CHAPTER TWELVE #3
He said nothing, but that was answer enough. I laughed, and the sound came out genuine, which surprised me.
“Of course you want to.” I shook my head as my entire body echoed the laugh that was still leaving my lips. “Gods help you, Corvin. Gods help every man in this fucking room because we all want to fuck her.”
I walked over to her then and grabbed a fistful of her hair, not gently and not slowly. My fingers closed around a handful at the nape of her neck, and I pulled her forward with the kind of grip that didn’t ask for permission. She came with it because she had no choice.
Lance made a sound that was short and cut off.
I caught it in my periphery, and I also caught the way the color left his face, the way his throat worked, his eyes cutting sideways to Agravaine and Tristan and then away.
He was anxious about what would happen next.
And I couldn’t blame him for it. I couldn’t blame him because I understood his feelings.
We’d all cared for Lioran in our own ways, some of us more than others.
And Lance had taken Lioran under his wing, just as I had.
It wasn’t an easy thing to stop caring for someone, even when that someone was revealed to be a liar and a spy, an enemy.
So, yes, even though I noticed Lance’s apparent concern over my treatment of her, I didn’t blame him entirely for it.
Agravaine wasn’t concerned, though. Not at all.
In fact, he appeared to be fairly jubilant in my rough treatment of her, barely bothering to mask it.
His pale green eyes were bright with glee, the kind of bright that had nothing generous in it.
It was the satisfaction of a man watching someone else’s humiliation and finding it inordinately delicious.
And Tristan? I couldn’t read Tristan’s expression. He just stood there, as blankly as a page.
I thrust the white-haired witch forward so she was standing directly in front of Corvin. Close enough that if he’d had his hands free, he could have touched her. I kept my grip in her hair and tilted her head back at an angle so Corvin had no choice but to look at her face.
“Someone has fucked her,” I said.
My voice was easy. Conversational.
“She won’t say who.” I looked into Corvin’s eyes and watched them. “Mind you, her king has asked her. Not once. More than once. But she won’t tell me the fucking truth.”
I glanced down at her.
She was looking straight ahead. Not at me and not at Corvin. But at something in the middle distance, her jaw set, her breathing controlled.
“If you won’t tell me, then tell him,” I said.
Nothing.
“Tell him who it was that took your innocence.”
That was the moment she chose to look at me, as much as she was able to turn her neck while my fist was still stuck in her hair.
“It’s none of your fucking business.”
Her words came out level, without any tremor and without any heat. It was just a flat, clean statement.
I released that fistful of hair at the same time that my other hand connected with her cheek. The crack of it was loud, and her head went sideways. She nearly fell against me and instead had to stabilize herself against the rail of the bed.
STOP! YOU WILL NOT HARM HER!
The dragon’s anger and its voice exploded inside me.
Suddenly, pain cracked against my ribs like the dragon had punched me from the inside, and the tattoo moved, writhed, a slow horrific ripple across my chest and up my spine.
I had to catch my breath and could feel the weight of all the eyes in the room on me.
I smiled because the dragon couldn’t do a thing to stop me from doing whatever the fuck I wanted to do to her.
Yes, it could momentarily cause pain within me, but that pain was fleeting.
In truth, there wasn’t a fucking thing it could do to stop me.
I could harm her however I wanted, and the fucking dragon could only stand there and watch.
Yes, it could try to overcome me, but I’d already proven I could fight it back. I could hold it if I needed to.
SHE IS OUR MATE! YOU DISRESPECT HER! OUR TREASURE!
I ignored the fucking thing.
DO NOT—
Ignored it still.
The absolute helplessness of the beast thrilled me in a way I hadn’t anticipated. All that ancient power, all that terrible hunger it carried for her, and it was trapped. Caged behind my ribs while I did exactly as I pleased.
“Disrespect?” I laughed. “Would you like to see true disrespect?”
It was only when I saw the confused expressions on Agravaine and Tristan’s faces that I realized I’d spoken aloud. I shook my head and laughed my words off.
YOU WILL NOT HARM HER! The dragon howled.
I let it howl.
Corvin’s eyes had gone dark. He was looking at her cheek, which was glowing red with the imprint of my hand.
I tilted her face back toward me with two fingers beneath her chin.
“Again,” I said softly. “Who was it that fucked you?”
Corvin moved.
He got half a step before Agravaine and Tristan had to restrain him, and the sound he made couldn’t be described in words. It was something guttural, something that came from the part of a man that lives below the throat, in the place where the things he actually cared about were kept.
I looked at him and laughed. “What you wouldn’t do for your shadows now, eh?”
“You sound like a king unhinged, Arthur,” he spat the words at me. “Why the fuck do you care who fucked her?”
I felt my eyes narrow. “I will tell you why I care.”
Then I breathed in deeply. “I care merely because it’s a mystery I haven’t solved. Do I care about the actual act itself, the slaying of her maidenhead? No,” I lied, and the dragon bucked within me.
“I care about the fact that I have demanded an answer repeatedly. Yet, every time I do, I don’t fucking get one.”
“And you will never get one,” she said.
I turned my anger back to her, but she didn’t wince away from me. Instead, she held her ground, and those violet eyes burned inside her face just as they always did whenever she looked at me.
“Just answer him,” Corvin said to her. “Tell him the truth.” He was now pulling against the two men holding him, not frantically but with the kind of steady, purposeful strain of a man who wasn’t panicking but who was planning, who was simply waiting for the grip to loosen by one degree.
“No,” she insisted. “I will not.”
Lance hadn’t moved. His sword was still in his hand, half-raised. He’d been holding it like that since I’d hit her, the blade angled up, and he was very quiet. It was the quiet that comes just before a man either acts or doesn’t. I hoped he’d make the right decision.
I returned my eyes to Corvin.
“Well, it appears our prisoner is not in the mood to speak. But perhaps there are other ways we can encourage her?”
His jaw was locked as I walked a slow half-circle around her, keeping her in my periphery, watching him watch her without letting himself watch her. It was a remarkable exercise in self-denial. I was almost impressed.
“She’s a whore, Corvin.” I said the words conversationally.
There was no heat in them, no theater. Just the flat delivery of a stated fact.
“She’s Merlin’s daughter, and she arrived in my kingdom wearing a man’s face, with the sole intention of gutting everything I’ve spent years building.”
I paused, allowing the words to sit. “She deserves considerably worse than this.”
His jaw worked.
“She deserves—”
“—she deserves what I decide she fucking deserves.” I stopped walking and looked at him directly. “You forfeited your vote on this matter when you chose the other side.”
Silence.
I let that comment breathe for a moment, and then I looked at her.
“I am no fucking whore,” she said.
“Guin,” Corvin started and shook his head, telling her, in effect, to be silent.
At his use of her shortened name, something in me began to burn. Whether it was the dragon’s reaction or my own, I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. I came as close to her as I could and said nothing, just let the anger burn through me as I glared at her. In response, she spat in my face.
The silence afterward was absolute.
The warmth of her spit landed on my cheekbone, just below my eye, and tracked slowly downward.
I didn’t move, and I didn’t raise my hand, didn’t attempt to backhand her. I didn’t even step back. But Lance stepped reached out and gripped her by the shoulder, walking her away from me, as if he was afraid I’d cleave her in two. Part of me wanted to.
Instead, I stood exactly where I was while the spit traced a path down my face, and I let the whole room watch me stand there and not react. Then I raised two fingers and wiped it away.
OUR MATE BARES HER TEETH. AS SHE SHOULD!
I looked at her: at the way her chest was rising and falling in short, sharp movements that she was fighting to control, at the brightness behind her eyes that wasn’t only anger but something more. And I looked at the pulse in her throat that was hammering visibly.
She was terrified, and she was furious.
She was extraordinary.