Page 83 of The King’s Man (The Kingdom of the Krow #3)

~ brEN ~

Twenty minutes later, lurching, panting, sweating, my belly burning with pain, I stumbled upon the dirt road that linked the city with the Palace grounds and Dragon Reach.

I’d been mindless, running in fear and pain and unable to think beyond putting as much space between myself and Ruin’s hands as possible.

But when I saw those two, rutted lines in the clear strip between the forest and the rise of land on the other side, I staggered to a halt, chest heaving and my sight blurred with tears.

Somewhere off to my right, if I kept following that road, it would take me to the walls around the royal grounds where it was rumored the King took in young woman to keep them… safe.

I swallowed hard and looked left.

Or, if I followed this road back in that direction, it would lead me to the city. To the streets my father had threatened to leave me to…

My mother, on her knees, sobbing, pleading as I clawed at my father’s hand which was fisted in my hair, trying desperately to pry his fingers off. But he kept shaking me so that my ears rang.

“Is that what you wanted, Bren? To bring shame on your poor mother and me?”

“No!” I shrieked. “Please! Father—”

“Did you even think before opening your legs? Or were you so overcome by the devil you had no thought beyond your own lusts?”

I sobbed, and it turned into a retch.

Bent at the waist, hands on my knees, gulping at the air… it took several deep breaths to swallow the nausea back. When I was sure my stomach wouldn’t revolt, I straightened slowly and stared at that grassy verge, feeling the weight of… all of it.

Straight across the road, just a little east, the wide mouth of a rocky path began, disappearing quickly into the trees, but following the rise of the land up, up, up to the Dragonmaw cliffs.

My body swayed and I almost fell as the terrain in front of me disappeared and my mind conjured Ruin…

Ruin who no longer wanted me. After all the promises. All the plans. Everything I’d given.

Ruin had discarded me as easily as a shirt he could not mend.

“Go home and hang yourself in the barn for all I care—”

A sick, knotted weight appeared in my stomach as I stood there at the crossroads—both literal and metaphorical.

The city was a choice. I would not be the first girl from the farmlands to give herself to the streets as my father had threatened that I deserved one night when he was drunk.

After the thrill and joy of Ruin’s love, how different would it feel to give myself to a man I’d never met?

But then it hit me… thrill and joy?

What thrill remained? What joy? It had all been a lie.

“Are you fucking with me? You can’t honestly believe—”

“Y-you said—”

“And you opened your legs, just like I asked…”

I recoiled. No. I had to go home, or…

Or?

My thoughts were interrupted by a deep, resonant thunder, beating the air in rhythmic time, and followed immediately by a high, thin cheer.

I looked over my shoulder, over the trees, squinting into the pale sky of the rising sun to see the huge, graceful dragonfuries rise and rise, necks stretched forward, noses pointed to the sun, their massive wings beating the air and carrying their riders—from this distance they looked like insects clinging to the dragon’s backs.

For a breath I forgot my pain.

One of those insects was the man I loved. And he might never return.

I watched until they flew high enough into the clouds that I could no longer make out their forms. And then I kept watching. Waiting. Though I didn’t know for what.

I was startled a few minutes later when the crunch of hoofbeats on the gravel road, and the creak of a wagon heralded the arrival of people.

Others who loved those men. Others who’d gone to see the Furyknights off.

A horse and rider passed first, the man’s countenance dark.

Then the wagon. Then footsteps. People passing in twos and threes, some of the women crying, others only grim.

And then I saw her.

She was so elegant, so… ethereal. Riding a sweet, prancing mare, her cloak spread over the mount’s back, her hair gleaming in the sun as brightly as her horse’s coat.

She was a vision.

Of course he would choose her.

Who wouldn’t?

And even if she’d given her virtue, as I had, the fine stitching on her cloak and gloves, and the servant riding at her side told anyone with eyes that she was a woman of means.

Any man given the chance would choose her over a ruined farmgirl with dirt under her nails and callouses on her palms.

Of course they would.

She knew that as surely as I did.

Then my breath caught.

Did she know about me?

I remembered the confusion on her face, and her question to Ruin.

No. She didn’t know me. But she’d seen me… Seen Ruin run to me.

Would she have asked him what had passed between him and the peasant?

It was the wrong thought, because the moment I had it, my mind replaced my memories of Ruin with her.

Ruin jogging across the barnyard, hair sticking to his sweaty brow, beaming at her.

Ruin unbuttoning his leather jacket, his breath heavy with want, eyes blazing for her.

Ruin, his eyes gentle and warm, tugging to straighten the blanket he’d thrown over the hay, then picking a single blade of straw from her hair…

Then the images began of Ruin taking her in his arms the way he’d done with me. Of him pleading and kissing, undressing her, declaring himself—and the pleasure he’d wring from her sweet body—so soft and clean because she didn’t work.

But no… I reminded myself, theirs would never be a roll in the hay on a sunny afternoon. Ruin had no need to stoop so low.

She would welcome him to an elegant bed in a manor home, and cry his name from secluded shadows behind locked doors.

Or perhaps a dark room at night, skins glowing in the light of the fire.

I was going to vomit. But the thoughts wouldn’t end.

It was all too easy to see Ruin’s sun-weathered hands, dark against her pale skin, his strong fingers gripping her body, his jaw buried under her throat—her pretty face thrown back in ecstasy…

It was all too easy to see her long, fine body entwined in his strength—

With a small cry that drew the attention of the woman and her servant, though I ducked my head to hide from them, I darted across that road and onto the path up to the cliffs.

Holding my hands to my belly to ease the pain, I ran.

I was a fool.

Ruin didn’t love me. He never had.

He had a bigger, better life, now. To him I was nothing but a gnat to be swatted away.

Ruin was not mine. But I was his. And as a poor farmgirl of marrying age, I had bestowed upon him the one article of value that might have garnered me a husband: My virtue.

I was not a pretty, porcelain woman of means, with a father who could pay to silence gossip.

I was a broodmare, already spent. No wonder Ruin didn’t want me.

I shuddered as that truth finally slid home like a knife between my ribs: Ruin wasn’t mine. Worse, he’d never truly wanted to be.

And that it wasn’t going to change.

I looked up the path, shadowed by overhanging trees, and my parched throat wanted to squeeze shut at the thought of the climb to come, but I pressed on.

It was the only answer.

I wouldn’t have to walk all the way home, only to admit I’d been discarded and demeaned.

I wouldn’t have to heal.

I wouldn’t have to remember.

I would never again be forced to look a man in the eye while he spat loathing at me.

All of this would be over.

That was all I needed was for it to be over.

And so, as the path grew rocky and steep, I pressed on to climb to the Dragonmaw Cliffs.

*****

Hours later, drenched in sweat and body screaming with pain so deep my knees shook, I took the final steps to the summit.

This high up, the icy wind off the ocean howled between the trees that thinned, then finally stopped, giving way to rock-strewn grass that grew right up to the edge of the cliffs.

About one hundred feet ahead, the grass simply ceased. The land fell away in a sheer drop to the sea, where the waves thundered against the unforgiving cliff-face, and churned around the pointed rocks that speared out of the water like dragon fangs, giving the coastline its name.