Chapter 88

Where the hell were they?

I watched the knife Silas had given me fly through the air in a perfect arc, the point slamming down into the old chopping board the temple cook had given me. I'd hung it from the back of the door to stop myself from damaging it each time I threw the knife. And why was I doing such a thing?

Several days had passed since I heard from the four men who claimed me as their mate, longer for Creed. I gripped the knife handle tightly and then wrenched it free with a frown before stalking back to a spot closer to my bed. Where the hell were they?

In the absence of someone to ask, my mind decided it had the answer. Arik, Roan, and Silas were taken by the king, their stupid plot discovered. Gods, maybe they were just thrown in a cell as a possible threat to the king's plans. Perhaps Creed was dead in a ditch somewhere. Mother always talked about people being dead in ditches. Or what if he'd been shot by a hunter while in his wolf form. My hand wrapped so tightly around the knife I could feel the cool metal and smooth wood's grain. I shook my head, squared my stance, and tried to remember everything Silas had told me.

His lips moved, saying the words, but I wasn't hearing them, just the sound of my own heart beating as I traced the shape of his mouth in my mind's eye. That full bottom lip, the way his mouth twisted into any number of sardonic smiles, then that last one. When his eyes lit up from a curious light, his grin unpractised and real. I couldn't remember what I'd done to earn that, but I remembered the way it looked. Teeth flashing, followed by a low chuckle, I was caught in the moment, whole body quivering as I held that knife, just in time to watch that smile be obliterated entirely.

The executioner's axe, poison, an arrow between the shoulder blades, a sword in his side, his horse stumbling and then throwing him over its head, catching him by surprise before he landed in an ugly pile, the sound of his neck breaking forcing me to blink. My cell at the temple came back to me abruptly, and I looked around at the reassuringly bland space, still able to see shadows on the wall. Of Roan dying as waves of the king's men were directed against him. Of Arik being led to the scaffold. Of Creed being shot down by a long bowmen, his wolfish form fading to reveal the soft-eyed man I'd come to know. My chest heaved and heaved until finally I threw the knife. All that emotion seemed to fly with it, through the air, sent away from me by my blade until the point buried itself into the chopping board.

Well, it should've.

My aim was true, my whole body feeling like it went behind that throw, but something had queered my attempt. Perhaps the god-awful weight of everything I was feeling. I was sucking air into lungs that wouldn't inflate correctly, my whole body working as I crossed the floor, my failure some kind of sign, my heart was sure. If I could throw the knife properly, the four of them were safe. We were safe and would get out of this ridiculous situation alive. If I could show Silas that I had learned how to use the knife—

A sharp knock at the door had my eyes jerking up as I went to pick up the knife blindly. Doing anything without your eyes wide open and your entire focus on the job was stupid, and I paid a price. My fingers wrapped around the hilt and the guard, a bright flare of pain letting me know I'd cut myself. I wish I could say it was for the first time.

"Ouch!" I hissed, pushing the knife back into its thigh sheath before inspecting this injury. Just a thin line of red, I watched the blood well for a second before shoving the wound in my mouth that filled rapidly with that distinctive coppery taste, forcing me to blink as the tiny pain seemed to grow exponentially.

I sucked in a shuddering breath as I was overwhelmed. I wouldn't cry over a small scratch, I wouldn't, not when there were so many other pains looming on the horizon. Giselle had been enraptured by the idea of watching my head get cut off, and that had changed something in me. I'd watched executions happen plenty of times before. I was forced to stand by my father's side and watch the first of them when I was barely seven years old. Nothing that I had seen, however, prepared me for the ruffling of air I felt on my nape all the time, sure that now, now was the time the axe was about to fall.

"Yes?" I opened the door a crack and for a moment, those green eyes, that dark hair, made my heart leap in ways it shouldn't. I'd taken a step forward, ready to rush into his arms when I saw the much more feminine curve of her cheek. "Selene? Is something wrong? Has something happened at the palace? Your brother has sent word? Arik, Roan…? Gods, something has happened to Creed, hasn't it?"

She smiled at me, but not unkindly, because who knew a thing about longing but the sister?

"Perhaps you need to ask them yourself," she said.

There they stood. Three of them, not four, my heart noted with a wrench. My lips fell open to demand an explanation why, but words stuttered in my throat, because my eyes had control of me. They raked over Arik, Silas, and Roan, taking in their armour, their dust-stained cloaks, the dirt of the road heavy upon them.

"Lass…"

How had I forgotten how greatly I liked to hear that simple word uttered, with so much need and desperation hidden within it? Roan shouldered forward, and something deep inside me flared to life at the sight of him. Was he always so damn big?

"You…" I tried to trace every muscle, every line of him, of Silas, of Arik, as if I could store the sight of them away inside my mind, to be pulled out again and again and pored over. The fact that I was just standing there staring finally occurred to me, so I straightened up and flicked my hands down my nightgown. "You had better come in."

This was a mistake, I knew that the moment they entered my room. Selene left us to it with a slight smile and a nod, but that didn't prepare me for the sight of the three of them filling my room with the stink of horses and a cloud of dust.

"Where have you…?"

The words were out of my mouth before I could think twice as my hand jerked up in response to try and stuff them back in. Too late for that, I winced, both due to my bluntness and the stinging cut on my finger. A tiny trickle of blood had slid free, so I was forced to pull a handkerchief from my pocket and wrap it around it, right as I turned to face the lot of them.

"What's that?" This wasn't Arik, but the commander, his military bearing forcing his spine ramrod straight as he stormed over, taking the kerchief and my hand before inspecting it closely. "How the hell did you…?" He didn't wait for an answer, his head whipping around so he could glare at Silas. "This is that bloody knife you gave her. A few hours of foreplay masquerading as a lesson in handling a knife does not warrant leaving a weapon in her hands."

"So leaving her feeling helpless as she faced down a death sentence was preferable?" Silas snapped.

"Not like we didn't cut ourselves plenty when we were learning weaponry," Roan reasoned, but I ended the debate with the most persuasive of arguments. I pulled my hands free of Arik's, even as I missed the heat of his touch. It felt like it warmed me down to the bone, far more thoroughly than the fire that crackled in the grate. Instead of letting myself enjoy that, I opened the slit I'd cut into my nightdress and jerked the knife from its thigh sheath.

Now I had their attention.

Arik frowned, those brows drawing deeper as I raised my weapon. Roan grinned, his thick arms crossing his chest, but Silas gave me the sweetest of gifts. His eyes lit up with that same green fire as they followed my hand, my knife, as I threw it almost negligently towards the wall. Silas' sharp hiss had my eyes whipping around, his self-congratulatory smile echoing my own when I turned to see the blade had buried its point into the wood.

"Clever girl…" That little scrap of praise made my body flush hotter than any amount of roseblood could do. I didn't have the haze of the drug to dull anything, including the smile Silas gave me, nor that grin. I let out a tiny strangled sound, all my mother's training feeling like it was imploding by the second as he crossed the floor to stand before me. "You've been practising?"

"What else can I do?" I said, staring into his eyes, willing him to answer that question the way I needed him to. "How would you propose I spend my time, holed up in here?" I felt a pang of guilt as I gestured to the room. It was a perfectly pleasant space to sleep in and far preferable to anything the palace might have to offer. "What the hell do you expect me to do when you….?"

I blinked and blinked, my eye sockets aching as I stared at each one of them, as if they were the three suns I was doomed to orbit around and I couldn't stop looking into their bright rays. Instead, I sucked a breath in and stood tall.

"When you disappear for days, leaving me to wonder what the hell had happened to the lot of you."

Oh, that got all three of them grinning then. Arik drew closer, Roan appearing by my side seconds later.

"Were you worried about us, lass?" Roan asked, tilting my chin up and his way.

Admitting that seemed a very bad idea, so I jerked my face clear and looked at him straight in the eye.

"You're my only allies in this godforsaken country. Of course I was concerned when I didn't hear from you for days."

"Oh lass…" Arik's smile slowly widened. "That was not why. You lie so very badly for a princess, your nose twitching when you tell a falsehood."

My hand slapped over my nose, but it was reassuringly still when I touched it.

"It does not. I lied most convincingly that night at the inn."

"When you tried to escape us?" I couldn't have told you who growled that, each man moving closer, forcing me back until I was pressed against the wall, the three of them surrounding me. A hand found the slit in the nightdress, my breath sucking in as fingers traced the place where the sheath was strapped to my thigh. "Best not to bring that up again. A bad business that was."

"There'll be no need to drug us and sneak off in the night with men who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as you." Silas settled against the wall beside me. "No need for plots or feints."

"We left you to try and orchestrate the death of the king," Roan told me earnestly, those amber eyes pleading for my understanding.

"For you." Something harsh and naked burned in Arik's eyes, all traces of the arrogant prince gone, revealing lines of pain, of exhaustion, in his face. "We disappeared for days, Princess, to try to keep you safe. To stop…"

Did he mean for his hand to rise, for his fingers to flex in the air between us, all of his focus and ours on his hesitation? Did they feel a moment of relief when he finally touched me, one that was short lived? Taking roseblood with the four of them had robbed me of something because I was sure I hadn't felt every whorl of his fingertips as he slid them down my neck to thumb my pulse. He felt the rapid beat there, caught the way my chest heaved because I was suddenly breathless. I had been worrying about what the hell they were doing only minutes before, and now I couldn't help but focus on what he would do next.

My fingers twitched, wanting to clasp his wrist, just to feel his skin against mine, to hold him right where he was, but I needn't have bothered. Arik shouldered closer, a small frown forming as he loomed above me.

"To keep you safe, Jessalyn, that's why we disappeared for days. I can't send you word that we're engaging in treasonous plots." He shook his head sharply. "We shouldn't be here at all."

"So why are you?"

I blinked, shocked I'd managed to croak that out, but I got my answer immediately in the chorus of snorts from each one of them.

"My father taught me to suppress every one of my impulses," Silas said, tugging my head closer so our lips hovered over the other's. "Never do what you want, only what's smart, but I can't…" His eyes burned as he stared into mine. "I can't bring myself to do a single thing he taught me, not when I'm near you."

That little sound of surrender, of the loss of hope and the finding of it, was a perfect match for the one in my own heart, so when Silas moved closer, when Roan wrapped his arm around me, and Arik pinned me to the wall, I melted into them, into Silas' kiss. This, my heart beat, this was what eased the ache that throbbed so persistently in my chest, replacing it with a very different kind of pain.

My hands slid up and into Silas' hair, a momentary feeling of the silken slip of it against my fingertips and then just his kiss. Hungry, claiming, branding me as his, it burned into me far more intensely than roseblood.

They all did.

Strong hands tilted my head Roan's way, his kiss harder, hungrier, his small growl of desperation the twin of my own. When I pulled away to suck in a breath, Arik stared down at me.

"For you, Jessalyn."

I don't think I'd ever heard Arik say my name that softly, and his kiss was the same. Just a brush of lips at first, as if we were kissing for the first time, and in some ways, that's what this felt like. When the drugs, the pain, and the fear was all stripped away, just leaving the four of us. "Just for you."

I slid my hand around his neck like I had a right to, then tugged his mouth down so it slammed into mine.