Finally I found my voice.
“I need to speak with the prince.” I turned over my shoulder to get one last glimpse of him before she dragged me around the corner.
He hadn’t seen me; I was sure of it. I was too far away. He looked so commanding up there. So regal. I could have kicked myself for not realizing it before; now that I had seen him for what he really was, it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I have a very important message for him.”
“Of course, of course,” she said, warmly. “My name is Lisette. I’ll bring you right to him.”
I was so relieved that I had to stifle a sob. So relieved, in fact, that I felt tears spring to my eyes. I realized I was absolutely terrified, so uncertain and so confused, but now I was going to see him. Thank goodness.
But as we moved away from the great hall, the maid’s demeanor seemed to stiffen. Her face gave away nothing, except for the occasional cold glance from the corner of her eye. Her grip on my forearm tightened and went from helpful to hostile. She wasn’t guiding me. She was all but dragging me. Once again, my instinct said what my mind could not.
Run.
Run.
Run.
“On second thought,” I said, stopping short, “I need to get back to my cows. I’m a farmer’s daughter and it’s calving season, you know. I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble.”
When she turned to face me, the kindly face had transformed completely. The warm, bright, blustering maid was gone. The set of her jaw was firm, her lips pursed and nasty. It was as if she had aged a decade in an instant.
She seized my arm brutally and yanked me around the corner into an open-aired courtyard garden. Without even having to think about it, I knew it was a sinister place—every plant was ruthlessly groomed, sterile and solitary, everything planted in horrible symmetrical rows and grids. It was the garden of someone with an icy heart and no love for the messy beauty of nature.
Whoever planted this garden didn’t know how to love at all.
The maid shoved me forward and I stumbled out into the white-bright sunlight in the center of the courtyard. And before me stood Queen Patara, with a poisonous oleander flower behind her ear.
“So you’re the bastard’s little cocksucker,” she said, looking me up and down like a pig being auctioned for slaughter.
The what? I backed up instinctively, but the maid blocked my escape, holding me from behind with one hand on each shoulder. Her hands felt so strong and cold, they were hardly human.
“I’m…. Please,” I stammered. “I’m just…”
Confused. I’m so confused…
The queen stared at me for a long moment, while my heart pounded so hard, I could feel it in my eyes. Then she removed the oleander flower from her ear, crushed it up in her palm, and said, “Take her.”
And just like that, the guards dragged me away, screaming.
Chapter 14
Randal
Once I left the great hall, I booked it back to my quarters as fast as I could—one single hour away from Iris was way too goddamned long. Showing myself to the court had gone well, way better than I had expected, but the whole thing was still utterly fucking surreal. Felt like some other world, some other life. And I was hungry to get back to the world and life I knew, the world with Iris that I had fantasized about for all that fucking time.
But as I came around the corner to go down into the side stairway to the dungeon, I found Erik slumped on the ground. There had been a scuffle, that much was clear, and I doubted his attacker had come away unscathed, but Erik’s throat had been sliced open and his eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling.
I felt total fucking disbelief for one half-second, followed by all-encompassing rage. Those motherfucking monsters.
Anger gave way to panic. Iris. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Goddamnit,” I growled from between gritted teeth, taking the stairs down to the dungeon two at a time, with my heart pounding. The door at the bottom was wide open. I ran inside, fully fucking expecting to find her dead on the ground as well. But the place was empty, undisturbed.
Except that all of the clothes I’d left for her were gone.
Rage blinded me; it narrowed my vision like a fucking mist. I slammed my hand on the table, making the buckles of the restraints clatter. With my fingernails digging hard into my palm, I sucked a breath through my fist and forced myself, fucking forced myself, to calm down and think clearly. This was homicidal rage, no fucking doubt about it. If I didn’t get control of myself, I’d be ripping every palace guard limb from limb to get to her. When it came to her, it would be mass murder first and questions later.