3
Jeryn
I would catch her first. So help me.
Before she had the chance to savor her freedom, I would find her.
Stalking into Autumn’s castle, I cut a furious path down the wainscoted halls. Noble figures bowed and curtsied in my wake, a chorus of “Your Highness” and “Sire” swarming me from all directions. Ignoring them, I sliced my way through the masses.
I considered myself to be a patient fucking prince. Patient in the way of scientists and the slow drip of ice. The patience to test and the patience to unnerve.
But never before had my tolerance been pushed to the brink.
Fucking. Little. Beast.
The fur coat slapped my calves as I prowled toward Autumn’s outmoded infirmary. Work. I needed to work. Best be quick about it before I did something rash like strangle a bystander. And I never did anything rash.
Our limited history had prepared me for a fight. What I hadn’t expected was her stunt with that vine, nor for her to leave me soaking in an icy creek like fodder for the carnivores. I had nearly fractured my wrists trying to break free. At which point, the knights from my security detail had located me. As usual, my absence had been noticed.
My temple throbbed. She would not escape me a second time.
Nailing my features in place, I stepped into the infirmary. Courtiers, dignitaries, and commoners in various states of pain lay atop thin cots. Charred forearms. Blistered flesh. Gashes. Contusions. Stab wounds. So much for this kingdom’s alleged pacifism. Dignity aside, if this nation had practiced a shred of indifference instead of leaning toward softer emotions—trifling inclinations such as tenderness—tonight’s mayhem would not have transpired. The populace would have been equipped to control their disillusioned reactions once those limits had been compromised.
No matter their sovereign’s transgressions, Winter would not have succumbed to pandemonium. I wouldn’t have allowed it.
The castle blackout, then the subsequent riot instigated by Summer’s tempestuous and bumbling excuse for a king, had left many wounded. Blood splattered the floor. A man wailed as a physician jiggled an arrow from his stomach. Were it not for this scene, I’d still be searching for that tiny fugitive.
When I got my hands on her, she would suffer. I would punish her slowly, thoroughly.
Images of mad fools howling from surgical tables occupied my head like a portfolio—an index of memories. Picking their fingernails out with tongs. Sawing off an ear. Testing droplets of an erosive liquid on their oculi and calibrating how long it took for the sockets to disintegrate. Painstaking experiments that had nonetheless yielded a stockpile of effective remedies.
She would know this anguish. In the near future, I would inflict my skills on her until she yielded. Until she became unequivocally mine.
When next we met, I would not hold back. No matter how brightly those combustible eyes glowed, no matter what volcanic expression she hurled my way, and no matter how her fucking body felt burning against mine. I would not succumb to her.
A cacophony of screams and moans engulfed the infirmary. Shrugging off my coat, I tossed the vestment onto a stool, then rolled up my sleeves and washed my hands in a basin. Despite the numbers of patients hemorrhaging, I stalked toward a pallet where a boy whimpered under the ministrations of a healer.
Correction. An inexperienced practitioner, judging by his hesitant profile. And while patience was a strength, I drew the line at incompetence and indecision.
Approaching the juvenile’s bedside, I tossed the novice an imperious look. “Move.”
The man gulped, backing up as I assessed the boy’s shoulder, the scalded flesh black and flaky. Expedient annoyance crept up my spine. I narrowed my eyes at the inferior idling next to me, my presence having drawn an audience of additional physicians. They had gathered to observe, to witness the genius Prince of Winter in his element.
My eyes tapered into shards. I swatted my chin toward the surplus of patients. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
They blanched with shame, then scattered like vermin. Much better.
The boy wore the livery of a stablehand. He sobbed quietly as I knelt to inspect his arm. The sleeve would have to go, to reach the wounds adhering to the fabric. Inconveniently, this court lacked enough anesthesia to treat this number of people at once. Thus, critical procedures took priority.
I arched my gaze to the boy. “Are you brave?”
“I hope so,” he sniveled.
Sufficient enough. I twisted and retrieved a pair of shears from an adjacent tray. “This will hurt,” I informed him. “A lot.”
The child nodded, sank his teeth into the branch I provided, and lifted his chin. As I cut into the fabric and pried it from the burns, his yellow irises gleamed in defiance of what had to be pure anguish. Fierce. Impressive. Like someone else I’d met.
A hiss pressed against my mouth. No more. She had caused me enough obsessive upheaval.
After finishing with the boy, I spent until dawn making the rounds. One of the patients bucked and yowled as I carved through his calf. He took it worse than born souls did on my surgical table, though their mutilations were usually worse.
For fuck’s sake. With exasperation flaring my nostrils, I waved a hand to an assistant. “Silence him.”
After that, the wad stuffed in the patient’s mouth made things easier. By morning, crimson stained my hands and soaked into my clothes.
On the way to my suite, two figures passed through a lower level. Halting at a mezzanine railing, I trained my gaze on the pair, their bodies magnetized to one another as they moved in the opposite direction below. Battered and exhausted, the man slid one possessive arm around his woman, tucking her into him.
Poet. Briar.
They did not speak yet somehow didn’t need to. The jester and princess excelled in communicating with each other through mere looks, disguising their thoughts in a private manner no one could translate.
Clever. Irksome.
Not long ago, the Court Jester of Spring and Princess of Autumn had triggered a shitstorm by pledging themselves to one another. Poet had been Spring’s secret weapon. With a silver tongue bred for dark ridicule and a face that would make a deity jealous, the jester had been the continent’s most idolized and feared celebrity, not to mention its most desired fuck toy. Not only a performer, advisor, and whore, but an influential pain in the ass.
A treasonous one as well, with a simpleton son. Apparently, this hadn’t mattered to Briar. She’d claimed the child as her own once she and Poet made their controversial affair known, then brought her new family to Autumn.
Following a succession of revels to celebrate Reaper’s Fest, the insubordinate couple remained an enigma to me. I’d never understood the look between them at the public reading, nor the fervor of their dance during the night market. The intensity between them had nettled my thoughts, directing them each time to the little beast in her dungeon cell.
One level below. Alone. So fucking close.
Poet’s pace slowed, his features narrowing in awareness. Devilish green irises lanced in my direction and darkened. Most victims would shrink to a pinprick from that dangerous look. They would quail while their cocks and cunts did the opposite, hardening like stone or puddling on the floor. The man knew how to target people, coerce his enemies, render them insignificant and powerless.
As did I.
Unfazed, I met his destructive glare with my own degree of contempt. Our ruse was over. The fake alliance we’d fabricated to thwart Rhys had ended. The Summer King’s ruination had spared Autumn a war and Winter a headache.
Done. Finished.
Yet I had one breakable bone still to pick.
While stabbing his gaze my way, Poet tightened his hold on Briar. The fatigued princess leaned into him, unaware of the exchange. They kept going, heading to the Royal wing, likely to bathe and fuck their trauma away.
Happily ever after. Rubbish. Absurd. As if eternal bliss were truly possible.
The remaining days in Autumn came and went. The little beast had disappeared. I could not say what slithered under my skin more—that she had gotten away or escaped without a coat. Or at least a fucking pair of shoes. Madness. Foolishness. I could strangle her for both crimes.
Nonetheless, I suspected where she’d scurried off to. Her presence at the four-way creek implied only one path.
One Season.
Before leaving this formerly pious nation, I cloistered myself in a surgical room with Poet and Briar, then interrogated them while struggling to keep my voice even, to scale down the volume before it tore a hole through the castle. To that end, I omitted the episode in the forest, the better to purge information from them.
Poet and Briar had aided the beast’s flight. That much had been clear when I’d registered the jester’s embellished dagger in her possession. No one else had the nerve to carry a weapon that gaudy, the hilt ornamented with scarlet jewels. Not only reminiscent of the fucker’s obscene wardrobe but his entire persona.
Yet. The infernal jester and princess refused to budge.
An hour later, I left Autumn with flurries racing through my bloodstream. So be it. As I’d warned them, I would hunt for the abominable beast myself. Though, logic told me this wouldn’t be the last time I encountered Poet and Briar. Whatever that woman meant to them, the relentless couple planned to intercept, lest I should catch my prey.
Pity for them, they would not succeed.
I slipped into the black carriage harnessed by stags, their spiked antlers impaling the air. As the convoy sheared into motion, I reclined in my seat. Took a measured breath. Clamped my fingers around the vial hanging from my necklace. Gently, my thumb stroked the glass, a crack marring its surface.
Turbulent creature. Within seconds of our first encounter, she’d damaged the precious item. Within another second, all hell had broken loose inside me.
I should have walked away before then. I should not have stalled beside her cage, taken notice—recognized her.
We shared a history, however brief and indirect. This, she did not know.
Be that as it may, one detail didn’t make sense. The woman lacked a voice, which I’d confirmed by questioning the dungeon guards, in case I had misinterpreted things in the forest. Yet I’d heard her scream. Moreover, she hadn’t been mute years ago. So either I was missing a pertinent clue, or she was faking her condition.
Wheat and corn fields smothered the carriage windows. Along the forest thoroughfare, the pigmented colors of Autumn passed by in an overstimulating tableau of red and orange.
Also, gold. At the hue, my thoughts strayed to those inflammatory metallic eyes. With that exceptional hue burnishing her irises, she’d all but flung her emotions at me.
Such ferocity. So much heat.
I recalled the tattooed collar around her neck, which also hadn’t been there years ago.
Who marked you?
Which peon had done that to her?
When I’d asked, the insufferable female had kept the answer to herself. From that point on, every decision I made had been linked to the fool. Isolating her in a separate cell. Searching for her in the castle during the blackout. Prowling after her when the riot had ended. Thinking about her each moment in between, tossing and turning in my sheets, festering and panting with aggravation.
Beneath my coat, red imprints encircled my wrists from where she’d tied me. A low growl climbed up my throat. I released the vial before the pressure of my fingers pulverized it.
Control. Always keep in control.
I lounged and tapped my lips. How to locate my prey? Aside from the tattoo and those eyes, I recalled the amenities of her cell, in which she’d sketched some manner of artwork into a dirt pile. That led to an image of sand impacted within her fingernails, the permanence of which pointed to one type of Summer native. One nomadic group was reputed to have that trait, a product of their lifestyle. This detail gave me enough to work with.
Time passed. When the queue of carriages crossed borders, I felt the first drop in temperature. Pine trees sprouted needle leaves. Scabrous alpine mountains loomed. A chalet castle foiled in silver glinted like a blade.
Winter.
The polar breeze blasted through my hair as I exited the carriage, the fur coat snapping against my frame. A squall thrashed about, thus limiting visibility.
Inhaling a brisk draught of air, I seized the arm of a passing soldier, frost slicing from my lips. “Get me a messenger. I have tidings for Summer.”
Making a deal with Rhys was a tedious but small price to pay. When the warrior departed, I regarded the fortress chiseled into an alp of charcoal gray rock, the tips of its spires knifing into the sky.
I had two grandaunts to reunite with, subjects to lead, patients to treat, specimens to test, spies to execute. That aside, I envisioned finding the beast when she least expected it. Like an elixir, my head swam with visions of her chained, stripped, at my behest.
Whips came to mind. Her back would look gratifying after a few lashings. Perhaps forceps too. Or something longer, harder.
It might take a considerable while to trap that creature. But for her, I would wait. She might retreat to a nation of seafarers, but I hailed from a court of scholars, scientists—and hunters.
Privately, my lip curled. A hiss rolled off my tongue. “I’ll catch you, Little Beast.”