7. Killian
Asmall, warm hand on my arm shakes me instantly awake.
“Killian, I need you to wake up. Something’s out there.”
Briar.
Rolling up, I grasp my sword and freeze, listening. Familiar shuffling sounds.
“It’s all right, Princess. Go back to sleep.”
She stiffens. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
I don’t make a habit of arguing with women. Or with anyone. I either settle disagreements with violence or I walk away.
I hate the way this woman turns me inside out simply by existing.
I hate what she’s doing to my friendship with Alistair.
But I don’t hate her. I’m being deliberately rude to get under Briar’s skin just because I want her and will take any attention I can get from her, even if it’s negative. Like a fucking child. I know I’m behaving like an arse and yet I can’t seem to stop.
She’s rightly afraid of monsters, and Alistair’s forefather locked her away in a castle full of them. What a bastard.
The shuffling noise creeps nearer.
“Show yourself, Queen Isadora.”
“Is it true?” the old woman’s tremulous voice wavers out of the darkness. Briar Rose shrinks back, clutching that rough wool blanket around her shoulders like it can shield her from harm.
I’m her shield. I protect her, now. Whether she believes it or not. For as long as she is bound to my liege lord, I am bound to her by an oath of honor.
Until death do us part.
“It is true!” The crone cackles. Her bent form’s shadow grows to towering heights in the candlelight. Behind me, the lady gasps and edges closer to my back.
Queen Isadora is having none of her reticence.
“Come here child.” She lurches up the steps into the nave and seizes the hem of Briar Rose’s blue dress. “As fresh and lovely as the day I poisoned you. Truly, your beauty remains undiminished after all this time.”
“I—but you—” Briar swallows hard. I hear the muscles in her throat work and her pulse pick up, pushing blood forcefully through her veins. Outside, birds chirp, signaling that dawn isn’t far off. “How are you still alive?”
“Cursed!” the queen rages. “That backstabbing wizard could not bring himself to destroy such a beauty, and so he softened the poison in the chalice to send you into an eternal slumber, only to be broken when you were awakened by true love.”
She drops Briar’s hem and shuffles away.
“Where are you going?” I demand.
“At last, my time has come to die,” the queen calls over her shoulder. I barely can make out her shadow in the gloom. There’s a scrape and a muffled curse, then a crack of wan gray light seeps into the castle sanctum.
Windows.
I thought I’d seen their arched shapes lining the main section of the sanctum, but in the frenzy of the fight I didn’t pause to investigate, and the candles’ light didn’t penetrate the darkness far enough for me to be certain. The fleeting shadow of a harpy winging past is why I didn’t feel the need to investigate.
“Queen?”
Briar’s hesitant voice resonates like a shout.
“Goodbye, Briar Rose.” She perches on the sill for a brief second. “Good luck with her, my great-great grandson!”
The queen leaps.
“No!” Briar rushes to the window, dropping the blanket, her golden hair flying, heedless of her long skirt dusting over the candles. Two wink out. The rest gutter before flaring again. It’s a miracle she didn’t set herself on fire.
Gripping the sill with white knuckles, Briar turns to me beseechingly. “She jumped!”
“Why do you care? The queen poisoned you. She only wanted your curse broken so she could escape the one placed on her.”
I snuff the remaining candles and cast a dark glare at Alistair, who’s managed to sleep through the ruckus.
Maybe he’s been afflicted with the curse, too.
Maybe he’ll sleep for a hundred years and be awakened by another true love’s kiss, while I claim Briar for my own.
A flare of hope sparks, hot and painful inside my chest, that he won’t awaken, leaving Briar free to choose.
Only to be doused just as quickly when Alistair swings his boots over the side of the coffin and sits up, scrubbing his face.
Foolish of me to entertain the idea that Briar might want me. Women come to my bed for one of two reasons: to be ridden hard and put up wet, or as a stepping stone into his. She’s already got a solid-gold permanent invitation to his bed. The only reason Briar might glance in my direction is if she wanted a good hard fuck—and I’ve given her every reason not to consider trying such a thing.
For the first time in my life, I feel greedy and possessive over a woman. One I can’t have, naturally. I don’t want a taste. I want to consume her.
“Morning already?” Alistair asks.
Another shadow flickers past the window, darkening it. In a few strides, I’m at Briar’s side, yanking her away.
Touching her.
The scent of roses rises from her skin, so soft and sweet that the swell of desire I’ve been fighting since she roused surges anew.
She would never choose me. My body doesn’t care.
Her gentle curves press against me as she cowers away from the window. An ear-splitting shriek, followed by the harpy’s sharp talons crunch into the exterior and the intrusion of a curved beak.
I shove Briar behind me, not gently, and slam the casement windows on that deadly, snapping culmen. Feathers batter the stone, but the monster flies off as I latch the window, its wingbeats as loud as drums.
Alistair has come down from the nave to wrap his arms around his lady love. Briar’s wide eyes well with tears, but she pushes his hand away, only for him to put it around her shoulders instead of her waist.
“The queen may have poisoned me, but that doesn’t mean I wanted her dead,” Briar says indignantly.
“The queen didn’t care one whit about your life. Why do you care about hers?”
“No one is born a monster, Killian. We choose whether to grow claws and fangs.” She glares haughtily at me. “I choose not to become what I despise most.”
I cannot fathom forgiving a betrayal like Isadora’s. Whether Briar Rose’s comes from innocence or purity of heart, or both, I find it utterly confounding. In her place, I’d have pushed that hag out the window myself.
“The queen had already lived many years past the natural span of her life. Let it go, darling.”
Despite the endearment, there’s a note of warning in his voice that says Alistair will brook no argument. Briar’s lush mouth flattens.
“How do you plan to get us out of here, Kill?” he asks.
Leaving the logistics to me. As usual.
“The same way we came in.”
“She can’t go over the wall in this dress,” the prince argues.
Fuck. He’s right. It’ll be nigh on impossible for her to climb down. While I wouldn’t mind seeing her naked, I suspect Alistair would gouge my eyes out for looking.
“We’ll make a sling. I can lower her down.”
I’m already aching and sore from yesterday’s chopping, fighting, and climbing, but I’m strong enough to dangle a slip of a girl off a cliff for the short time it’ll take to make the descent.
“How do you plan to hold off the harpies?”
“Highness, with all due respect, shut up, and let me do my job.”
He bows mockingly. “Lead on, Sir Ironheart.”
Briar
A knight. Everything makes sense, now.
Sir Killian Ironheart is a dark knight sworn to serve the prince. Or, more likely, sworn to serve the king and assigned to serve as the prince’s protector. That explains their uneasy friendship—and it is, unmistakably, a friendship, if an unequal one.
Sandwiched between the knight, who leads us down a dark and lengthy passageway, and the prince at my back, I edge down each step like a young child learning how to descend safely. My stupid skirt doesn’t help matters, obscuring the light no matter how much I gather into my fists and hold out of the way.
Each time I stumble into Killian’s back, he grunts and stops. Alistair instantly pounces to pull me upright, pressing me against the wall to steal kisses I don’t dare refuse.
But it’s the man in black armor whose broad shoulders I watch with interest.
He doesn’t like me. I’m not accustomed to people instantly disliking me. My face is enough to win general favor. But not his.
Clearly, his favor must be earned.
Is it worth earning? Considering his surliness, I would say not. Yet my life has already depended upon his quick actions once, and I don’t doubt it will again before the day is done.
The knight raises one gloved fist. I halt instantly.
“We’re here.”
“We’ve wasted half the morning retracing this route.” The prince squeezes past me. “Let’s not dally.”
He yanks the door open. Pandemonium erupts. Ear-piercing shrieks stun me into inaction. At the same time, light sears my eyes, blinding me to what’s happening.
“Get back!” Killian shouts. He shoves Alistair, who trips on the edge of one stair and crashes on top of me. My stupid silk dress slips on the stone, his weight dragging us down toward the fearsome beaks shoving through the open door.
“Close it!” Alistair kicks one with his boot.
“Can’t.” Killian remains upright, a short sword flashing and brandishing that strange shield that looks like an enormous scale against an onslaught of pecks and shrieks. The birds have managed to wedge their heads inside, but their bodies can’t all fit through at once.
I never realized that birds have tongues. Not until one clamps onto the hem of my dress.