Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
YOU WILL CRAWL FIRST
H e grabs me and spins us in a dizzying whirlwind back to the Court clearing and once again he’s the Prince, all trace of a male descending into rut gone. It's as if those few near feral moments of threat and negotiation never happened.
This time I cling to him with no pretense at coordination or grace. It’s a subtle punishment, rendering me helpless in his arms as we return to the vultures and I don’t fight it—let him win these small displays of dominance; keep the edge off the beast’s hunger.
But I’m still Aerinne of Faronne. “Have you forgotten my Vow, Prince?” I snap.
As I speak it strangles me for three heartbeats, reminding me of the consequences of failure. I’m in the arms of the male whose throat I’m required to slit.
Even if I want him, I can't have him except on his deathbed. Or mine. Courtship is only buying time, like my strategic submission .
His pale gaze travels across my face, over my lips, down the line of my bare shoulder and tense arm to fingers that flex open and closed. He’s turned off the glimpse of wild desire as if it never existed. His self-control is frightening, and inspiring.
It also reinforces that any poor behavior from him is a choice.
“I forget nothing. I think if you were armed, you would try to kill me.” He smiles, taunting.
“Who says I'm not armed?” More than one reason why I hadn't wanted his hands under my dress.
“. . .I see. I'll speak with my guard.”
“What's the punishment for dereliction of duty these days? Death?”
“Hmm. Tell me more of age sixteen.”
I can endure this a little while longer.
“That's the year. . .Baroun captured my brother.” As soon as the words leave my mouth I almost stutter. He has me so off kilter I forgot to censor anything related to Embry. I’d actually been about to recount the full truth.
“I haven’t seen him since. Is Danon still alive? ”
The Prince tilts his head down, lashes veiling his eyes. “Have you seen a body?”
“Renaud, the only reason your palace is still standing is because we haven't seen a body.”
His smile unfurls like a fallen angel unfolding tattered wings, cruel and capricious, sensual lips revealing straight white teeth a single misstep from tearing into my flesh. I shiver.
“Are you cold, Aerinne?” His attention lowers to my cleavage and his eyes flare, pupils dilating.
More anger uncoils, sparked by the lust and malice entwined in his voice. He’s trying to change the subject. “What I am, is using everything within me to restrain myself.”
Those eyes burn, flashing from glacial to blue flame in a whiplash. “This is you practicing restraint? One wonders what you'll be like naked, wet, and unleashed in my bed.”
Enough of this. I stop moving, making dead weight of my body, forcing him to halt. I hang onto good behavior, survival behavior, by a thread.
“Prince, when you see me unleashed, it will be because I'm covered in your blood.”
His knuckles brush my jaw. “Only if you are on your back, Lady. Or your knees, filled and covered with my come.” Cruel eyes, crude words, gentle fingers. “Then you may choke on my blood all you wish. I’ll feed it to you as I feed you my cock.”
I recoil. Not because it disgusts me. Because it doesn't. “I'll fight before I let you have me.” Which is probably true, but also not the right words, Aerinne, when you just barely nudged him out of a rut moments ago.
The Prince lowers his head and bites the rim of my ear, sharp and punishing. “You taunt monsters, little halfling. Is this how you wish me to woo you? Pain and punishment? Desire and debasement?”
“I don’t wish you to woo me at all. You use the right word when you use the word debase.”
He grips my hips, bruising.
“You are fortunate, Aerinne of Faronne, that your worth to me is greater than you comprehend. You are fortunate that worth outweighs your refusal.”
A choice hovers in the air like a sword against my neck.
I lock my knees to keep from sinking to the stones. To keep from lunging at him with my hidden blade. For a split second, I'm certain he’s about to force me to my knees, uncaring of our quiet audience.
Renaud releases me and steps back, bending in a low bow.
“Lady Aerinne, it has been a pleasure, and your thoughts on my rights charming.” A flicker of feral amusement. “Perhaps you should return to your father now, before I am tempted to demonstrate the difference between my idle advance and true force. Ava'malisse sovva anfa la akra khet neshir.”? 1
I freeze when I hear those last, almost taunting words aloud, staring at him a split second, then turn on my heels to flee.
But I stop.
Turn back to him. He doesn't move, leashed only by whatever long term goal requires short term self-control. I don't fool myself into thinking he honored my “not yet” for my sake or even my mother’s.
“Nora is wrong,” I say. “Maybe our whole damn species is wrong. Force isn't an act of power. It's admission that you lack the intelligence, the strategy, the charisma, the will to win another to your side.”
I hold his narrowed gaze, not allowing him to break it. I want him to understand. I need him to understand.
If he plays this game with me, neither of us will win.
If he plays this game with me, Faronne and Montague will burn.
It's not in me, what my aunt says I must do.
Submit to what I don't want. Pretend to be weak, make myself a snake, a slithering thing that works from behind the shadows because they are stronger than my blaze.
Strong enough to snuff me out. A kraken will wait silent in the depths until roused but when it rises there is no doubt, no stealth, only sudden obliteration.
My hand curls, nails pricking my palms, sharper than I remember.
It is not in me.
For the sake of my House I would try, but I would fail. I know myself.
“Force is weakness and the reason why this city stagnates, because few of us has the power to command willingness.
So prove your weakness, Prince. Prove your impotence.
Take from me by force what you can't otherwise win because you can offer me nothing I want. Because you are nothing I want. But you best kill me when done.”
Blue eyes sear mine. He’s white, with anger or some other emotion, I don't know. The evening breeze whips around us, his silky blue-black hair obscuring his face a moment.
“Will you come to me then, if I wait? Will you give me your allegiance, your body, your soul?”
“I don't know, Renaud.”
“Aerinne,” he says after I've turned and walked three steps. I stop, but don’t face him again.
“What I want from you is neither simple nor temporary.
True rape, of body or will, is a contemptible exercise with no victor, and like you I'm no fool. I know you better than you think. You understand the game we now play?”
I stiffen.
He chuckles. “You don't. You've thrown down the gauntlet, Malisse ni, my halfling. When you come to me it will be because you want me. ”
I'm caught by the spell of his words though my back is to him and he can't use the hypnotism of his eyes.
“Because you need me.”
Warm breath on the nape of my neck, though he's not close.
“Because your soul craves mine above all others.”
A shudder of denial, a foreboding of that future savage need, tears through me. I exhale, the breath shaky.
“When I am done convincing you of my power, my right, not only will you come to me willingly, you will crawl through black flames, skin and sinew stripped from your bone, if that's what it takes.”
Composed despite my wildly racing heart, I say, “But you’ll crawl to me first.”
As I stalk away, focusing on one click of my heels at a time, he says nothing.
Silence is not denial.
I leave the courtyard, though not returning to my father. I need a few minutes to regain my composure. More than a few minutes.
This ball isn't over, the dance between the Prince and I barely begun.
The night will be long and I brace to only go down fighting, all the while wondering at the one glaring omission in our conversation.
The one person he hasn't mentioned.
Whose death should be the writ for my immediate execution.
1 ? The father of the Princess will have her a short while longer.