Page 118 of Heartbreak Prince

My fingers grip something solid. I pull the knife out of its sheath and ram it into his arm.

With a yell of pain, he releases my throat. I drag in a painful breath and kick him as hard as I can.

“Bitch!” he yells. “Heartless, wicked bitch. You’re one of those southern assholes from Belavrin, flaunting your wealth and your land, dangling everything you have in our faces. Foul, greedy wretches.”

I try to respond, but my throat hurts too badly for anything but the most essential words. “Where’s my carpet?”

“I didn’t do anything to your fucking carpet.” He advances, and I slash wildly through the air to fend him off. I’m dizzy, and my throat is bruised, but I won’t let him get near me again.

“We had just been married,” says the man, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Her father arranged it. After waiting for so long to get a woman, I finally made a good match. She would have borne me sturdy children.”

“You wanted children? In this place?” I rasp a laugh. “Is that wise?”

“It’s a man’s right to have children.” He takes another step.

I brandish my blade, hissing, “Stay back.”

“You took that future from me,” he snarls. “I worked for years to get matched, and now she’s dead.”

“Not my problem. My carpet and I saved the people we could easily reach, and then we had to get them to shelter before everyone fucking froze to death.”

“I could hear her crying in the rubble. I begged you and the others to help.” He drags off his glove with his teeth and sinks one of his fingernails into the stab wound on his forearm. “You owe me a wife.”

A cool sensation washes over me, turning my limbs soft and pliant. My arm falls to my side, and the knife slips from my hand.

He activated a glyph. I didn’t see any markings on his fingernails, so I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t expect a man from a poor village in Tularesk to have any way of using magic—much less a glyph crafted with invisible paint.

That mistake is going to fucking cost me.

“Compliance glyph,” rasps the man. “A wedding gift from my father, since my wife wasn’t enthusiastic about the match. He told me it might come in handy.”

A rape glyph, you mean. I try to say it, but with the weight of the glyph conforming me to my attacker’s will, I can’t form the words.

His wife, whoever she was, might have preferred death to being trapped in a marriage with this bastard. I wish I’d saved her and left him to die.

“The glyph won’t last long, so I’m going to make the most of it.” The man starts unfastening his pants. “Bend over that table.”

Every part of my will and my consciousness condense within me, attempting to resist the compelling force of the magic. I take one step toward the table, but I don’t bend. I may not be able to fight back, but I refuse to yield easily.

“Bend over.” The man’s voice is strained, shaking. Like he’s working himself up to this. Like his fury and bitterness are warring with whatever shreds of sanity he has left. “This is your punishment. And afterward, you’ll stay with me. You can be her.” His large hand slams against my back, forcing my front down against the dusty surface of the table.

Once I’m bowed there, he grabs my pants and drags them down to my knees. Cold air washes over my skin. I’m fighting inside, struggling against the compliance magic flowing over my body, screaming silently for Vawn, for Severin, for anyone.

The man’s fingers find the edge of my undershorts, and he starts to pull them—

Something splatters across my bare thighs, and for a second I think he came before he even got inside me. But a sodden thump follows the splatter. Out of the corner of my eye, I see his body tilt aside and fall heavily to the ground.

There’s something different about his shape. My dizzy brain takes a second to identify it.

He doesn’t have a head.

Warm fingers grasp my pants and pull them back into place. Then Vawn steps around the table, into my view. He’s holding a short sword, a sharp one, judging by the ease with which he decapitated my attacker. I’m guessing he used the strength glyph on the central finger of his right hand.

“Your Highness,” I murmur.

“Forsythia.” He sounds angry, panicked, devastated, and relieved all at once.

“Compliance glyph.” I push myself slowly upright as the effect dissipates. With no will to guide it, the glyph’s magic is no longer effective.