Page 4 of Dynasty of the Wicked (The Wicked Princess #1)

4

Zhi Ruo sat in a balled-up position for the next half hour. She had found a small bowl of water in the cell and had drunk the whole thing; Feng Mian hadn’t said a word the entire time, and neither did the old man, who’d kept his distance since Feng Mian sat by their shared bars. Now that the tension of everything had diffused, she couldn’t stop feeling everything all at once: disappointment and betrayal that the guards in the royal palace had jumped to save Ying Yue rather than her, misery over her pitiful position here in this prison, fear at what was to come, and abandonment from her own people.

She knew, for a fact, that Father would rescue her, but not because he loved her. Rather, he would want to preserve the dignity of the royal family by saving her and ensuring she wasn’t sullied. She was still a princess of the empire, a symbol, that could easily be exploited in the hands of the enemy. Father would want to protect the image of the royal family and the empire.

How long must she remain in this prison before he sent his forces to save her? Did he even know where she was located? She had no idea how long she’d been out for. It could have been a few days, or weeks. She had no way of knowing, since she had been drugged for the majority of it.

She hugged her torn, dirtied dress closer to her body, hating the way the chill was sending goosebumps up her filthy skin. She hated the grimy feeling of dirt clinging under her nails, of sweat and vomit drenching her dress, and the grittiness of filth against her skin. She wanted to go home. She wanted to slip under her warm covers and sleep this nightmare away. She wanted to wake up and realize it had all been in her head.

Her stomach growled loudly and she tucked her chin over her knees. The back of her eyes stung with tears and if she was alone, she would curl into a tighter ball and sob herself to sleep. But it was hard to ignore Feng Mian’s presence.

“Here.”

Zhi Ruo jerked her head up to find Feng Mian holding out a few strips of the dried meat he had swiped from the Kadian soldier. When she didn’t immediately move toward him to grab it, he waved it once more.

“I’m getting tired of listening to your stomach cave in on itself.” He motioned toward the dead soldier just outside the entrance of their cell. “They’ll find his body soon and then they’ll strip this cell down top to bottom, so this is your only chance.”

She wanted to refuse and snap at him to mind his own business, or to tell him that she didn’t want help from a cursed magicked person, but her stomach rumbled again and she gladly crawled over and snatched it from his hand before plopping down in the corner again. Without wasting another breath, she bit into the tough meat and chewed with great difficulty. It was salty, had a strong earthy and beefy taste, and was surprisingly tasty. She ravenously chewed on the rest of the strips.

Feng Mian’s mouth twitched into a smirk and she scowled at him, though he wouldn’t be able to tell.

Her eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness and she could now make out the dried blood and urine staining the floors, the dead mice in the other corners of the cell and outside in the hallway, and the cobwebs stuck to the ceiling like a gauzy canopy.

“If you have such powerful magic, why can’t you get out of here?” she asked between bites of the meat. “Can’t you just … blast the doors away?”

His smile faded, replaced with a grimace. “I can’t. They sealed my magic away.”

“How is that even possible?” The mages in the royal palace were still studying magic and the intricacies of it, most of it still a mystery, but hearing that it was possible to seal magic sent a shiver down her spine. What if the Kadians found a way to completely seal all of their magic?

Feng Mian held his hands up, showing her the two bands of metal bound snugly over his wrists. “They created this tool that keeps me from using my magic. I don’t really know how it works, but it does. It’s been over a month since I’ve been captured and I still haven’t been able to use it. I can feel it inside me, but that’s about it.”

“Have you tried breaking it? Or can it only be broken by magic?”

“Trust me, I’ve tried everything I can.”

They were quiet for a moment longer. Zhi Ruo finished the beef and hugged her knees to her chest even tighter than before. She was still hungry and the salted beef made her thirst worse, but it was better than nothing. It was only now that she didn’t have any more food that her eyes begun to sting again. She blinked the tears away, but they returned, the pressure intensifying.

Don’t cry.

A strangled sob escaped from her lips and she tried clamping them together to keep from sobbing, but it was too late. Her face crumpled up and she wept. She pressed her eyes against her knees and drew herself into a tighter ball.

The Kadians had her imprisoned.

Nobody had protected her at the palace.

Did anyone even care that she was stuck here? Or were they still fawning over Ying Yue, who most likely was safe and tucked away in bed at the royal palace?

What unimaginable horror awaited Zhi Ruo here?

“Do you wish to escape?” Feng Mian’s voice softened, but when she raised her eyes to meet his, there was a grim determination set on his handsome face. His lips were pursed together in a strange expression she couldn’t pinpoint—teetering between disappointment, resignation, and displeasure.

Zhi Ruo wiped her face with the back of her hands. “Of course.”

“There is a way for us to escape fairly quickly.”

Hope kindled in her chest and she inched closer to him, eyes wide. “Really? What is it?”

The old man scurried closer to them, though not close enough for Feng Mian to reach through the bars and bash his body against the metal rods. He wrung his hands together, the darkness obscuring half his face. “Escape? What are you planning?”

“Nothing, old man,” Feng Mian said. “Mind your business or I’ll gut you.”

“Let me help?—”

“No.” This time, he turned sharply to the left, as if he could see into the cell. His tone dropped. “I’ve already promised to kill you when I can. Don’t hasten your death.” He slowly shifted his body in Zhi Ruo’s direction and spoke more softly, as if sensing her fear. “Let me sit next to you, so I can tell you my plan in secret.”

Zhi Ruo blinked at the sudden gentle quality to his voice. It almost made her believe that he too could be kind, that he could be anything other than devastation. She bobbed her head, but then realized he couldn’t see it, and said, “Y-yes—” She cleared her throat, hating how weak she sounded. “Yes, I’ll allow it.”

Feng Mian rose to his impressive height and it took all her control to keep fidgeting and blushing when he came to sit beside her on the filthy floor. Their knees touched, and Zhi Ruo could feel the heat crawling up her flesh. She had been around beautiful people before, but no one as wickedly handsome as him. Just being so close made her heart flutter. She was sure that if there wasn’t a corpse a few feet away, the old man glaring at them from the cell over, and the smell of decay and piss everywhere, she would have been caught up in his beauty and whatever deception laid behind this kind veneer.

He leaned closer to her, his mouth grazing the shell of her ear as he spoke. “There is a way for you to wield magic, Princess.”

Zhi Ruo hesitated at hearing those words. Women were forbidden from wielding magic. It was a known fact around the empire that women were incapable of handling it since their nature was more emotional, thus the power too great for them. Men were more capable of it and the heavy responsibility that came with it.

Even at the royal palace, only her brother attended magic lessons from Father’s appointed mages and even though Ying Yue had mentioned her interest in magic, Father hadn’t allowed her to. If he didn’t want to bend the rules for his favorite child, why would he allow Zhi Ruo to do that which he forbade?

“I … I am unsure,” she finally said, her stomach tightening in apprehension. She twiddled her thumbs together and focused on a dark blood splatter on her sleeve.

“You could become very powerful,” he continued, and she shivered despite his warm breath against her bare neck. “The royal family is blessed with powerful magic. You just need to learn how to wield it. I can help you.”

“It is forbidden …”

“By whom?”

She finally glanced at him and nearly bumped her nose against his. She sucked in sharply. She hadn’t realized he was this close. His long, silvery lashes framed equally gray eyes, and she found it hard to look away. His lips were so close. She wondered, briefly, what it would be like to lean into him, to press her own mouth against his. To kiss someone so handsome. Ying Yue would have been jealous.

Zhi Ruo snapped out of her reverie and quickly averted her gaze. She hated the direction of her thoughts. “By my father,” she breathed out in response. She wove her hands together to keep them from traveling to the gap between them both. “By everyone in this empire.”

“You could become more powerful than any of them. Then, at that point, it wouldn’t even matter.”

She thought about it for a moment, what it would be like to be powerful . For people to cower in her presence. For no one to say any wicked words about her. For people to respect her.

But she couldn’t imagine it. She could only see hateful gazes and sneers.

“I am not meant for such glory,” she whispered and then clamped her mouth shut. She had said that out loud, she realized with mounting embarrassment. Her cheeks flamed with color and she explained, “I am, as you said, the wicked princess.”

He was quiet for a moment and she couldn’t bear to look at his face, for fear of what she would find—disappointment, probably.

“But you wish to escape, do you not? Surely, you can compromise your … morals .” He tilted his head to the side, and the shadows of the room cast a darkness over his face so she could only make out his frown. “Women can be powerful too, Princess. I like women with teeth.”

She froze, unsure of what he meant. When he didn’t elaborate, she asked, “Teeth?”

“Yes. Teeth .” Feng Mian raised his hand and grazed his fingers over her jaw. A trial of fire erupted over her bruised skin, and despite the chill in the damp cell, her body grew hot. Her heart raced as he leaned closer to her. “I like my women with teeth and claws and sharp words. I like my women wicked.”

Zhi Ruo swallowed down the unexpected feeling building in her chest. “What are you talking about?”

“I am saying that you could become very, very powerful.” He brushed a remnant of a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “If you marry me, right here, right now, we can form a magicked bond that will allow you to wield my magic. I can help you harness it and then we can escape.”

Whatever trance he had on her broke in that moment. Zhi Ruo twitched back, breaking free from his touch. Marriage? With him? This had to be a joke. A cruel, cruel joke.

His magic was corrosive, evil, and dark. If she bound herself to him and used his magic, then she would eventually succumb to its cursed energy. Even she knew that much about magic, despite being shielded from it her whole life.

All of this was a lie. His soft voice, his gentle caresses, even his honeyed words about the type of women he liked. It was all to get her guard down, for her to trust him, and then foolishly tie herself to his explosive, life-sucking magic.

“Are you serious?” Zhi Ruo jumped to her feet, her hands bunching up together.

Feng Mian’s jaw tightened. “It isn’t that bad.”

“You …” She wanted to hit him.

He didn’t care if she died in the process of wielding his magic, so long as he was able to escape. She wanted to laugh at her stupidity; at how she almost fell for it. How starved of love was she that sweetened words could trick her so easily?

She hated that, for a moment, she had felt special.

“I will never bind myself to you like that,” she snapped, putting distance between them until her back hit the bars of the cell. Her heel connected with the corpse and she grimaced as the man’s blood seeped into the hem of her dress. It only solidified her opinion that this was wrong. That Feng Mian’s brutal beauty was just an illusion. A deceit that would ruin her. “I would rather be patient and wait for my father’s men to rescue me than to marry such a violent, horrendous, nasty beast such as you.”

He clambered up to his feet too, his expression dark as he crossed the distance to her. “Your father’s men? Are you daft, Princess? No one will come to rescue you here.”

“That is not true. My father will not abandon me.”

Feng Mian tipped his head back and laughed. She flinched at the sound, hating how beautifully haunting it was. He turned back in her direction, his unseeing gaze flicking over her. “Your father has already abandoned you, Princess. No one will come to rescue you. Either you save yourself, or you die here. A pathetic, slow death that will be no one’s fault but your own and it will be then that you remember that you are unloved and unworthy of your father’s court.”

She slapped him, and this time, he let her. Her hand stung and she breathed out heavily, tension pulling her muscles taut. “You are a cruel beast,” she whispered, hating the tears that stung her eyes.

“And you are a petulant princess who puts her trust in those who have already proven to be disloyal to you. Have you not been disappointed enough times?”

“My father would never do that.” Father might have disliked her, but he wouldn’t do such a ruthless thing to her. He would never leave her fate to the Kadians; she was still his flesh and blood. “My father,” she spoke, her words gaining heat and strength, “my people, my empire will not abandon me. I may be a wicked princess, but I am still a princess of the Huo empire. I am more than worthy?—”

He chuckled, running his fingers through his long, silver-threaded hair. His teeth gleamed like that of a monster who had eaten the flesh of its enemy and licked itself clean in victory. His powerful, muscled frame trembled with his laughs and she straightened her shoulders at how vicious he appeared.

She hated him, she decided.

She would wait for Father’s men. There was no way she would be abandoned here, where these evil Kadians could do whatever they wished with her. Even Father wasn’t so terrible as to leave her to such a fate.