8. Briar
Afrightened shriek bursts past my lips as the beast drags me closer to its fellows. I’ll be embarrassed about my reaction later—if I survive this.
I reach for something, anything to stop the slow slide to my death, hands scrabbling on stone, seeking blindly. I brush cloth and clutch it with all my strength.
Alistair’s pant leg. He managed to pull himself upright. He grabs my arm. My dress rips loudly. I can’t get enough air to scream.
Silver flashes. Killian’s blade falls once, twice. On the third swing, the flinty determination in the bird’s eye abruptly fades out. Its head dangles at a strange angle as its body collapses in the doorway, blocking the other two harpies from getting into the passageway.
“Get up. Go.” Killian’s gloved hand wraps around mine. He yanks me upright, hard enough to almost dislocate my arm from its socket. I rub my shoulder and back up a few steps.
“Go fucking where?” Alistair shouts, spiking his fingers through his hair. “The castle is a monster-ridden death trap.”
“Back to the sanctum. We can’t get out this way.”
“We can’t stay here, either,” I say as reasonably as I can manage, surveying the huge rent in my skirt.
The harpies were intelligent enough to lay a trap and wait patiently for us to fall into it. Revoltingly, the fae raptors drag the corpse of their fallen comrade away. One begins pecking out its eyes. My stomach churns.
“I’ll hold them off.” Killian puts his shoulder to the door, forcing it closed. “Get her to safety.”
Alistair grabs my hand and starts climbing. Winded from my ordeal and hampered by my torn dress, I barely manage to scramble after him. The sounds of battle fade behind us.
Alone in the dark, we feel our way blindly along the wall.
“We should go back.”
“Killian can take care of himself, sweet Rose.”
I press my back against the cold stone, panting. “What if he dies?”
Alistair laughs. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about him. He’s a hard man to kill, sweetheart.”
Standing on the step below him puts the top of my head level with his shoulder. He drags me close to press a kiss against the top of my head. It feels wrong, but I don’t dare push him away. Princes tend to take rejection personally, in my experience.
We return to the shuttered sanctum and its perpetual night. Sunlight shoves between the slats. Golden shafts dotted with dust motes cut across the floor.
The stink of rotting flesh makes my gorge rise. I’d forgotten about the basilisk.
“Hungry?”
Alistair offers me a bundle of rations from the pack. I shake my head. To avoid his attentions and anxious for the return of the dark knight, I set about exploring the place where I slept for a hundred years.
Everything feels both new and ancient. The carpet is thick and velvety, unworn by footsteps, but dusty with age. I may be seeing it for the first time, but I feel a connection to this place that I’ve never experienced before.
Here, I feel grounded in time itself.
If only the castle weren’t infested with monsters, I could see myself living here forever.
“There you are,” Alistair says casually. “Took you long enough.”
Killian lurches out of the hidden passageway, his face once again spattered with blood. His hard gray eyes cut to mine, then away. My heart leaps at that brief contact. I avert my gaze.
It’s dangerous to look at him. If I start, I might never stop.
I want a choice. A say in my own fate.
Shaking my head, I move away. I’d be a fool to refuse a prince in favor of a knight—especially one who despised me on sight.
“Glad you’re here.” Alistair motions for Killian to follow him up the stairwell. “I have an idea.”
Killian
Briar’s evident alarm at my arrival cuts deeper than the gash from the harpy’s talon. In the frantic battle, it slipped beneath my vambrace and scored my flesh all the way up my forearm. It’s a miracle tendons or arteries weren’t severed. The wound will make fighting harder. We’ve already wasted our best chance at escaping this mountain alive.
The harpies know we’re in here, and they want their next meal.
Which makes Alistair’s solution ingenious, if disgusting.
Hours later, we’ve peeled the basilisk’s hide from its body, chopped the legs and head off, and are about to execute the second part of our bloody plan.
“Ready?”
At my signal, Alistair opens the window. Immediately, there’s a shadow followed by the crunch of talons seeking purchase on the exterior. Briar throws open a second window, giving me my opening.
I heave the chunks of lizard out the window. A meaty slap draws the raptors away.
“Grand,” Alistair says. “Now for the hard part.”
We throw the rolled-up hide down the passageway, but it keeps getting stuck. I keep having to kick it free. By the time we reach the platform where Queen Isadora first let us into the castle, evening has painted the sky in vivid shades of orange.
Fucking great. Getting out of here at night is going to be nigh impossible. Maybe if I was fresh, uninjured, and alone, I could do it. But whether we stay another night or leave now, we’re as good as dead.
Alistair’s plan had better work, or we’re fucked.
“What do we do now?”
Briar surveys the landscape of tangled thorns below like the queen she soon will be.
“We go down that wall, and drape this disgusting thing over our heads to fool any passing monsters into leaving us alone,” Alistair says.
Which will work splendidly until we reach the vine forest again and have to hack our way through with a dull axe.
“Better move. Those harpies won’t be satisfied for long.”
Alistair drops down the wall first, leaving me to devise a harness for the lady. I loop the rope, eyeing her figure to try and get it close to the right size. Her tiny waist flares gently into lush hips. I’d like to say I avoid looking at the pillowy rises of her breasts, and that I’m not tempted to run my thumb along the bottom curve, but I’m only a man. I’m tempted. I resist as best I can.
The real test comes when I hold open the loop and bid her to step in. She’s tied her torn skirt up, leaving her legs exposed. She presses one hand on my shoulder for balance and steps through the makeshift harness. I frown at the sight of blood on her shin.
“What happened to your leg?”
“The harpy’s attack. It’s only a scratch, mercifully.”
Our faces are close.
“Listen to me, Princess. No harm will ever come to you again. As long as I’m alive, not one monster, whether human or beast, will so much as displace a single hair on your head. Understand?” My words come out fiercer than they should, a low, protective growl. Her eyes widen.
It would cost me my life, if I were to lose hers. But that isn’t why I said it. Or why I mean it with every fiber of my being.
Her lips turn up in a faint smile. That gorgeous mouth brushes my cheek with each syllable, as soft as a butterfly’s wings. My chest turns warm.
“Does that include your beastly friend?”
I yank the rope tight around her waist. She gasps.
She knows I can’t protect her from him.
She glares and settles into the double loops, one below her bottom, the other at her waist. Twisting her long hair into a knot, she ties a ribbon from her sleeve around it and glares at me. “You’re not as awful as you’re pretending to be.”
“You don’t know me at all, Princess.”
Her blue eyes narrow. “What are you so afraid of me knowing about you, Killian?”
“What’s taking so long?” Alistair shouts, breaking the spell before I can respond.
“Coming down now,” Briar calls out, but she hesitates, holding onto my shoulder and perched awkwardly on the wall. “I see your loyalty to the prince. I wonder what he’s done to deserve a man like you.”
She lets go of my shoulder and clambers over the wall, somehow managing to make the awkward move look elegant. Then she twists to look at me over her shoulder, waiting for my signal.
The image of her in profile against the evening sky will be seared into my memory forever.
I wrap the rope around a balustrade and lean back. Slowly, carefully, she drops over the side. Trusting me to get her safely to the ground.
A man like me.
What is that supposed to mean?
My injured forearm screams in protest.
It’s worse when it’s my turn to go down. I’ve wrapped the cut, and at least it’s on my shield hand, so I can still hook my arm through the straps, but it won’t take much of a blow. Each hand-over-hand descent is agony. I drop the final ten feet and roll.
Alistair has his hands on Briar’s waist, his lips grazing her neck. My stomach sours at the sight. He obviously can’t wait to get her into bed, and little wonder.
Briar’s eyes meet mine. Steady. No hint of desire. A mix of emotions in those crystalline blue depths I can’t quite read, but one thing is clear. She’s tolerating his touch, just barely.
A flash of rage makes me want to grab my friend by the collar and throw him off her. I promised her I would never allow harm to come to her. A stupid thing to say.
I’m the worst kind of idiot. Briar doesn’t want me; she wants a knight in shining armor to save her. She is no different from the maidens who throw themselves at my feet begging for rescue.
My armor isn’t gleaming silver. I’m the black sheep of the knighthood, barely accepted among the royal guards, whose rules I ignore outright. As long as Alistair has my back, I can get away with disobedience.
I need to push them together as hard as I can. Not let myself be tempted by the idea that I can keep her for myself. She’s not for me.
Kicking open the rolled lizard skin, I wrinkle my nose.
“Smells like shit,” Alistair says, then glances apologetically at Briar. If she notices his cursing, she doesn’t seem to care.
“Get used to it.” I’ll be washing the stink of dead basilisk off my body for weeks. Foul lizards.
“We’re going under that?” Briar asks skeptically.
“Got a better idea, Princess?” I heft the skin, using it to conceal the weakness in my arm. My wound shrieks in agony. The shield is hooked to my back alongside the bow and arrows. I use the butt of my axe head to support the wet skin. Once it’s been cured and tanned it’ll be worth a fortune. But first, we have to get it, and ourselves, out of the forest.
Alistair and I hold the skin draped over our heads. Briar, being shorter, walks between us, carrying the pack without protest. I imagine her staring at my shoulders. My ass. My cock persists in making the trek needlessly uncomfortable. At least the basilisk’s stench obscures her floral scent.
Gods, I’ve never met a woman whose very existence ties me in knots. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I grit my teeth and march forward.
To my astonishment, the vines part with a noisy rustle at our approach.