Chapter 34

My mother was stroking my hair.

When I was a little girl, she loved to do just that, using the heavy hairbrush with the silver and mother of pearl inlay to brush through my hair in long strokes. I'd lay with my head in her lap, on the verge of sleep, with my breath becoming slower and slower. That she was doing so now, after everything that had happened, helped me drop deeper into the darkness that promised the rest I yearned for. But then she said the words that stopped me from falling too far.

"Jessalyn…"

Her voice was filled with all the affection I craved. I could feel the love throbbing there, clear and evident, though that wasn't all. Concern, worry, and just a rough edge of anxiety. Usually that meant I'd done something I shouldn't have, used the wrong fork at dinner or worn short gloves when long ones were called for. That didn't fit with what the overwhelming feeling of love that I had.

The other strange thing was that she wasn't saying my name in her usual carefully cultured tones.

"Jessalyn…"

I shifted restively, feeling like I was hovering in a sensual kind of darkness that licked at my skin, ready to swallow me down. I wanted to go down its dark throat. I felt like if I did, then it'd all stop, the pain, the struggle, the uncertainty, and the need. I'd stop. A tiny throb of concern made me wonder if that was such a good idea, but it was so fleeting that it was there and gone again the moment I felt it. The darkness remained.

"Jessalyn…"

The voice was deeper now, more resonant, vibrating toward me through the darkness and forcing it to shift, slip along my skin, swirl around me in response to currents I couldn't see.

"No, darling girl…"

Who was this man to command me so? And it was a man, because Mother's voice had completely transformed somehow, going from elegant and feminine to ragged and masculine. The words felt like they snagged on my skin, in the way that satin slippers did when I neglected to polish my feet smooth.

"Jessalyn…"

I was swept up then, picked up and swirled around by a hidden presence so immense the whole world was forced to shift and change in response to it. I felt dizzied and slightly ill, and once I noticed that, it seemed to make my guts roil more aggressively. My brow creased and I didn't like that. The more I became aware of my body, the more the darkness receded, and that didn't feel a good thing at all.

Pain, throbbing slow and steady—at a pace akin to my mother's when brushing my hair—pulsed through my head, though these regular spikes of sensation were nowhere near as pleasant. As soon as I acknowledged the pain in my head, that seemed to enable me to feel it all: in my wrists, in my neck, in my whole body. Becoming aware of it made me whimper, and my fingers twitched before catching on something very warm and very hard. I felt a need to see what it was, and that made my eyelids flutter, flutter, like a moth against a lantern's glass. But moths die when they manage to touch the burning wicks of candles, and that's what my eyes did as they flicked open.

"Jessalyn…?"

He hung over me, holding onto my arms as he gazed down at my face. His blue eyes were red-rimmed, blood-shot with a filigree of capillaries, and he stared for several heartbeats as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Arik.

His name came to me suddenly, as did so much else. Arik, rescuing me from my dress and then from the castle. Arik, leading me to the docks under the guise of being a helpful stranger. Arik, cautioning me not to drink roseblood tainted beer but doing the same when I downed mine, then sending word for his contacts—no, his men—to meet him at the tavern. And there the four of them had sat, watching me and listening to my plans of escape. And Arik had given me a bag of gold, no doubt passed on to him by their king, knowing that I'd never be able to use it.

But I had.

Even if my plan had gone spectacularly badly.

I'd given gold to Rion and his men, blithely assuming that they'd be so motivated by the promise of more that they would do my bidding and get me as far away from Arik and his bloody band of men—from Khean, altogether—as I could go.

My hand shook as I raised it, the faint rim of blood around the nails confirming my suspicion. I touched the back of my head, then winced as I felt the lump there.

"Don't touch that," he said, reaching a hand out to stop me, but I shrank back as if whipped.

"Don't."

"Jessalyn, sweetness…" Gods, that pet name made my gut, already sour, turn more. "You might not remember—"

"I do." Copping a hit to the head seemed to have done something to me because my voice no longer sounded like mine. It was like the grating of a knife on the grindstone as it was sharpened. My eyes narrowed, even though that small tightening of muscles hurt. "I remember everything." I shifted on the bed, every muscle aching. "I remember you. Letting me think I could escape, then all of you showing up at the castle gates to escort me to my fate."

He flinched at that, and I absorbed that with satisfaction.

"But then I actually escaped and you—"

"Killed every man who'd touched you." His lips thinned down to a line. "And we'd do so again, that I promise."

"Left me hanging on the rope those bastards used to truss me up like a pig carcass." I was talking the way an angry cat did when their ears flattened to their skulls and their tails whipped from side to side. "You…" My head shifted sideways and that eased the ache slightly. "You beat me."

His head whipped back at that, as if it was him that had been hit, not me.

"I smacked your impudent arse—"

"After those men had knocked me unconscious."

"I needed to teach you a lesson—"

"With your cock?" My lips twisted into the world's ugliest smile. "Was there a special message to be gained from sucking on the tip, something I could only learn from swallowing your seed?"

He stopped then, the muscle in his jaw jumping in time with my now rapid heartbeat. Those eyes were filled with the bluest of fire, right before he shook his head sharply.

"I didn't know you were hurt—"

"Not that you bothered to check."

"—but you won't be again." He nodded once, twice, as he considered his vow. "Never again, Jessalyn. No one will lay a hand on you without your permission. And if you knew how few women could say that in this country, you'd be thanking me."

"I'd rather clean my own arse with my tongue, like a cat."

The door opened then, and the others spilled inside. Roan carried a large copper bath, Creed and Silas toting buckets of steaming water. They stopped when they took in the tableau before them. As I looked at them, I realised something. I wasn't in a carriage, nor the inn, nor lying on a bedroll under a tree. I was lying on someone's bed, in a room painted palest sage green, and the light streaming in through the windows revealed a pretty rural scene beyond.

"You're awake…" Silas blinked as if he couldn't believe his own words.

"And angry." Creed frowned, looking at me, then Arik. "What the hell did you do?"

"How?" Roan stepped forward. "We just stepped out to get her bath ready and…" He shook his head and forced himself to smile, stepping toward me to sink to his knees beside the bed. "How are you, Trouble?" His smile was a fragile thing, wavering already. "You scared the shit out of us, I don't mind saying. First, disappearing like that, and second, passing out in our arms. Let's have less of that from now on, yes?"

"So you're awake." An older woman swung through the door. Her long hair was dyed a harsh red and the skin around her eyes creased as she smiled and looked me over, then turned to the others. "Didn't I tell you so?"

"You did, Mother Marian," Creed said.

"But…" She sniffed the air like an animal, then frowned. "The air in here has turned sour and not just from the stink of the lot of you." Her focus shifted to Arik. "What did you do? I told you to watch the girl, not upset her."

"I did as you asked." His response was abrupt and so was his withdrawal as he twisted away from the bed and its occupant. Those long legs had him at the door in a few strides, but he gripped the edge of the door for a second before he actually left. "I'll take my ‘stink' elsewhere, so it doesn't interfere with the healing."

"Probably for the best," this Mother Marian said, a wry smile curving her lips as he walked out.

It was what I wanted. I felt as though I could either have Arik close or I could breathe air, but not both. He made my chest tight and my lungs burn every second he was near me, so I found myself breathing much more slowly now he was gone. That didn't explain the ache in my chest, though. I frowned. It was as if my body had grown so accustomed to such a burden, that I craved it when it was gone.

"So, the bathwater…?" Roan asked.

"Put the bath down and fill it up," Marian ordered, her long, green gown sweeping across the wooden floorboards as she came closer. "I'll examine the patient, but if she's well enough to get angry with one of her suitors, I'm sure she's on the mend." She approached me with her hands held out, as if to placate a flighty animal. "I'm Marian, one of the packland healers, and I'm just here to ensure you heal well."

I drew myself up tall, something my body protested. The effect was entirely ruined by the fact that I was wearing one of my underdresses, which was stale-smelling and somewhat stained, but I nodded to the woman.

"You have my thanks, Lady Marian."

She snorted at that, sitting down on the side of the bed, then reached up with featherlight hands to touch my scalp. I let out a little hiss of pain, which had the remaining three men stepping forward, but she shook her head, making clear they weren't needed. I was glad for her intervention because I didn't want anything to do with any of them.

When I was a child, I'd come across a litter of piglets when out in the castle farm one day. All those little pink wriggling bodies had entranced me and while my governess had tried to keep me from getting close, I'd asked the farmer caring for them if I could name one. I was the princess, something they all knew, and so the pigs were my father's, by rights. That meant no one would stop me, and so I bestowed the name of Patch upon one that had a dark spot around one eye.

After that, I'd gone there every day to see Patch. I took scraps from our table to feed him and his brothers and sisters, and I watched him grow bigger and bigger. Then one day I walked into the dining room for dinner to find a red, meticulously basted, suckling pig on a platter, an apple stuffed in its mouth. Patch had joined us for dinner, Mother informed me, her eyes challenging me to make a fuss in front of our esteemed guests.

I didn't.

She'd trained me too well, but it had been a terrible shock to find out where the meat on our table came from. I'd wondered, late into the night, how it could be that farmers could spend so much time caring for animals, raising them from tiny little fragile things into adults, all the while knowing their fate.

And I found myself wondering the same about these men.

If the deaths of all the Kheanian queens was common knowledge in Stormare, then it had to be known all throughout this country. So, just like the farmer with the piglets, the four of them had to have known what fate they would be consigning me to. They'd ferried me across my nation and theirs, towards the man who threatened my life. Then, when I'd dared to try and make my escape…

"I think we need to make a few things clear." I heard Arik's voice in my head as if he was in the same room, though I was thankful he wasn't. "That she belongs to us."

I shook my head sharply. Arik's words seemed like barbed grass seeds that would lodge themselves in my skin, and I refused to allow them to gain purchase.