Chapter 15
KORMAC
I’d lost my fucking tongue.
Milky potion and salve helped with the pain, but it didn’t change the fact I’d lost it. The prince had taken it through the hands of his elves.
Valance had taken my tongue as he’d taken Ren’s right hand.
Hellpiss! My hate boiled like a stew too long on the fire. Spilling over the edges, bubbling and enraged. I’d kill the fucker. I would. I wasn’t dying in this place until I took him with me.
Poor Ren. If only I could save him.
I lay down on the warm floor, listening to a rat skitter by somewhere in my cell. It came close, sniffed me, went about its business.
It was quiet. Not even the phlegm man snored. Had he gone? Also taken off to be mutilated or hurt or killed? Probably.
Fucking Valance.
Fucking piece of shit.
“I see you have met the wrath of the grieving prince.” It was the woman from the other cell. “A pity. I wouldn’t worry your head too much about it, though.”
How did she know he was grieving?
I resisted getting up and kicking ten shits out of her cell bars.
Instead, I sat up, my aches and pains kept at bay by the milky human potions.
I’d been dosed up well, bandaged well. So much salve had been applied to my bruises and slathered over my mouth wound.
Tasted like blackcurrant pie with cream.
I missed home.
“There are things waiting down the roads of fate. Terrible things, yet hopeful too. It is up to you how you approach them, lad. In one week, the prince will meet his future husband for the first time. Spring and Summer will unite.” She cackled.
“I think not. This is a union that will not take place.”
I wanted to ask her how in hell she knew that. Remembered I couldn’t.
“The beginning is here,” she added. “You will need to help him. He will require so much of it.”
A swell of fury got me to my feet. I went to the bars of her cell. Tried to see her. Saw nothing but the dark. I grabbed the metal and shook them with as much strength as I could muster.
Help the prince? Was she out of her mind?
The seven hells would have to freeze, the heavens fall in fire and ashes before that happened.
If I ever got the opportunity, I’d obliterate the royal prick.
He’d forced me to lick Ren’s blood off his blade, done this to me along with being born in the first place.
But what had she meant? Marriage? Lasair hadn’t mentioned a union between Spring and Summer. I knew Spring rimmed Summer good and proper, nothing more than that. What was going on?
The woman didn’t speak again. I was left to the cloying silence and the odd guard walking by to look in on me.
Help the prince?
Gods, what a pile of cow shit.