21. Briar
Killian follows me out into pandemonium.
“Shit,” my knight breathes, drawing out the word as he moves in front of me. I cling to his back, trying to figure out what’s going on.
People in fancy dress dart this way and that, shrieking in fear. The terrified orchestra players have broken ranks, dropping instruments in their haste to flee. One stalwart musician valiantly attempts to wrestle his enormous bass through a maze of strewn chairs and music stands. I wince when his foot lands on a violin.
A spray of broken glass decorates the ballroom. A tail lashes. Seconds later, two uniformed royal guards poke spears at a huge gryphon as it darts forward. It rears back on its leonine legs. Talons screech across a shield.
Alistair shouts and runs at it, his sword held high. I flinch, cowering against Killian. He slips one arm around my waist.
“Shouldn’t you help him?”
“And deprive Alistair of his chance to prove his courage before his people?” Killian shakes his head. “He’s been wanting an opportunity to demonstrate his monster-hunting prowess for years.” He catches my eye in a sidelong glance that feels like our own secret, unspoken language. “It’s the brave prince who defeats the monster and rescues the princess in fairy tales. Not his dark knight.”
I smile at that, though I’d rather flee than remain here. Only Killian’s stalwart presence keeps me from running, too.
“I’ll bail him out in a few minutes,” Killian adds when the creature advances with a peculiar hopping slash. The half-lion, half-eagle moves with lethal, unpredictable grace.
Seeing the gryphon from behind the protective shield of Killian’s back, I’m startled to realize that a small part of me finds beauty in its ferocity.
Then the beast whips its head around to stare directly at me and my newfound curiosity expires on the spot. Cringing, I take a step back.
A wall of guards with long spears advances, but it’s focused on me. My lips part in wordless warning, but nothing comes out. One soldier scores a direct hit. A scream dies in my throat. The gryphon roars as blood flows down its side to mingle with the broken glass. It catches a guard with one talon and sends him crashing into a marble column. The man moans but doesn’t get up.
Killian edges forward a step, pushing me behind him, when it again swings its head in my direction. Its taloned foreclaws tap menacingly against the gleaming ballroom floor. Closer.
It’s coming for me.
Alistair lunges. The gryphon emits an ear-shattering shriek and pounces on an attacking guard. Its beak closes around the man’s neck with an audible crunch.
I cover my mouth, gagging.
“Time to make our exit, Princess.”
Killian manacles my upper arm, the same way he’s gripped me when he’s angry at me for flirting with him, with fierce urgency. The stroke of his thumb on my inner arm fizzes my blood. A dirty vision of me bent over, manacled this way, while he drives unrelentingly into my?—
The gryphon stops attacking the guards and stares directly at me.
Frissons skitter over my skin.
That thing isn’t coming for me. It’s here for me. It sensed my turmoil, and came to…protect me?
Before I can do anything more than gasp at the implications, Alistair’s sword hacks down on the back of its neck. The beast is, listing to one side. I cover my mouth with both hands, gagging. Guards drive spears deep into its belly. It cries out once more in that shattering scream and falls to the floor, dead.
Alistair, flushed and breathing hard, buries his sword in the gryphon’s jugular for good measure. He leaves it there, quivering, and stalks over to us, his face a thundercloud.
“Where have the two of you been?”
The men glare daggers at one another.
“Safe,” Killian declares. “You ordered me to protect your bride, and so I did.” He glances at the dead gryphon. “Congratulations on your kill.”
He’s right—I’ve never felt safer than I did with Killian’s head between my thighs—and yet his answer cuts all the way to the bone. I’m a dalliance for him. An obligation.
I forgot that in the heady success of seducing him.
But he still means to turn me over to Alistair at my wedding the morning after tomorrow. I have one full day to convince Killian to take me away from here. The ceremony will be held at midmorning on the day after.
How can I prove to Killian that I’m worth more than any castle when it would mean spending the rest of our lives on the run?
No safety. No children.
An ache blossoms next to my heart at the thought.
I have nothing to offer him but my face and body. I’m a liability. A burden. If monsters will trail us wherever we go…then there is no future for us. The one I hazily envisioned is impossible.
Seducing him isn’t a game anymore. This is deadly serious. I cannot let him leave me. The prince will never let him stay.
Alistair glowers fearsomely at me. Killian moves between us.
“Why assign me to guard her if you don’t trust me?” He jerks his head to indicate me, hovering behind him. My heart breaks a little for their fractured friendship. He will feel the loss keenly, even if he can’t bring himself to admit it.
“It’s. A. Test,” Alistair grinds out. “One you are both failing.”
“Of what?” I push Killian’s arm aside and insert myself between the two feuding men, heedless of onlookers. Despair makes me reckless. “Killian’s loyalty? You shove us together for a few days and then decide we’ve betrayed you, whether or not it’s the truth, thus proving that no one really cares about you?”
He recoils. I keep pushing.
“Isn’t confirming your worldview just an excuse to cut off the only man who’s ever truly called you friend?”
“Briar,” Killian says in warning.
“We’ll discuss this later, Rose.” He points at the dead monster, then at his knight. “Get that beast out of my ballroom while I have a word with my bride.”
Killian turns his head as if to spit, but he restrains himself and stalks away to do as he was ordered. My heart sinks. As long as he is bound to the prince by a sworn oath, he cannot be mine.
Alistair grabs my chin.
“You are not the obedient, empty-headed little princess I was expecting.”
I jerk away, but he quickly backs me against a column only a few feet from the fallen guard. An observer might think he’s comforting me after a terrifying experience, but Alistair is the terrifying experience. I glimpse the storeroom where I spent a quarter hour with Killian and am swamped by a wave of longing.
“I don’t know where you got that notion, Your Highness. I’ve been fending off entitled royals for my entire adult life.”
An ashen undertone shades his reddened face. “I earned you.”
“We both know you didn’t.” Killian did. I don’t say it out loud, but I think it at full volume.
He grips my arm. This time, no fantasies of being bent over flicker through my imagination. “I want your word that you will remain faithful to me.”
“As soon as our vows are spoken, I will be yours in every way, Alistair.” Outwardly, at any rate. My heart is my own. “I expect the same courtesy from you. No mistresses.”
“Agreed.”
The glint in his eyes tells me he’s lying. I’ve seen him do it so many times that I recognize the way he lights up when he thinks he’s getting away with something, like a naughty schoolboy.
I, however, am not lying. I speak the truth. He will have my body once I have promised it to him and him alone. But I have no intention of ever speaking those vows.
The prince thinks he can coerce me, seeing as persuasion hasn’t worked.
From the corner of my eye, I watch Killian dive into the work of field-dressing the beast. He’s divested himself of his jacket. His muscles flex as he applies a large knife to the gryphon’s belly. Entrails pour out onto the floor. The few remaining aristocrats flee, covering their noses. I breathe shallowly to avoid the smell. The prince’s nose wrinkles in disgust.
Sadness at the sight of a huge beast being butchered on a ballroom floor takes me off-guard. I edge closer to the corpse, gently stroking its feathers. The fearsome eye stays open, staring straight at me. Its wickedly curved beak hangs open. The gryphon doesn’t look so different from the harpies.
They’re only animals, left behind by the fae when they retreated to the sky to escape our cruelty. There’s a certain beauty to its sheening feathers.
One way or another, I must convince Killian to take me away from this palace of nightmares. Where we’ll go, I don’t know, but I cannot remain here.