Page 42 of The Nightmare Bride

I was nearing the stairs, my steps whispering against the tatty carpets, when a shadow darkened the corridor behind me. I glanced back, and...shit. Vick was headed my way, clearly on a mission.

My stomach sank. Goddess, Ky had asked me to do one thing today. One thing .

I veered into a side hallway and chose a random corner to turn, then another. After ducking through a door, I found myself in what had once been a nursery, complete with pastel curtains and a cradle with a bug net draped over the top.

I leaned against the wall, my chest heaving. Had I lost him? A minute ticked by, then another, and I allowed myself to hope.

But then the knob turned. When the door opened, Vick slipped inside.

Dread flash-boiled in my stomach. As usual, he wore his shortsword. A disembodied section of my mind calculated whether anyone would hear me if I screamed.

Probably not.

Vick smiled, a slow bleed that sharpened to a wolf’s grin. A few carroty curls had escaped the tie at his nape and frizzed in the heat.

I sidled away. “Don’t mind me. I was just on my way downstairs.”

He was on me in a flash, barring me from retreat with a hand planted against the wall. He leaned close, one hand rested casually atop his sword pommel.

I froze, eyeing his weapon. If he drew, I could go for my dagger, but I had no illusions about how that would go. I wasn’t a fighter. The best I could do was lure unarmed princes into sucking on my neck before catching them off-guard with a blade to the throat.

Vick, unfortunately, was not an unarmed prince. Nor was I about to offer him my neck.

“Just the person I wanted to see,” he said. “You’re a tough one to get alone.”

“Yep. Great to see you, but I’ll be going now.” I made an attempt for the door, but he pinned my shoulder to the wall.

“Ah, ah,” he tutted. “It’s past time for us to have a chat, Princess .”

My skin writhed in his sweat-dampened grip. “Is it? Because I’m pretty sure I’d prefer we never speak again.”

His fingers dug into my arm. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Talking like that. Marrying Ky like you did. Trying to get yourself a title.”

A laugh knifed its way up my throat. “You think I married him for a title ?”

“Of course I do.”

I almost guffawed in his face. This conversation was even less amusing the second time than it had been the first.

But then the sparkling accusation in Vick’s eyes sobered me.

Sweat beaded his upper lip where a few blond hairs had escaped the razor, and.

..goddess, he looked so young. Younger than Ky, but also harder and grimmer, enough that arguing while trapped in a room with him seemed like an incredibly stupid thing to do.

So I didn’t. “You know what? You’re right. I’m a double-crossing gold-digger who just wanted to be royalty. Sucks that it didn’t work out the way I planned.”

Vick’s nose twitched, making him look more foxlike than ever. “Oh, I know. I know all about people like you. You don’t care if others go hungry while you hole up in your little castle, eating sausage every day. You’re the kind that thinks you deserve everything even though you contribute nothing.”

Well, then. Don’t hold back, or anything. Though I supposed this was the liberator in him talking. “Yep. You’ve got me pegged. Well done.”

His eyes flashed. “Are you mocking me?”

“I would never .”

He grunted, a warning. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Princess.

However your little tricks with Ky started, I’m not an idiot, and I see the way he looks at you now.

Which is fine. You can give him all the moon-eyed looks you want, wrap him around your little finger, I don’t care.

But when the annulment comes, you will sign it. And then you’ll send him away.”

I tried to tug my arm away, but it was no use. Despite Vick’s compact size, hard living had bought him a sinewy strength I couldn’t match. “Fine. I’d be glad to.”

His eyes slitted, as if he were trying to work that out. “Do you understand? If you so much as think of asking him to stay?—”

“What, are you going to run me through?”

“What? No. What kind of question is that?” A snarl wrinkled the bridge of his nose. “I don’t run women through . What do you take me for?”

I clamped my lips together. I was about ninety-eight percent sure he didn’t actually want me to answer that.

“I’m the good guy,” he said. “Not the villain. Which means that if I have to hurt you, it’s only in the name of the greater good. That’ll be on you. Not me.”

I scowled. And here I’d thought Ky was the master of circular reasoning.

“But,” Vick said, his grip tightening, “while we wait for all that, you’re going to tell me where to find the damn valuables in this house. Because I’ve reached the end of my patience. If Olivian won’t share with the territory he’s supposed to govern, I’ll make him.”

“There’s nothing here, though. No money. We ran out of all that years ago.”

“You say that.” His smile approached a sneer. “But there’s something in this house, I can feel it. Something that’ll help the people the seneschal’s supposed to serve.”

Alarm bells clanged in my brain. I considered my dagger, then the diary—the only things of value under this roof. Well, and Amryssa.

But Vick couldn’t have any of that. He’d have to gut me, first. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We have nothing. Barely enough to eat.”

“Fine.” His smile gleamed with cold light. “If you won’t tell me, then you’ve forced me to do this. Just know that this was your decision, not mine.”

He reached for his sword.

Cold terror spiraled through my gut. Zephyrine, help me.

At my summons, the blade awoke. I inhaled the goddess’s energy, funneling it into my palm, willing it into a weapon. Planting my free hand against Vick’s chest, I cannoned Zephyrine’s magic straight into him.

He reeled backward, clutching his heart, his sword halfway drawn. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

I darted away. I probably hadn’t done any permanent damage, but I had no desire to stick around and find out.

Adrenaline shrieked in my veins. I pelted down the hallway, my feet barely touching the steps as I descended the stairs.

Only once I’d reached the kitchens, where Miss Quist and Lunk bent over a bubbling pot together, did I glance behind me.

Vick hadn’t followed.

Which was cold comfort, because I had a feeling that I’d just made an enemy.