Page 16

An ugly silence stretched between us all. Finally, Theodore spoke, his tone barbed and labored. “I am not my father.” He paused. Pulled in a deep breath. “I know how terrible the Mage Seer is. That is why Lady Imogen will be accompanied by a retinue of guards and a palace healer.”

“I beg you to send a rider instead.” Tears slipped down Agatha’s cheeks. “Let them bring the severing draught back to the palace. Let her endure the ritual under your care. You’re the most powerful healer in all of Leucosia.”

Tension strung through Theodore. He dropped his attention back to the vials on the table in front of him. “I can’t do that.”

Agatha gaped, her tears falling now in earnest. “You can’t ?”

I felt like I was sinking. Like the new shackle I’d stepped into when I knelt before the king of Varya was tightening, cutting in, pulling me down.

Lachlan’s eyes were bright with fury. “Theo, I think—”

“You can both leave.” It was an order, slicing through the room like a whistling sword. “Now.”

Agatha reeled like she’d been struck across the face.

She whirled and stormed from the room. Lachlan lingered to give Theodore a final damning look.

“I’d thought you, of all people, would have chosen better than this.

On all fronts.” He strode with heavy steps toward the open cabin door, then slammed it shut behind him.

Theodore stood in the quiet, pinching the bridge of his nose. The moments strained, until finally, he swiped two vials from the table and came to the side of the bed. He pulled the stopper from one with his teeth and spat it to the floor. “Drink this.”

I wished I were standing and clothed, instead of laid out over the man’s bed, but I filled my voice with all the rebuke I could manage. “That was heartless of you.”

“It was necessary.” He held the little vial closer. “Drink.”

Anger burst through me. Keeping the sheets in place, I clumsily pushed myself up to sit. A sharp pain hit my thigh and hot liquid gushed over my skin. “I will not drink,” I said, ignoring it. “You tricked me. Why didn’t you tell me that severing our bond could kill me?”

He raked a hand through his waving hair. “I did not trick you. You do not understand the complexity—” He tried for some control and failed. “Gods damn it, you have forced me to make impossible decisions, to do things I never thought I would, and yet you make me the villain.”

“I forced you to do nothing! You agreed.”

“Do you truly think I had any other choice when you broke into my room, all wet and winged—” He cut himself off with a scowl.

When he finally looked back down at me, he winced.

“You’re bleeding through the sheet. I’ll ask once more that you drink this and let me close that wound on your leg properly. We can scream at one another after.”

The bright stain in the bedding spread quickly, but my anger did too. I glared at the little vial in his hand and spoke through my teeth. “What is it?”

“Nepenthe,” he said, evenly. It riled me further that he sounded so composed. “It’ll get rid of the pain.”

Nepenthe did more than rid a body of pain.

It blunted the faculties too. And the most I’d ever taken at once had been a handful of drops in my tea.

I expected a vial’s worth would send me into a dream-riddled sleep that I’d not wake from for half a day.

I shivered at the thought and shook my head. “No nepenthe. Just do it.”

Theodore looked at me like I was mad, but he knelt at the edge of the bed and waited as I struggled to slip my leg free of the covers.

The small movement made me whimper. My thigh was a flap of bloody flesh.

Only a thin layer of skin, that I assumed Theodore had coaxed into existence, had kept it from bleeding. When I’d moved it had torn.

“Hold this.” He pressed the nepenthe into my hand. “You’re going to change your mind.” Then he set a tentative, but warm, grip on my knee. He swallowed hard and stared at my thigh, which was exposed all the way up to the curve of my hip. He didn’t move.

I threw a fist into the mattress. “What in the bloody Gods are you waiting for?”

His mouth opened and closed. “Can I touch you?”

“You’re already touching me.”

“I need to touch you here.” The wound was large, curving around my leg toward the underside of my buttock.

“Oh, for Gods’ sake. Yes. Touch me.”

For a tense moment our gazes locked. Anger and concern and annoyance churned between us until finally he palmed the flesh at my hip with such a firm hand that I gasped.

He’d not hurt me, but his touch was fervent, frustrated, and somehow tender too.

A heavy exhale slipped past my lips as he slid his hand down my rounded hip to the edge of the wound.

His touch left a trail of gooseflesh in its wake. Then he met my eye. “Last chance.”

“Do it.”

He didn’t hesitate. He tugged the flap of skin closed in one skilled motion as his hands filled with fiery heat. I screamed, then drained the little bottle of nepenthe in one swill.

“That’s what I thought,” Theodore mumbled, and his touch grew hotter and hotter.

I squeezed my eyes shut as the nepenthe carved through me.

It trimmed away my pain until all I could feel was Theodore’s power and the pressure of his fingers.

It cut the flimsy ties that kept my anger in place too.

“You’ll come with me,” I said, in an odd voice.

It was not a question, or an order, or a plea, but some nepenthe-laced thing in between. “To the Mage Seer.”

His fingers paused on my skin. “I’ve already said that I can’t.”

“Because of your dearest betrothed,” I snapped.

His keen eyes found mine and I worried I’d let my asinine desire to guard him like some sort of treasure I’d never be able to claim slip into my voice.

“Yes,” he said, carefully. “When we arrive on Varya, I am to meet immediately with the Empress of Obelia and her daughter, whom I am to marry.” His grip on my leg tightened and a new flood of heat radiated through the healing skin. “That is why I cannot go with you.”

I pushed up onto an elbow and scowled. “And why can’t you send a rider?”

He kept his gaze on my wound. “Because it’s not just the severance you need while you’re there. You need a prophecy too.”

I stared at him. My mind swam with worry over his words, his commands, over everything he withheld.

I was overcome with fury and fear, but still, I could not help but notice that King Theodore was appallingly, tragically handsome.

Fucking nepenthe. I squeezed my eyes closed.

“A prophecy.” The words slurred. “Is that your third condition?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then I don’t need to do it.”

“You do.” He rose in a huff and went to a clean washbasin beside the bed.

He washed his hands, wrung out a rag, then brought it to my healed leg to clean away the thick smears of blood.

“Because I am your king, and you swore fealty to me. And because the third condition, which you have already agreed to, hinges upon the prophecy.”

My hand shot out and grabbed his hard forearm.

I yanked him toward me, leaning in close enough to feel his breath fanning over my cheek.

“I know you did not bind yourself to me out of the goodness of your kingly heart. You did it because I have something you need. Something, I expect, that you cannot get from anyone else.” My words were sloppily strung together, but not without bite.

“I will not live another life like my last, honoring the whims of a king who wishes to use me. I bent the knee to you, yes, but it will cost me nothing to denounce you and leave your kingdom with my blood still running through your veins. I will happily let our bond plague you with unending worry over my well-being until you are old and gray if you treat me like I am some palace maid to be ordered about. If you want a severance, if you want me to receive a prophecy so that I can fulfill your final condition, then I have some terms of my own you must agree to.”

Theodore did not blink as he stared at me.

I wasn’t certain he breathed. His handsome face was unreadable, until his mouth parted in the barest look of offense.

I wondered if anyone had ever spoken to him as I just had.

I waited for him to rail at me for doing so.

But his bewildered eyes merely slipped from mine and landed on my lips.

One breath. Two breaths. Three. Then he jerked his arm from my hold.

“Later.” His voice was rough, clenched. “When you’re not flying from the nepenthe, we’ll…” He rolled his jaw. “… negotiate.” He strode to a built-in bureau and pulled a white nightshirt from within. He tossed it over my now clean and healed leg. Only a fine, silvery line of new skin remained.

Brooding, he went from lantern to lantern, turning them low.

“A rule: If you somehow wake before I do, you are not permitted to leave this cabin without me at your side.” He strode to the door and clicked the lock over with a key.

Then he tucked it deep inside his trouser pocket.

My heart thundered, the fog over my mind grew denser, and I watched the shadow of his strong body curl onto the settee. “Good night, Lady Imogen.”

I fumbled the nightshirt over my dizzy head before falling back into the pillows.

Sleep held me in its palm, but I could not help picturing it as the clawed, slick-skinned hand of the monster from my dream.

I thought I could feel it writhe through the water below me, thought I could hear its roaring heart in my ears.

Despite how I tried, my eyes wouldn’t stay open.

A terrified whimper filled my head as I finally slipped into midnight darkness.