Page 13 of The Broken Prince

“I think she deserves your wrath more than he does. In the eyes of the gods, you’re still paired for eternity—”

“And she’ll remind me how I betrayed those vows when I fucked someone else—”

“Then you’re even,” I said. “If she bedded you, there’s hope. Forget General Macabre, and get your wife back.”

“Would you forget the man screwing your wife?” he asked coldly.

“Don’t forget someone else screwed her husband.”

His eyes immediately narrowed.

“Imagine the rage she felt toward this nameless woman. The rage you feel right now. Focus on getting your wife back and nothing else.”

FOUR

IAN

I'd thought I was broken when my wife left me, but now I was broken into even more pieces. I sat with Huntley at the table, looking at the details of a map created long ago with little information.

“We travel here.” Huntley dragged his finger down the map. “We follow the river through the mountains. That way, we have it for reference on our return journey.”

I stared at the parchment but didn’t listen.

“Ian.”

My eyes flicked up.

“Are you sure you can do this? Because I’m not about to risk my life with someone who can’t focus.”

I pulled back and straightened in the chair before I gave a nod. “I can do this.”

“You’re sure?” Huntley pierced my eyes with his. “Because our lives are on the line here.”

I held his gaze, feeling inferior to my perfect brother, as usual. He always kept his strength, no matter the situation, even when his own daughter was taken. Someone else bedded my wife…and I lost my shit. “I can do this.”

The guard stepped into the room. “Steward Ian, Avice wishes to speak with you.”

My heart dropped, did a somersault, squeezed in pain…everything. My eyes shifted to Huntley.

Huntley gave a nod before he silently departed my chambers.

Fuck, I was nervous. She’d never come to me before—only the other way around. I fantasized about her asking me to take her back, to work on our marriage, but I knew she had a different agenda.

She walked in a moment later, wearing a long-sleeved dark blue dress with her dark hair secured in a tight braid. With a strong posture and a slender neck, she looked like a fucking goddess. Her eyes were lit with the flames of her soul, and when she walked up to me, I couldn’t focus on anything else.

I rose to my feet to meet her, butterflies the size of dragons in my chest.

“Ian…I’m so sorry.”

This conversation was already starting off a lot better than I’d expected.

“I never meant for you to find out like that.”

I felt like shit again.

“Joseph never should have approached you.”

“Approached me?” I asked incredulously. “He obviously told you a very different story from what actually happened.”