Chapter 18

The room is modest, the simple wooden bed made up with crisp, white sheets that smell like starch.

“White?” I rasp, staring at them. “But Bahari’s color is blue …”

Finished turning them down, the barmaid smooths the new folds into place, averting my gaze. “Tradition, Mistress. They’re meant to showcase the evidence of a maiden’s broken virtue should somebody break in and try to …” she clears her throat, a deep blush pinching the apples of her cheeks.

Force their way between my legs.

A blunt reminder that I’ve sold my body to a complete stranger.

“Right,” I mutter bitterly. “Of course. What a silly question.”

“Is there anything else you need at the moment?” She fluffs the quilt draped over the end of the bed before sparking another lantern. “Can I draw you a bath?”

“I’ll sort myself out.” I offer her a small smile, suffocating under this thick oil of unease lining my chest cavity. “Thank you.”

She bobs a curtsey and turns to leave. The moment the door snicks shut my attention drags around the room again.

I don’t dash to the latrine to ease my overburdened bladder or begin running the bath, despite being covered in dirt, sweat, spume, and a mix of unfamiliar scents. Instead, I slide under the bed, running the tips of my fingers around the edges of all the floorboards until a splinter pierces me. I pare it back, snap it free, then wiggle out and tuck it beneath my pillow, sucking the swell of blood from my pinky.

Vanth caught me off guard. I refuse to let that happen again.

Inspecting the windows, I find them all sealed shut, bar the one in my washroom—high up and too small for most people to fit through. I leap off the latrine and take care of my business.

Twisting the tap, I fill the big brass tub, standing beside it as I watch the water tumble. I release a heavy sigh, my scratchy eyes, achy feet, and the twinge of pain in my lower back nothing compared to the bone-dead weight of my exhaustion.

Stripping down until my bare skin is exposed to the kissing steam, I move to the stone sink and grab a bar of soap, looking up at the small mirror hanging on the wall.

Frosted with fog, it reflects a blur of tan skin.

I lift my hand, swiping it across the glass, gasping at the reflection staring back at me—

Opaline skin …

Iridescent hair …

Glimmering freckles …

Crystal eyes that break my heart.

Cracks weave across my skin, peeling off to reveal the caustic blackness nesting below the surface.

A figure steps up behind me. Robust. Statuesque.

Beautiful.

Him.

The soap falls from my hand as I stare into lifeless eyes I don’t recognize.

“Rhor—”

He moves closer, and I swear I can feel his mighty presence pressed against my naked back. Can feel his powerful arm weave around my waist, hand threading between my thighs as he grips my throbbing heat.

I shudder, the sound snipped as a silver blade is whipped around and set upon my throat, dragged sideways in a brutal slice that cuts my voice and breath.

Blood gushes free, painting my bare breasts in a spill of red ribbons ...

I blink, shattering the illusion, heaving.

It’s just me. Just his lie reflecting back at me—hair a wild mess, tanned from all the sun, more freckles dashed across my nose than normal.

I’m going mad.

I sob, insides lurching as I fold to the side and grip the latrine. My stomach convulses, vomit bursting from my trembling lips. My tongue aches by the time I’m done, stomach muscles spasming. I use some tissue to wipe acidic residue from my mouth, then toss it down the hole, pawing at the onyx jewel clipped around my neck.

Snarling.

I grip the latch with both fingers, tugging, making sure it’s tightly fastened.

“Fuck you, Rhordyn.” I shove to my feet and stare at his lie in the mirror again, pinching my face as though I’m pinching him. “You got what you wanted—me out of your way. You don’t get to haunt me too.”

I spin, lift my leg over the edge of the bath, and dip my toes into the scalding water. A shiver travels all the way to the back of my neck.

Toohot.

I close my eyes, focus on the unwanted hug of my tight skin, and press the sole of my foot flush against the brass, sucking a sharp breath as the heat nips at the sore on the back of my heel—like rubbing salt in the peeled wound. Hissing tight breaths, I thread my other foot beneath the water and lower myself.

Every scrape riddled across my skin flares with a blaze of sting, but I force myself to endure the pain—the heat—until everything from my clavicle down is raw and straddling that fine line between hot chafe and blistering burn.

Easing back, I lean my head against the brass as the scald loses its edge. A droopy comfort takes over my limbs and mind, turning my thoughts sludgy and slow, my blinks getting heavier, longer …

I see them—broken, bloody, in pieces.

Staring.

I feel warm blood tacky on my hands. See its polychrome shine, born from the swing of an axe while my mother watched on and screamed.

My brother’s.

Gasping, I jerk my head off the side of the bath, eyes popping open.

The bath, now warm like my brother’s blood, makes my entire body shiver.

Fuck.

Groggily, limbs heavy, I clamber out, almost tripping over my own feet before I wrap myself in a towel and wring out my sodden hair. Pulling the door open, I step into the bedroom.

Breath catching, I still.

Cainon stands before the fireplace, hand perched on the mantle, staring into dancing flames.

My heart lodges in my throat as I spot my sack sitting on the end of the bed … open.

“Vanth told me that Rhordyn refused to let you go.” My gaze darts to the back of his head—the sketched undercut grown out so much I can no longer make out a pattern. “I’m wondering if it works both ways.”

“What do you mean?”

Cainon turns, eyes chips of ice, and my gaze drags to the bunch of black fabric held in his white-knuckled fist.

Nostrils flaring, I take in the faintest hint of Rhordyn’s scent that still hits like a punch to the chest, knocking my heart into a spin.

I bolt my feet to the floor and resist the urge to leap forward.

Snatch it.

He tosses the slip through the air, and it lands in a flutter on the floorboards between us.

Silence.

I hold his stare for a few thundering heartbeats before calmly taking a step. I pick up the slip, fingers clawing into the precious silk as I peel my eyes off him and inch toward my sack—as if these slow, soft movements will take the edge off this moment’s sharp significance.

Cainon sighs, and I look up to see his eyes darken. “I told you to tug out those roots, Orlaith. But you’re so determined to cower in his shade.”

I pause, hand tightening around the silk. “Cower?”

He prowls toward me. “Yes.”

I spin—calves flush against the wooden bed frame, the slip held against my chest like a shield.

“You have everything right here, staring at you,” he says, arching over me until I’m forced to fall back against the mattress as his eyes dip to the pillow slip. “But your hands are too full to accept it.”

Heart in my throat, I scramble up the crisp, white sheets, but he cages me in with strong arms planted either side of my head, knee notching between my spread thighs, making my skin burn.

I gasp …

He looks so big and powerful above me like this, and the towel separating him from my nakedness suddenly feels so thin.

He leans close, lips skimming my ear. “What did he do to get so far inside your head, huh?”

I open my mouth, close it … Realize there’s no way to explain without airing out my weakness like a still-stained shirt fresh from the wash.

Since I began seeing Rhordyn around the castle a few years back, he’s been a punishing presence trying to push me out the door. Telling me to get out and live, like he was furious with me for not spending my heartbeats the way he deemed appropriate.

But with all that pushing, all I felt was a pull.

He’d drift into the room and I’d fall into his gravity. He’d glance in my direction and every cell would feel pinched by his perusal.

When he touched me on that balcony beneath a fall of rain, it felt real, but not. Like there was some sort of veil separating us that held a deadly significance.

Truth is, I fell in love with a ghost. Now I’m gone and still ... haunted.

Cainon’s hand threads through my hair, gripping, gently tugging until my head is tipped as the residue of my thoughts thump through my body. Make me ache.

Face hovered above mine, Cainon looks down from beneath the lusty crush of heavy lids. “Did he fuck you, petal?”

The crass words are a purred attack, reeling my mind back to the feel of Rhordyn’s fingers skirting around my entrance …

Pushinginto me …

I throb, hips threatening to grind against the memory, choking on the fragrant scent of my arousal.

My cheeks heat.

Cainon’s brow shoots up.

“No,” I rasp. “He did not fuck me.”

“So, if I took you right here, right now …” He eases his other leg between my thighs and forces them wide. A gasp slips free as my bare core is exposed to the fire’s licking warmth. “You’d bleed for me?”

Bleed for me …

The words slap me.

My face hardens, and for one thrilling moment, I picture myself pulling that talon free from my open sack, pressing its lethal length against his throat, and asking him the very same question.

Part of me wants to, just to see the look in his eyes.

I set my hand against his chest and shove, snatching his wide-eyed stare as he rears back, frowning. “Yes, Cainon. I would.”

The words are absorbed by the sudden hollow between us. A chasm of his own creation.

I’m here, keeping my promise, while he’s dangling his over my head like a line of bait.

Perhaps he’s under the illusion that simply being his High Mistress is enough to satisfy me. That he’s giving me everything Rhordyn didn’t and therefore, I should be grateful.

Truth be told, I couldn’t give two shits about the title. About the pleasure his lusty eyes promise me in spades.

I want those ships.

All the heat snips from his stare, and he eases off the bed. “Fuck, sorry …” He grips the bridge of his nose and digs through his pocket, flipping a tiny, weatherworn scroll through his fingers. “Not that it’s any excuse, but I’m on edge,” he says with a burst of nervous laughter. “If you can’t already tell.”

My curiosity cranes her neck.

“What’s that?”

He looks between me and the scroll, then holds it out. “Rhordyn’s headed to Bahari to retrieve his ships. Payment for his prized mare.”

He ... what?

I leap off the bed and snatch the scroll, scanning the tiny scripture, then once more—slow, hungering over the slanted curves and delicate flicks in a way I know I shouldn’t.

His writing.

A dainty scrawl so at odds with the man it spilled from. I’m not sure why that makes the organ thumping in my chest ache, but it does.

I stop myself just shy of running my thumb across the parchment, feeling the dent of each syllable scratched into the surface.

He’s coming for the ships.

Unease wrestles with my insides as I realize there’s a high chance I’ll be forced into his proximity at least once before he leaves …

Shit.

“While he’s here, he’ll be searching for weaknesses.”

I look up, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t remember the last time he bothered to visit my territory,” Cainon continues, stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his gray leather pants. “He could’ve sent someone else. The only reason he didn’t is because he’s seeking signs that you’re not here of your own accord so he can use the law that protects people against extortion to his advantage.”

“I don’t follow ...”

Cainon snags the parchment and rolls it into a perfect little scroll. “Since Zali and Rhordyn publicly announced their allegiance at the ball, I’ve been outnumbered. The Eastern Territory of Rouste is almost the size of Ocruth, and Zali’s army is savage, forged from blistering dunes that are near inhabitable. Together, they’re a formidable match I have no hope in standing up against, and I don’t know what their plan is. I just know it’s something.” He pauses, pocketing the scroll. “I’m a bug beneath his boot, Orlaith. You give him a reason to believe you’re not here because you want to be, and he’ll put his foot down—use his pretty new alliance to destroy me and my people.”

I shake my head, thinking back to the most recent Tribunal—to the people who went to Rhordyn with cupped hands and ache in their eyes. “He has no need for extra land to manage. He’s having enough problems as it is.”

“But that’s just it. The jungle that separates us from both Rhordyn’s and Zali’s territories is thick and dark and riddled with Irilak—a natural Vruk deterrent. It’s safe here, and people are starting to notice. I’m packed full of refugees arriving on trade ships daily while the people that choose to stay behind are being slaughtered.”

I chew on his words, trying to find a comfortable space for them to settle inside me.

Rhordyn thinks Cainon is seeking to shift the borders through a territory war, and vice versa. There’s so much finger pointing that it’s literally costing lives.

Cainon’s palm grazes my elbow as he steps close. “He’s always been bigger, stronger, better than the rest of us. The fact that I’m his people’s salvation is twisting him up. I can see it.”

I look from his hand, now wrapped around my arm, to his eyes—wide and beseeching.

“You give him the faintest reason to believe I’m holding you here against your will before you’re officially released from his guardianship and he’ll exploit it. He’ll use my own ships against me and that war neither of us want will fall upon our doorstep. That, Orlaith, is why he can’t have the ships until after we’re coupled.”

I see the sense. His words are easy enough to follow.

But it doesn’t stop a frown from buckling my brow.

“Then why take such a risk on me?”

A broad smile makes it all the way to his eyes. “I saw something I wanted, and I had to have it. Damn the consequences.”

“Seems a bit shortsighted.”

“Quite the opposite,” he murmurs, grabbing my face with both hands, warm and all-encompassing as he looks right into me. “Let me save you ...”

There’s nothing left to save.

I almost say the words aloud. Probably would if it weren’t for his hand now trailing down my neck, my arm, all the way to my bunched fist. One by one, he pries my fingers free, until Rhordyn’s pillow slip is tugged away. Then he’s stalking toward the fire.

“Wait.”

He stops and looks at me over his shoulder.

I approach, throat cinched as I take the slip, hand tightening to the point of pain. Like that same hand just bored through my ribs and grabbed hold of my heart.

Don’t think.

Just do.

I force my fingers to ease their desperate clutch … and toss it at the flames, gaze fixed on the wild blue flare in Cainon’s eyes, like he’s desperate to watch that little piece of Rhordyn burn.

I turn from the scene, knowing that if I don’t, I’ll drop to my knees, screaming and digging through the embers until the flesh melts off my hands and my skin finally reflects that of my unsuspecting victims.

Cainon wants me to be his perfect High Mistress? Fine. I’ll play the part. I’ll earn those fucking ships. But if either he or Rhordyn use me to spark this political tiff, they’ll find themselves at war with me.

And unlike them, I’ve got nothing to lose ...

Not anymore.