Page 52 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

And I look at her.

Seravyn’s face has gone rigid. Her dark eyes find mine, and in them I see a flash of something—horror, fury, a plea not to let him do this to me.

But I see something else, too. I see what he’s doing. He’s not just humiliating me. He’s punishing her by doing so. He’s forcing her to watch the man who made her smile reduced to a begging dog, putting me in my place, reminding her of exactly how far beneath her I am. He wants her to see me debased. He wants to kill whatever it is he suspects lives between us by grinding it into the floor.

So I kneel, crawl to the high table on my hands andknees, bells noisy, and I look up at Seravyn with my whole heart in my eyes. I let the court laugh themselves sick. Because I would crawl across every hall in every kingdom, a bed of fucking thorns, just for her. Because my pride is a small price, and I’d pay it a thousand times over to spare her even one moment of his vile attention turned on her.

“Please, Your Majesty,” I say, and I make my voice light, a jester’s whine, keeping it funny so the court keeps laughing. “A scrap for a starving fool?”

Her hands are trembling as she takes a small piece of bread from her plate. I watch her fingers shake as she leans down to offer it to me, and for one breath we are close enough that I can smell the garden on her skin beneath the perfume she’s been drowned in.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathes, quiet enough only I can hear. “I’m sorry, Ren.”

“I’m not,” I murmur back, taking the bread from her fingers, letting my eyes hold hers. “I will always serve what’s mine. Even grovel for it, my queen.”

Her breath catches.

“Mine,” I say again, softer than a prayer.

Then Aldric’s hand comes down on her shoulder, long fingers curling around her neck, and the moment shatters. He guides her mouth to his, forcing me to watch the kiss, and the roar of my blood drowns out the cheering court.

I get to my feet, spitting the bread from between my teeth, a hot blade of rage carving through my insides.

As the night wears on, dread coilstighter in my gut with every passing minute, knowing what comes at the end of this feast.

I know that when the candles burn low and the wine runs out, the king will rise, and he will take his new queen by the hand and lead her from this hall to the bedchamber—to consummate his marriage.

And I know, down in the roiling pit of my stomach, what he will do to Sera in that room.In that bed.

I drive a hand through my hair, drag it down my face. I’m a man driven mad by the ticking down of the clock, unable to bear the vile images torturing my mind.

The tawdry images of Aldric in the war room surface, unbidden. The visual of him degrading that woman on her knees. Knowing he’ll do the same filthy, vile things to Sera soon.

I try to scrape it from my mind, but it taunts me, the unsolicited heat it sparks low, stirring an unwanted ache in my groin—and no matter how disgusted I am with myself for it, I can’t temper the shameful arousal it evokes. This dark and depraved fire kindled, unable to snuff it out.

These agonizing thoughts are a living thing clawing at the inside of my chest. I stand at the edge of the hall and watch the candles gutter lower and lower, and I feel the night running down like sand through my fingers.

Gods, how do I stop this.

Seven fucking hells, I gave her my word, I swore to her and yet?—

I watch Aldric’s hand creep up her thigh beneath thetable. I watch him lean in and whisper into her ear. I watch him press a lingering kiss to her temple, his fingers digging into her leg, possessive, claiming, a man savoring what he’s about to take.

And the vow I swore in the library claws its way back up my throat, tasting of ash.If Aldric forces himself on you, there is no power in any realm that will stop me.

By force or by the law that calls it his right—what’s the difference? She’ll endure it the way she endures everything he does, silent and still, and I’ll be in my quarters two corridors away losing my mind, knowing?—

The candles on the table gutter out, my tolerance with them.

Gods help me, I can’t be here.

The feast has descended into drunken chaos. Lords slumped over tables, women dancing barefoot in the spilled wine, the minstrels playing for a court too far gone to listen. No one is watching the shadows at the edge of the hall.

And then—there, through the press of bodies—I see her rise.

Seravyn excuses herself from the high table. Some murmured word to Aldric, a gesture toward the corridor, winning a moment of freedom. He waves her off, too deep in his cup to follow. She slips down from the dais and moves along the edge of the hall, her crimson gown bleeding into the shadows.

I don’t make the decision to follow her. There is only my body moving, the way it moved toward theriver, the way it moved toward her from the first instant she smiled at me in the throne room.