27. Killian
The instant I return to the archery range with Briar, Alistair whisks her into his carriage and, frustratingly, out of my sight. All of Belterre Castle is awash with grief for the dead, fortunately not as many as there were injured, demanding the skills of every available healer. The castle stinks with the tang of magic.
My mood, already foul with distaste for the way I took Briar in the forest and guilt over the way I’ve betrayed Alistair, haunts me through the halls. I finally track Alistair down in his receiving rooms.
The glass eyes of his taxidermized monster trophies mounted on the walls bore into me from all sides. There’s the hydra I defeated. The head of the dragon I slew, with its black scales replaced by replicas so I could use the real ones as armor.
I won’t tell him what Briar and I did, but I won’t let him continue down this path, either. I owe him that much.
I hate lying to him. I’d be lying to myself if I claimed that the idea that my son could be the next king, if I were to let Briar go through with this wedding, doesn’t give me a degree of satisfaction. I hate myself for it.
Some friend I am, cuckolding him. No matter how often I remind myself that theirs isn’t a love match on either side, the fact remains that if his queen is carrying my child, there would be shit all he could do about it, legally, even if the baby was a ringer for me.
And I’m a sick bastard for even contemplating this clusterfuck of a mess. Letting my dick lead me astray.
“Call off the wedding.”
“What the fuck, Kill?” Alistair kicks back in his chair, watching me pace.
“You cannot marry Briar.” I don’t know why I’m trying
“Why the fuck not?”
Because she could be pregnant with my child, and there is no possible way I’m giving her up even if she isn’t. Because she loves me, not you. Because I’m one of her monsters, and I’m going to have her, damn the consequences.
But that isn’t what I say. “The monsters will keep coming if you do. They’re drawn to her. That’s why there were so many of them in the castle where we found her. It’s why your ancestor bowed to Isadora’s pressure not to marry her, and why he did everything within his power to ensure that no one else could get to the tower and wake her up.”
“What are you saying, Kill? That she can control them?”
I can see the wheels turning in his mind. Cold realization sinks in. I’ve just handed him a powerful reason to never let her go. Briar isn’t only a beautiful trophy to display on his wall. She’s a potential weapon.
“No. I’m saying they are drawn to her. They respond to her feelings. Today, when she was scared, the dragon in the forest watched over her until I found her.”
Absently, I scratch the ropy scar. It hasn’t stopped aching. If anything, it’s getting worse. I haven’t told her my suspicions.
“That isn’t the story you gave me when you returned,” he says suspiciously, and I freeze, mid-scratch.
“Do you really want that knowledge shared with everyone in the kingdom?” I drop my arm. He stands with his arms clasped behind his back, an unconscious imitation of his father.
The beauty is a beast, and no one sees it but me. Briar is not queen material. Alistair requires a woman who can set her own needs aside for the good of the country. That’s not who Briar is.
She isn’t selfish; she just doesn’t care about courtly pretense. She was always meant to be free, like any wild thing. Caging her in this castle will kill her by inches.
“I know someone who might have an answer,” Alistair declares grimly. “Come.”
Snapping commands at me like I’m his dog. I’m reminded of the way I did the same thing to Briar today, and how she mocked me for it. A smile ghosts over my lips. It dies when I heel without protest, following the prince through a hidden panel. I can’t get away with the same behavior, but it’s tempting.
Airy lightness expands inside my chest, strange and unfamiliar.
Gods, the way Briar makes me feel seen, for once in my life, is worth any price I end up paying. To her, I’m not Kill, the knight with no honor and even less conscience, but Killian, the man who might have a hint of both. Whose heart isn’t as ironclad as I once believed.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t beat with wild rage at the idea of Alistair touching her.
The prince leads me down a concealed stairway. I’ve trekked this path on a handful of other occasions, to a hidden cell where people or animals can be held without light, food, water—or protest from the populace.
I have been the one to deliver blows, though never to a beast. Alistair was never interested in tormenting them. When he wanted monsters dead, I obliged without hesitation.
But I have done ugly things to men down here. Most of them deserved it—or so I tell myself. It was easier when I was nothing but Alistair’s killing machine. They deserved everything they got. Then Briar came along and brought shades of gray into my black-and-white life.
I don’t want to do wet work anymore.
I stop short at the sight of the old crone, Queen Isadora, in a crumpled heap on the cold stone floor.
“She showed up while we were retrieving the dead, raving about the beasts missing their rightful queen. I had to silence her, so I brought her here.”
She doesn’t deserve any more pain than she’s already endured. She shouldn’t be down here.
“Where is the Beauty?” the queen wheezes. She seems even frailer than before, impossibly ancient, and clearly in pain. Her rheumy eyes widen when they land on me. “You! You must awaken her.”
“I already did that, you stupid old hag.” Alistair bangs the bars, rattling them loudly enough to hurt my ears and startle the queen.
You haven’t awoken anything except your own powerlessness and inadequacy.
“Then why am I not dead, princeling?” She lurches upright and shuffles to the bars, her gnarled fingers curling grotesquely around them. “I should have died when I threw myself out that window.”
“You will be,” Alistair says coldly. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll get your wish. Once I have married Princess Aurora, your head will be severed, your corpse burned, and your ashes scattered to the four corners of the kingdom. I will stop the fae beasts from attacking the castle even if I have to hunt them all down myself.”
He is delusional if he believes he’s capable of killing the hordes of monsters Briar attracts. The harder he tries to possess her, the greater the destruction he’ll wreak upon the country, yet Alistair genuinely believes that marching Briar down that aisle in a white dress and putting a ring on her finger will solve all his problems.
He knows she doesn’t want him.
He doesn’t care.
No wonder he had the queen stashed down here as soon as she showed up. No wonder he intends to execute her. The only thing that isn’t obvious is why he hasn’t done it already.
Pride, knowing him. He needs to prove her wrong before he grants her deepest wish.
Absently, I rub the aching scar on my forearm. It stings and pulls as if there’s something crawling beneath my skin. There’s no relief when I scrape my blunt nails over the rough fabric. I keep doing it anyway.
It’s one thing to rip my own heart out and stomp on it, to leave a gaping hole in my chest. I’ve lived without love. I can do it again.
But I hadn’t counted on Briar’s whispered I love you. I don’t know what to do with it. But what once seemed unthinkable is now the only path forward.
Come hell or high water, I’m taking Briar away. Tonight. I’ll take her back to that castle and we’ll hide there among the monsters I once swore to eradicate.
If she’s not too terrified of them to come with me.
“Not. You.” The crone presses her wrinkled face to the bars, glaring at the prince. “Arrogant fool. You cannot break her curse, or mine. Only by embracing true love’s power can awaken the part of her that yet slumbers.”
Alistair rolls his eyes. “Do you ever listen to yourself, old woman? You rave like a senile, hopeless romantic.”
“I am not senile!” Queen Isadora protests indignantly. “I’m sharp as a tack! I had to be to evade being devoured by monsters for a century. Let’s see how sane you are after being torn apart by a harpy. Digested, shat out, and reconstituted, worse for the experience!”
I can’t say I’d have come through that experience entirely sane, either. I crouch beside the bars. She puts her back to them.
“What will happen when Briar awakens in truth?”
Did it happen today, with the dragon?
“The specifics of her curse died out with my generation. We never had all the details, what with the way Isanthia abandoned her. Their royal family urged us to send her away, too, but my fool of a son refused to see reason, just as my fool of a great-grandson won’t.”
“I can hear you,” Alistair fumes. “Your disrespect will not be tolerated.”
Queen Isadora ignores him. He’s already imprisoned the crone and threatened to kill her; he’s used up all his leverage, and she is in a mood to speak her mind. “All we ever knew was that she was cursed to be a legendary beauty, and that her curse was balanced by the fearsome fae beasts that are drawn to her.” Her eyes fasten on me. “I did not expect for you to be?—”
I lift one finger to my lips. Alistair, sulking with his arms crossed over his chest and anxious to get out of this depressing place, is too busy eyeing the exit to notice. The queen understands my silent warning and adjusts mid-sentence.
“For you to be the ones who awakened her,” Isadora finishes. “The fae gods work in strange ways.”
“Get up, Kill,” snaps Alistair. “I find your company offensive to the olfactory. Especially down here with both of you polluting the stale air.”
“I could use a bath,” complains Isadora. “Do you know the last time I had a hot soak?”
Alistair ignores her howls of protest that chase us up the stairwell. By the time we’ve reached his trophy room, her shouts are inaudible. The room is as soundproof as it is airless.
“At least give the woman what she wants, Alistair. She’s your ancestor. Do one nice thing to make up for the fact that you’re forcing her to spend her final moments in a dank cell.”
Alistair gives me an irritated glare.
“Kill, I have a smashed ballroom to repair, harpies rampaging, a dragon sighting to contend with, and my wedding is tomorrow. I do not have time for an old woman’s demand for a gods-damned bath. That would involve servants. It invites questions. I already had to slit the throats of the two guards who brought her down here, on top of all the men I lost during the attack today. If you feel so strongly that Queen Isadora deserves a nice hot treat, then you be the one to drag a tub and hot water down there.”
He smacks my chest lightly.
“Get yourself cleaned up first. That’s an order, Kill. Understand?”
Fucking prick. I turn away, but he stops me in my tracks.
“I can’t have my groomsman reeking of blood and battle at my wedding. Get your uniform polished up and pristine for tomorrow.”
Twist the knife, why don’t you.
“No.”
I can’t do it. I won’t.
Alistair eyes me sharply. “You don’t have the luxury of saying no, Kill.”
“I won’t stand by and watch you force Briar into a marriage she doesn’t want, and destroy your country in the process.”
“I can control them through her.” He clasps his hands at the small of his back. “Rose and her monsters are the key to convincing my father to abdicate. He is ill. He won’t want to go to war with the Isanthians, which is what they deserve after the way they treated my queen.”
“Alistair. Her own family abandoned her because they feared her curse. What makes you so certain you can break it?”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to break it. Besides, I didn’t bring you here to ask probing questions, Kill. Your assignment was to watch her until I put that ring on her finger. As of now, you have approximately fourteen hours of duty owed to me. Eight of those hours, you’ll both be asleep.”
I scrub my face and heave a sigh of frustration.
“You want that castle, don’t you?” he says.
Not as much as I want the woman. But I can’t say that. Words are tripwires, and I’m constantly stumbling into traps when I try to argue.
“Yeah, I want the castle.” It’s the only possible safe place for Briar. For us. Instinctively, I touch my scarred arm. Alistair observes this silently. Self-consciously, I drop it to my side.
“Sensible,” Alistair says. “You’d have a difficult time continuing as a knight with that maimed arm of yours. I heard reports from your time in the training ring today. You’re still trouncing the knights, but how long will that last once they stop going easy on you?”
Doubt slinks in and curls around my psyche, constricting my ambitions like a snake coiled around its prey. Briar’s not going to elope with a damaged knight. Not when she could have a prince. Even if she were reckless enough to contemplate it, a life with me isn’t for the faint of heart.
She might think she loves me, but she was a virgin. She probably needed to tell herself that to justify fucking me.
If I can’t protect her, Alistair will drag her back here and make her life a living hell, especially if he thinks that by controlling her, he can control dragons.
My plan to steal away with her tonight unravels under Alistair’s scrutiny. He’s a bastard, but he’s cunning and determined to make this wedding happen, no matter what it costs him or anyone else.
Maybe Queen Isadora can help me find a solution. I order hot water from the kitchens and go to the knight’s quarters to take my own cold shower while they’re heating it.
I shuck my trousers and leave my belongings in a heap beside the bench and cracked mirror. I strip my shirt over my head, arms crossed to tug the hem up my abdomen, and freeze at the sight of my puckered scar. Instead of healing pink, the wound has turned deep black, as though a thick vine grows beneath my skin.
“What is this?”
I thrust my arm at Isadora. She drags my forearm between the bars with surprising strength.
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Why would you expect me to know? This is old fae magic. Our kind aren’t meant to wield it.” She shakes her head and adds, “They knew our greed would tempt us to try to use magic and booby-trapped it.”
I’m inclined to agree. Didn’t decrease the appeal. Who wouldn’t want to be more beautiful? Stronger? Faster? Smarter? More intelligent?
More powerful. We’d already out-bred the fae and hunted them to the ends of the continent. All their magic and fantastical beasts couldn’t save them from us, and so the gods abandoned us.
Belterre is a beautiful but fallen realm. Gods only know what goes on in Isanthia.
“How do I break Briar’s curse?”
“I told you; I don’t know!”
I point wordlessly to the copper tub.
“Do you want me to lie? I’ll make up a pretty untruth if it gets me into that bath while it’s still hot.”
“No, I want to take Briar and leave Belterre Castle tonight. But I cannot do that if I’m going to die.”
“I don’t know what it means, lad. We know that the prince is incapable of breaking the curse I had cast upon her all those years ago. Which means you’re the only one who can.”
I rake my fingers through my hair, fisting damp sections and tugging at the roots. “How?”
“I keep telling you?—”
“Never mind.” She’s told me everything she knows. There’s no point in questioning her further. I twist the iron key in the lock and open the gate. “There’s a clean dress for you on the guard’s stool. I’ll be up the stairs, waiting for you to finish.”
“Soap!” She raises the pink cake to her nose and inhales deeply, then scowls. “Why did it have to be rose-scented? You couldn’t have brought lavender? Or lilac? Orange blossom? Anything but stinking roses?”
I shrug. “It’s not like I went to the market especially for you. I filched it from Briar’s maids. Take it or leave it, Iz.”
I’m not even three steps up before I hear a splash of water and a deep sigh.
A smile tugs at my mouth for the first time since we left the forest. She’s half-mad, but I like her.
An hour ago, I was ready to forsake everything and steal Briar away on her wedding night. Let them hunt us. Let them try. We could hide in the forest of thorns. Reign as queen and king of the beasts.
But I can’t take her back there if I’m dying. Or worse, transforming into a beast myself.
I shove my sleeve up and study the wound like an ink stain spreading beneath my scarred skin. It pulses with the beat of my heart, pumping poison through my blood.
Punishment for touching Briar.
Worth whatever’s coming for me—but right now, I’ve got a few regrets, and a lot of unanswered questions.