Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
He smirked. “No. All of that is true and more, but you still needn’t be afraid because now my cruelty will defend your honor. My den of nightmares will be made into your home. And the things I do to you tonight will create their own legend. The only thing you’ll fear is that I’ll stop.”
His grin widened. “Don’t worry. I respond well to begging.”
I leaned forward, getting as close as I could stand. “Teeth or not, I will never ever lie with you. For the rest of our short marriage, your bed will be as cold as the splinter of ice where your desiccated heart used to be.”
“You will lie with me every night and twice in the mornings,” he replied, tone flat. “Our bed will slide across the floor, riding the river of your sweet, flowing juices, while I plunder your hole to the music of your ear-shattering screams for more.”
I choked, eyes bugging. What did he say? He could not have said what my cursed, ailing mind thought he said.
“Not only are these facts written in your future, but I will have you every night with your complete and willing consent. You will beg, little bird,” he hissed. “And I will be only too happy to oblige.”
I stared at him for a long time, eyes huge—heart racing to get free. Shadowsoul didn’t break. He didn’t even blink.
I whipped around. “Help!” I threw myself against the window, screaming my throat raw. “I know you hear me up there! Let me out of here! Let me out!” My magic surged up inside of me, heeding my distress, and smashed against the internal barrier forced on my soul on the day I turned ten years of age. It wasn’t going to help me—nothing and no one was.
“I don’t accept that,” I bit through clenched teeth. “I’m going home.”
Tearing off the curtain, I wrapped it around my fist and prepared to strike under another amused smirk.
Shadowsoul could smirk his ass right to hell. When they locked Emiana in her chambers, they didn’t think that pointless, decorative princess would throw a chair through her window and climb out of that either. I was getting back to my family. Nothing would stop me.
I descended on the glass, preparing to—
Something flew across the horizon, soaring straight at my face. I shrieked as a flash of scales and teeth roared past my vision—snatching whatever it was out of the air.
“What was that!”
“An assassination attempt, most likely.” Alisdair couldn’t have sounded more bored if he tried. “There were many who opposed the treaty and are taking this opportunity to ambush me while I’m away from my kingdom. It is no matter,” he said. “My guards will protect you, little bird. Most fervently from the ones who did want this peace treaty. They will not be pleased to know you’ve broken it not ten minutes after it was signed.”
“I broke the treaty?” I gaped at him. “Oh, how terrible it is when age addles your mind and rots your memory. If you think real hard—really strain until you hurt yourself—you will find, old bird, that you broke the treaty when you threw the king of Lyrica through a wall.”
He grinned. Once again, I was amusing him, not irritating him. Certainly not enough to force him to turn the carriage around. “The terms of the treaty were that all acts of aggression between my kingdom and yours cease—”
“Exactly. You—”
“—therefore, plunging a sword in my chest, unprovoked and before a hundred witnesses, counts as an act of aggression, wouldn’t you say?” His grin was terrible to behold. “Do tell me, my queen. You know how age rots the mind.”
My lips pressed into a thin, numb line. “What does this mean? What will you do?”
“Now you ask?” He cocked his head. “Now you inquire about the treaty? Only now you mention your father, and not even to ask if he’s still alive? Why is that?”
“Because I’m not—!” I choked on Emiana’s name, strangled by curse and frustration. I sighed. “I don’t care what happens to that man. In the end, he was no better than a broker—selling his own daughter to warm his enemy’s bed. That’s all I was to him in the end. A pawn to sacrifice.”
He gave me a long, leveling look. “I see. So that was not the first time he’s struck you.”
“I—” I started to say I don’t know, then memories that weren’t mine rose to the surface. “No, it was not the first,” I replied, knowing it to be true. “Nor was it a common occurrence. He’d have had to spend more time in my presence for that—barring the one night a month I was allowed to sit beside him during the Meya’s Moon feast.”
Impossibly thick lashes cast long shadows over his unnatural eyes. They were beacons that kept drawing me back to them, no matter how much I wanted to look away.