been scooped out of me.
I wonder if Bram has some magic preventing me from reaching it, or if I’m just a failure.
I have the sad realization that if I was able to open the door from the dungeons, Mor could have as well. The bars were merely for show. She chose to stay in that dungeon for her son.
On the third day, Eloree arrives as the first pale pink of dawn peeks over the distant hills. Behind her are two other lady’s maids, who carry a large leather trunk between them.
A guard pulls out a key, but before he unlocks the bars, he looks at me and says, “If you try to run, we’ll kill her.” And gestures to Eloree.
“I won’t run.” My voice is a mere whisper, still ruined from all my screaming.
