Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A ndrian’s grip on her right arm was both foreign and familiar.

The calluses on his hand were the same. Even in just a few short months, the feel of his skin against hers had become ingrained into her psyche, her very soul. But now, there was something … different about his touch. Something strange. Something possessive and wicked and frightening.

While Andrian had, at one point, been—or tried to be—all those things … his touch never had. He may have hidden his feelings behind a wall of ice, but his hands always gave him away.

Until now.

Mariah was dragged down the hall, her weak legs barely able to take lurching steps. Her stumble earned her a sneer from the guard on her left and a firm shove to her shoulder by the one at her back.

That same awful, gleeful smile still stretched across Andrian’s face. “What’s the matter, princess? Having trouble keeping up? Don’t tell us you haven’t been enjoying our hospitality here in Khento these past few weeks.”

The guards snickered.

Mariah only gritted her teeth, straightened her spine, and forced back the growl of fury and defeat crawling its way slowly up her throat.

Andrian led them down a long tunnel, a thin layer of melting ice coating the uneven floor. The tunnel ended at a steep, narrow staircase, the stone slippery and dripping with moisture. Andrian released her arm, taking the first few steps up the stairs in a graceful leap, not deigning to see if she followed. The first guard followed him, and the other, the one who’d shoved her before, brusquely hit her again, pain blooming in her weakened shoulder.

“Climb,” he ordered, humorless distaste dripping from his voice.

Mariah narrowed her eyes at the staircase but held her tongue as she took her first few steps.

The stairs weren’t extraordinarily high; it wasn’t more than thirty steps to the top. But the sudden, forced exertion quickly proved too much on Mariah’s starved and atrophied body. Eighteen steps up, chest heaving, she faltered, bare feet slipping on slick stone, sending her careening forward. Her knee crashed against the stone, the sharp edge of a step slicing the bare skin of her forearm.

Her entire body barked in agony. She hissed, blood already welling to her skin.

The guard grabbed her again, his grip on her arm bruising, and dragged her to her feet and up the remaining steps. “Pathetic,” he jeered in her ear. “Can’t even handle a few fucking stairs.”

At least he wasn’t holding her where she now bled freely, ruby-red droplets dotting the ground. Small blessings, she supposed.

With a grunt, the guard threw her to the ground in the corridor at the top of the stairs. Mariah landed heavily on her injured knee and arm, letting out a yelp of pain, vision spotting. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, gasping for breath on the cold floor, scraping the very dredges of what little fight she had left.

She forced a deep inhale through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. The trembling in her body slowed, just enough for her to crack open her eyes, even as blood continued to drip down her forearm and streak her hands.

Two booted feet filled her vision, spotted with scarlet. They shifted, and a large, familiar hand gripped her chin, twisting her head to meet his crushing blue stare.

“Stand up, princess. You need to be on your feet when you greet our Royal hosts.”

The lights of the room were blinding, a fierce, burning reminder of the darkness Mariah had dwelled in for the past several weeks.

She blinked blearily against the brightness—it wasn’t sunlight, but was instead the warm glow of allume , the magic harvested twice a year on the Solstices that powered light and technology throughout Onita. It’s normally comforting, magical glow was now harsh and unforgiving, and her eyes adjusted slowly.

She was exhausted and weak and defeated, but that didn’t stop the anger from sparking low and warm in her stomach, pushing into her fingers and toes, burning against the black and gold stone shackles on her wrists as she took in her surroundings.

It was a throne room. Or, perhaps, a mockery of one.

The aisles were clear, the black stone floor empty except for Mariah and her escorts. Gathered in raised galleries flanking either side of the open space were lords and ladies, the wealthy and privileged of Onita. Clothed in their richest velvets and rarest furs, they watched the girl who was supposed to be their future queen be paraded out of a dark tunnel wearing nothing more than dirty, shredded rags. Their leers and murmurs grated against Mariah’s raw skin, pulling out what remained of her pride and raking it across the inky marble floor.

But she paid those lords and ladies and merchants no heed. Her focus turned to the man sitting in a chair upon a raised dais, his thinning blond hair dull in the light of the allume , face bearing a familiar sneer. Behind him stood a second figure, also blond but with scorching golden eyes set into a face devoid of any warmth.

Heads of two of the six Royal Houses of Onita: Lord Victor Shawth, the man whose grasp on power was threatened by Mariah’s very existence, and Lord Julian Laurent, Andrian’s father, who had once promised to end her reign—and her life—if Andrian ever bonded with her.

At least she didn’t have to worry about that second part anymore. Silver linings.

Andrian peeled away from her side to stand beside the dais, a dark shadow wearing an ambivalent expression. The foul-tempered guard behind Mariah gave her one final shove, forcing her to her knees. Sharp pain speared through her as a bleeding knee met the black marble with a wet thud. Even as she bit her cheek to swallow her cry, Mariah did not pull her glare away from the lords on the dais.

She may not have her magic, but she still had her soul. And despite the brokenness she felt inside, she would not let these men bear witness to it.

Shawth lifted an eyebrow, lips twitching and watery blue eyes shining. With a cavalier wave of his hand, the crowd fell silent, filling the room with an eager expectancy. Shawth stood slowly from his seat, hands shoved in his pockets as he gazed down at Mariah, smile widening.

“Well, Miss Salis. What a difference a month or so can make. One moment, you’re the most beautiful creature in the kingdom, and the next, you’re … well … this.”

Chuckles and laughs sounded from the galleries.

Mariah clenched her jaw, sparks of hatred and rage igniting in her gut. She stared up at Shawth, letting her wrath fill her eyes, baring her teeth in a vicious, animalistic grin.

“I may not be much to look at right now, Shawth, but I can promise you still have no fucking chance.” Her voice cracked from disuse and dehydration, but she forced the words out regardless, thankful for a moment to throw back some of the hate festering in her chest.

Shawth only chuckled. “Chance? A chance at what? To fuck you?” More laughs from the galleries. “My dear, if I wanted to fuck you, I would have done so already.”

A growl surged up her throat, bitter and hollow. Laurent rose from his seat and stepped to Shawth’s side, and the rumble in Mariah’s chest died when she caught the cruel glint in Laurent’s eyes.

Her blood ran cold when he turned that cruel stare upon his son. Andrian had stood still, immobile, but his spine straightened with that look from his father, his own lips tilting up in a smirk.

Mariah’s bravado faded quickly as her eyes lurched from Andrian, bounding between Shawth and Laurent. Her strength washed away like rushing water, her anger settling into tired resignation.

Shawth sighed before stepping down one level of the dais. “No, my dear. Contrary to what you might believe, I do not want to harm you. In fact, I have brought you here, before the people who truly rule this kingdom, to offer you a choice.”

Mariah cocked her head, the matted length of her hair shifting across her back. “A choice?” She scoffed. “I can tell you right now, I’m not interested in any choice you offer.”

Shawth grinned again. “Oh, but I think you might be interested in this one. I could give you everything you’ve always wanted. I could give you freedom .”

Mariah’s heart gave an unsteady lurch in her chest, sweat breaking out beneath her palms. He couldn’t possibly know that about her; couldn’t possibly know the one thing she’d always craved. Only a few people on the continent—in the entire world—knew what she’d most deeply desired, knew the true reason she’d attended the Choosing all those months ago.

Mariah wouldn’t entertain the possibility that Shawth had learned that about her from anyone close to her. She glanced, one more time, at Andrian, pain striking her gut with every beat of her heart.

He wasn’t looking at her, but the rot of betrayal wound its roots deeper into her blood.

Her instincts had led her so astray. She couldn’t equate the man who’d once been unable to tear his attention from her to this stranger with a strangling, empty ambivalence.

With a heavy swallow, desperate for moisture in her parched, burning mouth, Mariah slowly turned her attention back to Shawth. “What, exactly, do you mean?”

Shawth hmphed, taking another step down the dais, pulling one hand from his pocket to scratch his scraggly beard. “It’s quite simple. Give me what I want, and I will set you free.”

“And what is it you want?” she asked, voice quiet and withdrawn. She held her wariness and alarm close to her pounding heart and fixed a mask of boredom on her face. Her blood still dripped down her forearm to the black marble beneath her, the sound like a pounding drum to the fraying fear clawing down her limbs.

Shawth’s grin widened, taking the last few steps. He now stood so close that she had to tilt her head back to meet his stare. The smell of his too-strong cologne burned her throat and turned her stomach as she held his bitter sneer.

“Your power , Mariah. The power of the queen. Give me that, and I will set you free.”

Everything inside Mariah stood still. Her insides boiled and froze in a constant, repetitive loop of anger and fear and thrashing distress. Her hands shook, and even her magic, though locked far from her reach, snarled at Shawth as it fought against its chains.

Mariah took another grimacing swallow and gritted her teeth. “I … I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can! For whatever reason, the Goddess gave that power to you, and you can just as easily give it back.” Shawth slowly knelt, lowering his face to hers. The barest hint of power-drunk madness swam behind his eyes, an insanity brought on after too many years of exerting ultimate control over more deserving people. “Abdicate your power and your magic, and I will set you free. I promise it.”

Mariah’s gagged magic clawed desperately against the walls of its prison, scrounging for purchase, a caged silver-gold beast thrashing against the lord’s so-called offer. She leaned into it, desperate for even the barest of connections to the piece of her that had been silent and missing for too long, using the anger of her dampened magic and the fuel it fed her battered soul.

“ Fuck. No. ” Her voice was laced with everything she couldn’t do with her body, all the hate and anger and anguish and terror and heartbreak and betrayal she’d dwelled on those past six weeks.

These men could take everything from her: her home, her magic, her dignity. But they could never have her power. Could never take something so ingrained in her soul, it wasn’t even hers to give. She didn’t know if what Shawth asked was possible, and she had no inkling of desire to find out.

Even with her firm, confident resolve flushing her skin with her racing heartbeat … she did not miss the flicker of excitement warming Shawth’s gaze at her defiance. As if he was expecting, even hoping , for this response from her. There was no anger or fear, only a subtle glee that would’ve terrified her if she hadn’t been so fucking angry.

Shawth exhaled a dramatic mockery of a sigh, leaning back on his heels and rising to his feet. He stared at her for a few more beats before turning on his heel and returning to his makeshift throne. “What a shame.”

On the dais, Laurent’s jaw was tight, eyes blazing. Flames, a gift of elemental magic he didn’t deserve, danced on his fingertips and in his pupils. Shawth gave him the barest of nods that cooled a portion of Mariah’s rage, icy fear beginning to prickle once again beneath her skin.

Laurent’s face spread into a shallow grin, straightening the lapels of his jacket. He quelled his flames and walked down the steps, heading to an alcove beside the galleries. He bent down, retrieving an object, then strode back and halted beside his son.

“Andrian,” Lord Laurent said, a cruel smile twisting his voice. “Why don’t you show our guest a little … hospitality? Something that might shift her spirits in our favor.”

The guards behind Mariah gripped her shoulders and upper arms, locking her behind them and pinning her knees to the marble floors, her battered skin screaming in protest.

She struggled weakly in their grasp, twisting just enough to see Laurent and Andrian, her fingertips digging into the skin of her thighs beneath her tattered leggings. Everything in her froze in abject, muted horror as she saw what Laurent pushed into his son’s hands.

It was a whip. A coiled length of leather, its end tipped in something dark and glittering.

Mariah’s limbs slackened, and she sagged against the guards. True dread, oily and vile, now crawled through her like sludge.

“Ellis, Konnor, if you would please make our guest comfortable,” Shawth said, his tone conversational, as if merely discussing the weather.

Mariah heard a blade slide free from its sheath, then felt the bite of cool metal against the small of her back.

But it was not there to cut her. No, with an easy slice upward, the sharp edge only slashed through the fabric of her ragged sweater before snapping the elastic of her underclothes. In a matter of seconds, the two men pinned her between them, Shawth’s greedy, watery eyes drinking in her exposed chest as her clothes dropped to the ground. Jeering and raucous calls filled the throne room.

“ The whore queen! ”

“ On her knees, where she belongs! ”

Shawth raised his hand, and the cheers fell silent.

“Seven lashes should be sufficient, Andrian. We only need to change her mind. Break her spirit, just a touch.”

The command was far away from Mariah’s ears. At the sight of the whip, at the shredding of her clothes, and the calls from the crowd, she began pulling back all of herself, retreating into the deepest and darkest parts of her soul. She wanted to find those threads of silver and gold, to cower with them away from what awaited her, but she still only felt that familiar place within her, walled in by vile black and gold stone.

Mariah simply laid her mind against that wall, curling into it, and waited for the pain to come.

She felt him at her back. She would always feel connected to him, as much as she might despise it. His presence wrapped around her, choking out her hope.

The whip uncoiling was like the sound of a million broken hearts whispering through the stars.

The first strike was the worst.

Her skin split and sundered, blazing agony ripping through her body and piercing straight to her soul, where she still hid against that wall of onyx and gold adamant. She bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood. But she did not cry out.

The second strike had her digging her fingers into the still-bleeding wound on her arm, her ears sharpening onto the sound of dripping blood on black marble floors.

The third and fourth strikes dropped her to all fours, tugging her out of the guards’ grip, panting heavily, the sound of more raucous calls filling her ears, but even as she was hauled back up, she did not cry out.

The fifth and sixth were the easiest. Her back was now numb. She focused only on the pool of blood dripping under her right hand, on the way the ruby liquid vanished against the black stone.

But she did not cry out.

When the seventh and final blow came, it hit directly over a previous strike.

That was when a sound finally broke past her lips, when she could no longer swallow the pain. When the agony dragged her up, kicking and screaming, from where she’d hidden herself in the corners of her mind.

It was a barely audible whisper, a faint brush of air through clenched teeth, but she heard it.

She knew Andrian heard it, too. Her body trembled, and she panted, but a fresh wave of fear forced her to go rigid, muscles pulling against ruined flesh. Waiting for him to react, for her punishment to come.

But … it never did. He remained motionless behind her, dropping the whip to the floor with a sickening, wet thump.

“ Seven! ” the crowd cheered, ruthless laughs echoing around the room.

Shawth clapped his hands with merry excitement. Laurent was full of calculating cruelness, eyes narrowed first on Mariah before shifting over her shoulder, to his son.

Mariah met their glares with the very last dregs of her hate, holding herself together with a desperation wrought only from utter hopelessness.

“Andrian,” Laurent said, icy voice strong above the din of the crowd. “Take our little friend back to her … room. Make sure she knows to think long about her decision today and how much easier things could be for her if she simply obliged our request.”

Hands grabbed Mariah’s arms—not the hands of the guards, but familiar hands, calloused hands, wickedly gentle hands—and pulled her to her feet.

Andrian dragged Mariah back through the throne room, pulling her towards one of the dark hallways. He tugged her down the steep staircase, her body involuntarily sagging against his as her consciousness dipped and wavered. His skin felt too hot against hers, too grating, too poisoned, but she was too weak to pull away. He was emotionless, a stranger who half-carried her through the dark, winding hallways.

The further they moved, the more her vision spotted. She bled excessively, her life draining from her starved and weakened body through the wounds on her back. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, breathing heavy and labored.

Somewhere in her haze, she let herself be pushed against the cool stone wall. She latched onto its icy stability with all her strength, fighting against her mind to keep from sliding down to the ground. Andrian left her there, and she focused her entire being on pulling air into her lungs and strength into her shaking legs.

Something was thrust into her face, something that felt like coarse cloth.

“Put this on.” Andrian’s voice was flat, mechanical.

Somehow, somewhat dazedly, Mariah remembered her torso was still bare, the chill stone of the wall a salve against the burning of her skin.

With a tremor that wracked through her damaged body, Mariah heaved off the wall, grasping the linen tunic Andrian offered her in a shaking, bloody hand. Her vision again peppered, fighting against the rising tide of exhaustion and pain. She slowly pushed her hands into the tunic, snaking them out through the sleeves.

Andrian watched her with that empty look. She released a hiss as the tunic fell around her ruined flesh. It was thin, barely covering her, and it immediately clung to her back where her wounds had so far failed to clot. The foreign touch washed a renewed bout of nauseating agony across her skin.

She rocked for a moment, panting.

Before she was ready, Andrian resumed his grip on her arm and dragged her the rest of the way to her cold, dark, disgusting cell. He unlocked the door with a small skeleton key he pulled from his pocket before roughly pushing her back into captivity.

Mariah caught herself against her soiled mattress, hair falling around her face. Her cell door clicked closed behind her, the lock sliding into place with a quiet snick . Only then did she lift her head, using the last dredges of her strength to meet his stare.

She remembered a time, not long ago, when that stare had looked at her with so much love. Enough that would have stopped hearts and ended worlds.

Now it was empty. Void of all emotion. Absent of everything that had once made him so much more than the unworthy villain he’d long believed himself to be.

Her voice was soft, but despite her failing body, it was not weak. “This is not you.”

Something finally flickered in those flat blue eyes. Something like shadow and ice and seething flame.

As fast as it flickered, it vanished.

That same unfamiliar, cruel grin spread across the face of the one she loved most.

“You don’t recognize me, princess? Of course, it’s me. This has always been me.”

He turned on his heel and left her, bloody and weak and alone.

Mariah latched onto the glimmer of life she’d seen in his eyes, ignoring his words, as she finally fell unconscious.