Chapter
Twenty
Galantia Present day, Deepmarsh Castle, Malyr’s personal library
emongrass.
That was the note I had detected on Malyr the day of the feast, light and sweet, like a springL breeze on a warm afternoon. The one that seemed to contradict his scent of winter morning, wafting around a small library just as much in conflict with my expectations.
Clutching the fabric of my dress, I looked about a room cast in warm hues of red where the morning sun filtered in through a maple tree that stood outside the massive window. I wasn’t sure how I’d pictured Malyr’s personal space to look like. Strewn with skulls, torture instruments, and glass jars containing the tears of his enemies, perhaps.
Certainly not appointed with a large oaken desk that stood between window and hearth, with a threadbare quilt hanging loosely over its chair, as though the prince sometimes suffered mundane discomforts, like cold drafts on windy nights. Potted lemongrass stood in one corner, some tops cropped short, with a knife lying right beside it. Stacks of books rested here and there between a flickering black candle and a wax seal.
Behind it all, a set of gilded doors led to Malyr’s private rooms, easily recognized by the violent clashing of pottery and wood beyond it, the animalistic sounds that shook me to the bone. He was raging, hurting like he’d hurt me.
Something I’d expected to give me a sense of recompense before I would leave this place for good. Instead, a strange heaviness loomed over my heart. The thought of having cost Malyr his escape had been a comforting one. But that I had actually killed his brother?
A boy who’d never wronged me?
It felt terrible.
“What’s the deal with his brother, hmm?” Beside me, Sebian rubbed a palm over his red-rimmed eyes, his lips strangely gray, his cheeks dusted in patchy black stubble. “Explain it to me, because my head is throbbing and nothing makes any fucking sense right now.”
“When I was a child, there was that young Raven who’d escaped the dungeons,” I said. “All this time, I thought it was Malyr, but as it turns out, it was…”
“Harlen.”
“Harlen.” I allowed that name to linger on my tongue for a second, allowing me to taste the bitterness of what I’d done. “The guards tried to catch him. I didn’t think and just… pushed at a basket of apples. They rolled across the ground. He stepped on one, stumbled, and hit his head on a rock. There was a lot of blood coming from his head. I killed him.”
“An apple.” Sebian frowned at a row of bookshelves, mouth agape, then slowly turned his head just enough to give me a strange side-glance. “What a vicious killer you are, indeed. Do yourself a favor, sweetheart, and just stay quiet. I hear them coming.”
Time seemed to drag to a standstill until the side door finally opened.
“Please come inside.” Captain Asker entered, his spine as stiff as his unmoving features, merely offering me a dip of his head before he positioned himself near the desk. “Prince Malyr will be with us shortly.”
Captain Theolif followed, the dark stubble on his usually sheared head matching the one on his face, examining me from head to toe as though to make certain I still possessed both. Next came one of our chapel priests I recognized from mass for reasons I couldn’t fathom, who clutched his green robes tighter than I clutched my dress. And then… nothing.
Nobody else aside from the six Tidestone soldiers, who quickly carried in three heavy trunks.
They lowered them to the floor, the coins inside clanking in lieu of Mother’s frantic yelp upon our reunion, Father’s questions of my well-being, or whatever other noises loving parents usually made.
Not that I knew.
The soldiers left.
I forced a full inhale into my lungs, driving out that heaviness until my spine uncoiled. What had I hoped for? For Mother to come through that door and hug me? I could count myself lucky that Lord Brisden had sent such treasure as a sign of goodwill, making certain I would leave here today. Wasn’t that enough?
When one of the double doors shifted, I lowered my gaze, but I didn’t need to see to know when Malyr entered the room. I felt his presence in the tension crackling the air, the way the light died from my surroundings, the chill that settled in the room.
It was his shadows.
They drifted around him and toward the window beside his desk, blocking the light of the sun, the warmth of its rays as they dipped the entire library in dreary gray. More terrifying were those black tendrils that slithered across his face, seeping into and rising from his skin, at times drowning one eye
in pitch like some sort of monstrous disease.
That couldn’t be a good sign… Captain Asker took in the prince’s state, bit his upper lip as if to confirm as much, then lifted his chin in the direction of the envoy. “You stand in the presence of Prince Malyr of House Khysal, only living son of our late King Omaniel and rightful heir to the throne of Vhaerya.”
A presence that caused the priest to stumble back under the mumble of prayers. Even Captain Theolif visibly swallowed as he cast a concerned look over those shadows that seemed to radiate away from Malyr, but he stood his ground.
“Prince Malyr, I am Captain Theolif,” he said with a hesitant bow. “I stand before you on behalf of Lord Brisden, and I speak in his name, so we may negotiate terms.”
My ears pricked at his choice of words. Negotiate terms? But had Father not agreed to the exchange already? Why else send an envoy? Gold?
“Negotiate?” Malyr lifted a brow, the fact that he and I shared confusion was nothing short of disconcerting. “Your lord must have mistaken me, Captain Theolif, for the terms I laid out are irrefutable.”
“The Lady Galantia in exchange for our Raven,” Asker clarified with a strong step forward as he folded his arms behind his back, letting his black-armored barrel chest push out. “If Lord Brisden wishes to see his daughter returned, you will agree to the terms as laid out by Prince Malyr.”
The way Captain Theolif’s gaze sought out mine, his brows downcast and his jaws stiff, dug a hole into my sinking stomach. Why was he looking at me like that?
“It was not my choice, my lady,” Captain Theolif mumbled beneath his breath, but it dulled none of the foreboding dread that made itself a home where my heart should have beat. Should have. “Lord Brisden refuses the return of your Raven. Perhaps you have mistaken our lord, Prince Malyr, for he came to understand the true value of your woman. How she was the key to every battle you have won, every stronghold you have taken. Releasing such a valuable Raven is not in our lord’s best interest.”
Such a valuable Raven… Realization cleaved through my jumbled thoughts, letting memories of past conversations pour out of them in a cacophony of voices. But of course… How could I have been so stupid? As his mate, Marla had strengthened Asker’s gift of visions, making her essential in all of his military strategies, hadn’t she? I’d never stood a chance against someone so precious.
Amid the shock, my gaze sought out Malyr, whose face was framed by a black tangle of shadows that darkened those eyes he held fixed on me. Hate and disappointment sat in the depth of them. Still, it would never reach the amount of hate my parents had for me. How could they do this to me? Why did they resent me so?
Malyr turned away and strolled toward the window, staring at a wreath of dried daisies that hung from a nail, the petals curled. The longer his focus remained on it, the more his shadows slithered and writhed like black snakes from his raven strands. How long until they would lash out at me once more?
“Lord Brisden also commanded me to relay this.” Captain Theolif cleared his throat. “Should you attack Tidestone, Marla will die.”
Asker lifted his hand to the pommel of his sheathed sword, but his breathing remained even.
“What does your lord want? And do not propose that we release his daughter for three trunks of coins.
“These are no mere trunks of coins. For these…” Captain Theolif gave a wave at the heavy things, “are the Lady Galantia’s dowry.”
My blood froze over. “What!?”
Sebian settled a hand on the small of my back, steadying the dizzying shift in my upper body as the floor seemed to pull out from underneath me. This couldn’t be happening. No, no, no. Not that!
“My lady, your lord father proposes your betrothal to Prince Malyr,” Theolif said with a calm certainty that turned my legs weak and wobbly. “Such a union will benefit both the House Brisden and the House Khysal. It is our lord’s hope that the alliance forged from it will allow Prince Malyr to let bygones be bygones. So we may all reconcile on past conflicts and offen—”
Malyr’s bursting laugh silenced the room and my heart right along with it. I’d never heard the man make such a sound, and that he did so now was nothing short of terrifying. The way Sebian stiffened beside me and Asker gripped the pommel of his sword harder only confirmed my shudder-inducing notion.
I set my pleading gaze on Captain Theolif. “Please, do not make me marry him. Anything but that.
Anyone but him.”
My knees shook under the weight of my body, my fears, the premise of a lifetime at Malyr’s mercy. My soul wouldn’t survive it.
“Reconcile on past conflicts and offenses,” Theolif finished as he held my stare, then he looked over at Malyr once more. “In return, you, Prince Malyr, can rely on Lord Brisden as your bannerman in your war against King Barat. We may discuss the release of your Raven at a later point.”
“No!” I shook my head so frantically, my brain ached behind my temples. “Please, I beg of you, don’t give me to him.”
Sebian gripped my arm; if to keep me from bolting or in support, I couldn’t say. Asker looked back and forth between Malyr and me, though his stare ultimately settled on me, heavy and expectant.
No, I couldn’t do this. Not him.
“A wedding in exchange for a powerful ally,” Malyr mused as he turned away from the window and lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. He looked at me with nearly black eyes, then waved his hand, gesturing me to him. “Come to me, little dove.”
Sebian clutched me tighter for a second, as though he wanted to hold on. Oh please, hold on. Save me. Do something! But he had his loyalties, and how could I expect them to lie with me?
His hold eased away with a whisper. “Don’t make it worse for yourself.”
At his nudge, I stumbled toward the desk and around, my inhales nothing but stuttered gasps that seemed to suffocate me the closer I came to Malyr.
The prince clasped my waist in a manner too gentle to be trusted and pulled me onto his lap, only for his poisonous lips to whisper by my ear, “What a disappointment you turned out to be, hmm.”
His words carved at my heart, hollowing it, expanding the void. Yes, I was a disappointment… to everyone. Gods, I’d even failed at being a political hostage.
“A powerful ally, indeed,” Captain Theolif said, eyeing Malyr warily but not daring to remark on this inappropriate position of mine. “Archers, three thousand strong. Siege weapons. Not to mention a fleet of seventy-two longships, capable of carrying eighty men each.”
“Eighty men each…” Malyr combed his fingers through my hair. Detangled my strands. Brushed them behind my ear. Gestures that would have appeared loving to any oblivious soul—like Theolif— but I understood the threat in it. Sensed how his fingertips shook. How his shadows bit at my nape.
“With such a generous proposal, how could I not forget that one of the before-mentioned siege weapons crushed my little sister’s skull during the siege of Valtaris?”
His words tied around my heart like a noose, pulling taut until it ached, the last petals of blissful ignorance wilting away at my core. That Father was responsible for that, and worse, was suddenly an
easy thing to believe. After all the accounts? Theolif’s mention of past transgressions? The very fact that Father was cruel enough to abandon me to the monster he had created?
“How could I not forget that your lord had my ravens feast on my brother’s corpse to keep from starving?” Malyr continued. “That I drank from the guards’ piss cup? Chewed the moss off the walls?
Eventually ran out of corners to shit?” Malyr’s shout had my heart lodge somewhere between my ribs. “That he aided King Barat in the near annihilation of my people? The scars he left on me?” His lips scathed the shell of my ear where he whispered, “That his whore daughter killed my brother.”
I shuddered. It was all true.
Every.
Single.
Barbarity.
Of course, Captain Theolif denied none of it, and merely offered another bow. “Prince Malyr, if I —”
“You came here to insult me by offering nothing!” A burst of shadows cast the room into near darkness at Malyr’s shout, chilling the air by several degrees. “Let me adjust Lady Galantia’s value to the terms you proposed.” His warm hand shot beneath my skirts, and his hot whisper broke against my temple. “I should have done this much sooner.”
“My Prince,” Asker shouted. “Please recon—”
A yelp erupted from my chest even before I fully registered the pain, like a knife stabbing into my center, sending one cramp after another to ripple across my abdomen. Malyr thrust his fingers into me as deeply as my body permitted. They jerked, scraped, and jabbed with a violence that turned me nauseous, leaving me a little more cracked, a little more broken.
And a lot more worthless.
Malyr retreated his fingers and lifted them, a thin string of blood clinging to his glistening knuckle
for everyone to witness.
Nobody was looking.
Asker stared at the ground while Captain Theolif and the priest turned their backs on me in the same way my parents had. Only Sebian’s gaze lifted some, his posture stiff and his teeth barred, but it never reached mine.
Malyr placed his lips by my ear. “Now I rendered you worthless.”
The burning cleft in my heart bled into my ribcage. Yes, I was worthless. Never wanted, never loved. And how could anybody love something so deranged? So broken?
I looked into his pitch-black eyes, my throat strangling tight. “No matter how much you want to hate me, it’ll never measure up to the loathing my father clearly harbors for me. You think you rendered me worthless? Don’t flatter yourself, Malyr. I was born worthless.”
