Renick
It’s been four days since the feast, and I’ve seen Seravyn exactly twice.
Both times in passing—once being led down a corridor by a cluster of seamstresses, once across the great hall flanked by courtiers, her face painted into that porcelain stillness she wears like armor.
Both times she didn’t even look at me. Both times I told myself it was because she couldn’t, not because she wouldn’t.
I’m not sure I believe it anymore.
I’ve relived our kiss so many times, pulling at the delicate seams of it, trying to find a thread I missed. It was passionate and fervent and perfect—leaving me wanting more, needing all of her—but maybe I misread something.
She told me she’d come to me.
I’ll come to you, she said, her mouth still warm from mine in that alcove. She said it like a vow. Then the feast ended and the hours bled into dawn, and I sat in that dusty library until the candle guttered out.
And she never came.
I waited until the cold crept in through the high window and the dark turned gray. I told myself a hundred reasons she didn’t come. She got caught. She couldn’t get around Isolde.
But underneath all of them, a darker thought has been brewing. That she simply changed her mind. She came to her senses. She remembered what she is and what I am—a princess and a fool, a bride and a jest—and she decided the kiss was a mistake.
But here’s the thing: I’ve been a fool my whole life. I know how to live with it. What I don’t know how to live with is the not-knowing. This ache that’s curdled into something close to anger, this fear that I imagined what’s between us.
Now it’s three days until the wedding.
Three days until I stand in a crowd and watch Sera marry the vile man I came here to kill.
Anxiety is a dark pit in my chest. I have to see her. I don’t care what it costs me. I have to see her before they put a gold crown on her head and a ring on her finger and seal her into that monster’s bed forever.
So I go looking for the one person who might help me.
I find Isolde in the servants’ corridor behind the princess’s chambers, a basket of folded linens balanced on her hip. She sees me coming, and her whole body goes tight, her eyes cutting down the hall in both directions before she grabs my sleeve and hauls me around a corner.
“Are you mad,” she hisses. “What are you doing here, jester? If you’re seen near her chambers—”
“I have to see her.”
Her ire deflates. “You can’t.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but you cannot go anywhere near Sera. No one can.”
My brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
Her sigh is dejected. “She’s been confined to her chambers, Ren.
” My name drops heavy from her mouth, and the use of it sparks a wick of fear.
She’s never called me anything but jester.
“Under guard. By the king’s order. She hasn’t been allowed to leave her rooms since the night of the feast except for the fittings, and even then she’s watched. ”
Dread ices my veins. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Isolde’s eyes flick away. “I don’t know the whole of it,” she says warily.
“Sera won’t talk about it, but something happened after that feast…
” She sighs. “The bloody king has gone mad, that’s what I think.
He’s keeping her locked up tight until the wedding.
He doesn’t want her out of his sight.” Her mouth twists around the words like they taste foul.
Real fear washes through me, that someone saw us together in that alcove. That Sera is now being punished for our rash actions. But no, if that was the case, then surely I’d already be a dead man.
My hands have curled into fists at my sides. The old, familiar heat is climbing the back of my neck—the one that walked me into a throne room with murder in my blood, the one I felt at the feast with a glass shard biting into my palm.
Despite anger flooding me, there’s a breath of relief. It wasn’t her choice not to come to me.
Isolde looks at me. Really looks at me, like she’s reading the pages of me—and whatever she finds in my face makes her exhale slowly.
“You have to leave here, Ren,” she says.
And I understand that she doesn’t just mean this corridor.
“I’m not leaving her,” I say, and there’s a finality in my voice that keeps her from pressing the matter.
“I know you care for Sera, but—”
“Which means I’m going nowhere, Isolde. Now.” I step closer, lowering my voice. “Are you going to help me see her, or am I going to have to do something rash that will likely get me killed?”
For a long moment she just studies me, this sharp-faced woman who has been Sera’s shadow for so long, who carries her loyalty like a blade. I can see her weighing it. The risk. The cost. The thousand ways this will end badly for us all.
Isolde shakes her head, and something in her expression softens by a fraction. “You truly are a fool,” she says, but there’s no venom in it.
“For her, yes,” I confess.
She sets the basket down on a shelf.
“Help me see her,” I say. “Three days, Isolde. That’s all I have before—” My voice cracks, and I hate it, but I don’t stop. “Before the wedding.” Before he takes her.
Isolde stares at me. Then she looks down at herself, at the plain gray of her dress, and lets out a breath that’s half a curse.
“The guard on her door is named Halmen,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
“Young. Impetuous. Spends every coin he earns at the brothel.” She reaches up and unpins the top of her bodice, tugging the laces loose, shimmying the neckline down until the swell of her breasts pushes high.
She fluffs her auburn hair loose from its knot.
When she looks back up at me, she’s transformed, replaced by something soft and inviting.
“Go to the library,” she tells me, all business despite the display. “The one she sneaks off to, I know you know where.” She gives me a look. “Wait there, and don’t let anyone see you on the way.”
I hesitate before leaving. “What are you going to do?”
Her smile is sly. “Something I may regret.” She jerks her chin toward the corridor. “Now go, jester. Before I remember I have sense.”
I catch her wrist before she turns away. “Thank you, Isolde.”
Something like warmth flickers across her face. “Don’t thank me,” she says. “Just don’t do anything brash to hurt her.” Her eyes harden. “And if you do, know I’ll do far worse to you than any cruel king.”
I believe her completely.
With a lopsided smile, I nod. Then I depart to the library, my heart in my throat.
I wait in the dusty dark, pacing the length of the dead queen’s shelves, and every minute stretches into an hour.
I count my own footsteps. I run my thumb over the spines of books I can’t read.
I think about Sera’s face that first day in the throne room, the way her smile cracked through her sadness like the first thaw.
Then the door opens.
And she’s here.
Sera slips inside and closes the oak door behind her, and for a moment she just leans against it, her eyes finding mine across the room.
She’s in a simple lavender gown, no crown, her dark hair falling loose.
And gods, the sight of her undoes me the way it always does, the floor tilting, gravity giving way, everything in me sloping toward her.
I cross the room, eating every bit of distance between us. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” she breathes.
I reach for her. My hands find her face, her jaw, and I tilt her head up and just look at her, drinking her in, this woman I’ve been half-convinced I imagined. “I waited,” I say, rougher than I mean to. “After the feast, I waited all night. I thought—” I swallow. “I don’t know what I thought.”
Her hand rises to cover mine against her cheek. “Ren, I promise I wanted to come. I swear it on Morrishan. I tried.”
What Isolde told me comes back to me, and I’m almost afraid to ask, but I need her to tell me the truth. “What stopped you?”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes drop.
And that’s when I see it.
The collar of her gown has slipped at the shoulder, and in the pale light of the window, a bruise is apparent against her skin, at the swell of her breast. The ringed imprint in the shape of teeth.
The world goes very quiet.
Her throat works on a hard swallow. “Ren—”
But I’m already searching her, pushing her other shoulder down, finding the scatter of dark, finger-shaped marks down her collarbone.
My vision blazes red at the edges. “He did this to you.”
It’s not a question. It’s a demand scraped out of me raw and painful.
She tries to pull the bodice up. “It looks worse than it is.”
I catch her wrist to stop her—and she flinches, a sharp hiss of breath, and I look down and push her sleeve back. Her wrist is a ruin of bruises. A perfect, livid bracelet of fingerprints sunk into her skin.
I know exactly what kind of marks these are. And my body is a riot of violence.
“What did he do to you, Sera?” I demand. “Did he—” I break off, the words tasting like ash.
The heat that’s been climbing my neck for days finally crests, and it’s well past anger. The rage erupting inside me is a clash of fire and ice as it breaks my chest in a dark growl. “Did he force himself on you?”
Her beautiful eyes sheen with fear, with worry. “That’s not what happened.”
I’m barely hearing her, my blood roaring in my ears.
“Ren, please. Look at me.”
I’ve backed her against the door, moved her aside without realizing, reaching for the handle. To leave—to commit a far more diabolical act than one of simply murder.
I want him to feel pain, to suffer.
Sera takes my face in both hands, forcing my eyes to hers, and her voice is low and fierce. “Stop. Look at me, Renick Ashbourne. He didn’t do anything like that, just… You will not do anything to him. Do you hear me? You cannot.”
My fist meets the oak, my jaw clenched so tight it aches.
My eyes close as I breathe hard, breathing in her scent, reining my anger in for her.
But I know I’ll find him. I’ll find him tonight, and I’ll put my hands around his throat and I won’t stop until I’ve choked the last, vile breath from his lungs.