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I try to cry as my torn back brushes his arms, but no sound comes out. The pain is so sharp, the world turns white for a split second before I’m swallowed by darkness.
CHAPTER 31
• King Kylian •
THE MOMENT HER body goes limp over my shoulder, guilt rips me apart.
The murmurs of the crew dissolve into meaningless noise, and all I feel is the unnatural stillness of her weight against me. Now she’s silent, and I realize too late that silence from her is far worse than any scream.
I move without thought as the men—who only moments ago were shouting suggestions of what to do with her—scatter. They remember their place now that the show has ended, and it takes everything inside me not to slaughter them all.
I want to tear their throats open for looking at her like she was meat. For laughing as if they had any right to breathe the same air as her, and for forgetting that the only reason they are alive at all is because I allow it.
I still feel the weight of the whip in my hand, the crack echoing in my skull on repeat. Worse than that, I can still feel her back giving under it. Her body breaks in my mind repeatedly. The memory twists something vicious in my chest. They think she is just my toy. They do not understand that if she dies, I’ll lose all humanity, and in this world, that is all we have left.
Reaching my room, I slam the door so hard the walls shudder. The second I lower her onto the bed, I freeze, watching the bright red blood blossom across the clean sheets beneath her.
For a heartbeat, I don’t move. I have seen blood spilled across oceans. I’ve bathed in it. I’ve ruled through it. This is different. This blood is hers, and I allowed it to spill.
The bond inside me twists hard; it is screaming, clawing, demanding that I fix what I have done. The longer she lies there unmoving, the more my madness rises.
“Eagan,” I snarl, voice shaking with fury, but not at him. I’m angry with myself, at the decision I made the second I allowed the whip to touch her again. I let her pride bait my temper because she wanted me to hurt too, and I was stupid enough to give her exactly what she wanted. She knew what she was doing.
Eagan swiftly enters and stops when he sees the blood.
“My king,” he breathes, watching the way my hands hover like I am terrified of touching her again.
Eagan crosses the room fast. I barely register him as I grip her jaw carefully with shaking hands and tilt her face toward me, feeling the warmth of her skin. The pulse in her throat is still beating and very much alive. It should soothe me, but it doesn’t. It only makes my guilt worse because being alive does not mean she is okay.
I bite into my wrist before I can think better of it, fangs piercing deep enough to make my own blood spill fast and thick, then I press it to her mouth.
“Drink it,” I growl, and I feel ridiculous for commanding an unconscious girl like she can obey me. But then her throat moves, barely at first, then again. Her body accepts what I offer, and a shudder tears through me so hard I nearly stagger. Even unconscious, even in pain, her body recognizes the compulsion.
Her swallow is weak, an automatic response, yet it feels like being struck by lightning. Eagan lets out a slow breath beside me as he shifts her body to view her back. “She’s healing,” he murmurs.
Her dress still clings to her front, torn and ruined. Even with my blood, her skin will remain bruised for days.
“She shouldn’t have needed to heal,” I snap.
Eagan’s gaze flicks to mine, and he looks older than he should, like he carries the weight of my sins. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and that alone makes my stomach twist. Eagan does not apologize unless he means it. “I panicked. I knew what the men expected, and if I had not intervened with a punishment, they would have rioted, and you would have killed them all. Then when Zander’s men never returned . . .”
“You did the right thing,” I say, and that makes what I did even worse. The only true mistake made tonight was mine.
Eagan glances toward her again. “It wasn’t your . . .”
“It was me,” I cut in because I will not let him carry that guilt too, not when I am drowning in it already. “I ended it, and then she looked at me like she wanted to hurt me back. She knew exactly how to do it. She is not stupid. She knew better than to challenge me in front of everyone.” I swallow, staring at her face. “And I took the bait.”
“She will forgive you,” he says after a moment.
“Run the bath,” I order. “Find her fresh clothing, and get the chef to cook something that will be easy on her stomach when she wakes.”
Eagan nods. “Yes, my king.”
When he leaves, I brush strands of hair from her face, and the bond inside me presses hard as if it wants me to crawl inside her skin. As if it wants to fuse us together so it can take her pain.
I lift her, cradling her against my chest, and the smell hits me again. Her blood smears across my arms, her scent beneath it, sweet, sharp, and intoxicating. My hunger stirs in response.
“Bath’s ready, my king,” Eagan’s voice carries faintly from the bathroom. I step into the steam-filled room with her clutched to my chest, then I lower myself onto the edge of the tub, keeping her supported as I reach for the torn fabric clinging to her body. The moment I slide it down, the marks become more visible, faint red lines where the whip opened her back. Her wounds are already knitting closed from my blood, but healing her does not erase what I did. No magic in the world can make the memory disappear.
