Chapter 80

We were going to kill a king. That knowledge had stayed with me the entire ride home in the cart, preventing me from seeing or enjoying the sights of the Kheanian capital. I'd been taught to be biddable, graceful and a model of femininity, but instead… We were going to kill a king.

"I must leave you for a while," Selene said once we reached the safety of the temple. "There is much to do. I can have one of the postulants take you to the gardens, or the library if you wish?"

"Yes, please."

I answered without thought, not even specifying which, but Selene merely nodded. I don't think I moved from the spot in the temple foyer until a postulant took me by the arm and directed me to the gardens.

The perfectly formal beauty of the temple grounds was protected from the public eye by a high wall, but it didn't make me feel any safer. When Selene had brought up the plan, it seemed too unrealistic to even consider seriously but then we met with Desiree. Roan and the others had come stumbling in to tell me what I could and couldn't do, which hardened my resolve. Without them to provoke me, all that was left was a frozen sense of disbelief. I stared at a perfectly pruned topiary of red roses and then the sweeping branches of a willow, but didn't really see them, not until she stepped forward.

"There you are." Giselle, her name came to me eventually, the cruel expression of the king's mistress making it easier to recall. "Been out doing good works, have you? Not that it will help. Never put much stock in the idea of an afterlife myself." She made a show of regarding a statue of the goddess nestled in a flower bed. "Though I imagine such a thing would give you solace right now."

I watched her hand rise, saw those perfectly shaped nails and elegant fingers, rings laden with gemstones adorning each one, only to come to rest on her neck. It was a movement I knew well, taught to me as a genteel form of flirting. It brought the eye to the elegant length of one's neck, but what I saw there made me blanch. Purplish bruises ringed her perfect throat.

"The king gives me so many gifts." She wiggled her fingers as if aware the gold and jewels shone in the sunlight. "But none more precious than these." Her fingers tried to fit the marks around her neck, but she did not have the king's reach. "He can't always bring himself to give them to me, but when he does…" She let out a sigh as if she'd received a king's ransom in jewels, not wretched bruises. "He's always so worked up, riding the edge of pleasure and pain as he's forced to bring me with him." She dropped her hand with a flourish. "It's a pleasure you'll know soon enough."

"No." Giselle watched my throat work, as if trying to dislodge the feeling of icy fingers wrapped around it. "No, I won't."

"They all say that." She sauntered closer, the train of her beautiful dress trailing behind her. "No, no…!" She imitated a pained cry. "Don't, stop!" Her fingers flapped helplessly through the air. "My father will…" As her breath sucked in dramatically, mine stuttered in my chest, air not coming in or going out. "You think you're special, just like each one of those princesses did. You think somehow the position you were born into makes you exempt from such things."

She drew closer, looming over me as her keen eyes stabbed at my flesh.

"You think your title, your bloodline, your training or the people you think you have in your corner will prevent this from happening, but…" Giselle smiled slowly. "It won't. It never will. Not you or the princesses that will no doubt come after you. I'll make sure of it."

Her hand wrapped around my wrist and that touch broke the shell of passivity I was locked within. I jerked it free, glancing down at the red marks on my wrist, then back at her.

"What has the likes of you to do with anything?" I stared at the woman much more closely now, summoning a critical voice I rarely used. It was my mother's voice, my grandmother's, all the powerful women at court as they surveyed the wives of ambassadors or visiting lords and dissected the way they dressed and carried themselves. "You're not highborn." That was confirmed in the way she wore all of her jewels, rather than allowing one signature piece to take centre stage and declare her wealth and taste to all. "You're not even from money."

The daughters of wealthy merchants observed my every choice of cloth, jewellery and hair styles, when we were in women only spaces and I was allowed to remove my veil. They hungrily took in all of the details and advised their dressmakers to adopt each one, using their father's money to appear more refined than they were, but this Giselle didn't even have the benefit of that. Her dress was beautiful, but it was also too much. Too much lace, too much beading, too many jewels sewn into the brocaded fabric, but she twitched those folds with a frown, as if sensing my analysis.

"No, I'm not." She crossed her arms, straining the tight seams of her bodice. "Just a low born girl from the stews of Cheapside. One pretty enough to catch a duke's eye, then a king's, but whatever I lack in good breeding, I make up for in good sense. He never meant to kill the first princess he was supposed to take as wife."

"What?" I studied her perfectly cruel face, searching for evidence of lies.

"I was to be one in a long line of disposable girls. Stripped, fucked, then my neck snapped with no more effort than one might a chicken's, my body tossed on the dung heap along with all the other horse shit."

She tilted her head sideways and then made an ugly sound.

"But as I said, they breed us smarter in the shitty end of town." Giselle pulled away from me, scanning the garden. "If the king likes to ride a girl, hurt her and kill her, why should it be me to suffer that fate? My mother taught me tricks in the brothels to… get a man where he wants to go when his time runs out."

She shoved her fingers upwards, then gave them a wiggle, but my stare of incomprehension just made her cackle.

"That murderous impulse leaves him when he blows his load, doesn't it? But girls like you don't know anything about that." Her hands were clasped under her chin. "You're all perfect and pure and ready to be bred like bloody sheep." Her teeth glittered as she smiled viciously. "And if you're all determined to act like ewes, why not die like one?"

It took everything in me not to step back as Giselle advanced.

"I teased His Majesty a little too much last night, pushed him right to the edge. He muttered your name over and over as he squeezed my throat. It makes me come so very hard, all of the blood seems to leave my head and rush to my nethers. My field of vision started to go black and I sucked what air I could in, right before I forced him to finish. He cursed me out, drew his hand back to smack me fair in the face, before he came back to himself, but I consoled him."

She bared her teeth at me but they looked then like fangs.

"He'd be able to ride you to his satisfaction, not one person coming to your aid as you scream and scream…" She reached out to touch me with a fingertip. "Until you can't scream anymore."

I jerked out of her reach.

"You're mad," I snapped. "Completely bloody mad. Why would you stir a man's demonic passions? Why would you subject yourself to this treatment? Why would you want another woman to experience what you endured? You could help me and then I'd—"

"No." She shook her head. "I couldn't. There is only one of two choices to be made and that's either you or me. I choose me." All pretence at smiles was abandoned. "I choose me every time a princess walks in the door. Enjoy your last days on earth, praying and being pious. It's not the way I'd spend them, but perhaps that's the real difference between you and me. You're a little sheep." Her nail stabbed into my chest, feeling like it cut through my corset and dress. "And I'm a wolf."

My hand slapped down over hers, my thumb finding the space between her knuckles and pressing down until she was forced to jerk her hand away.

"And a wolf without a pack doesn't survive winter." I stared into her eyes. "Whereas I belong to one that's strong and stable."

After Giselle was gone I would stare at my hand and wonder how I dared do such a thing, but right now my fingers shot up and did their best to press into the bruises on her throat.

"If you gain such pleasure from being choked, then you should hope to die this way," I growled. "Gasping on the king's cock, because if it is just you and I in a room? I will not make your end so pleasant. I wouldn't take the time to give you such a fatal pleasure, rather I'll shove you out the window, making sure your broken body ends up on that dung heap."

Giselle was taller than me, had more weight, more knowledge than I did of fighting. Stormarian women were schooled to be genteel, not brawlers, but right as I questioned my own sanity, a woman cleared her throat conspicuously.

She looked like what I needed to, standing tall in well maintained black leather armour, her long brown hair pulled back in a loose plait. Her hand went to her sword hilt, caressed the grip idly.

"Apologies for the intrusion, Your Highness," the woman said. "I am Rose. Sister Selene sent me to fetch you."

The conversation with Giselle was well and truly over as far as I was concerned, so I grabbed my skirts, ready to whirl forward, when Giselle gripped my arm. Her fingers found the bruises the king had left with unerring accuracy, her lips twisting as she heard my hiss of pain.

"Don't go betting on that, Princess. The ones that came before you? Some were smart, tough and fast. One was even trained by a race of women warriors who cut one of their breasts off so that they might use a bow with more accuracy. Each one of them died as the king rutted her and…" Her smile widened. "And I watched. I'll enjoy seeing the light go out of your eyes."

"Giselle…" Rose's low growl spurred me to jerk my arm free. I wasn't afraid to admit an ally sporting a sword made me feel secure enough to do so and my feet crossed the flagstones quickly, not stopping until I reached the other women. "Fairly sure the king will be missing your presence right now. The chambermaids will be waiting for you to step in and redirect his loathsome attentions back where they need to go."

"You dare call the king loathsome?" Giselle asked, spinning around.

"I dare a whole lot, as you well know." As I gazed up at Rose I watched the woman warrior smile, challenge evidently in every line of her body. "Now, off you go."

The fact my mother had left out something crucial in my education, became apparent, because rather than argue, Giselle swept past, nose stuck in the air as if she was a fine lady.

"You said Selene sent word for me?" I asked Rose.

"She will." The woman shrugged, her smile now impish. "Especially when she hears I'm here."

"Rose…" Selene swept into the gardens, her resolute composure fractured for the first time since we'd met. She blinked when she saw the two of us standing together. "Someone said that Giselle was here?"

"I rid your temple of its vermin." Rose pulled away from me, moving to stand before Selene and drop down to one knee, as a knight might. Just like a knight, I realised, as she took the sister's hand in hers and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. "I get rid of all of your problems." Then she let out a sigh. "And add to them." She pulled a message scroll from her jerkin and handed it to Selene. "I bring word from your father."

"In my office," Selene said, then looked past Rose. "We're about to embark on the next step of the mission, I'm sure of it."