Chapter
Seven
Galantia Present day, Deepmarsh Castle
eavy. Convex. Sharp.
I balanced the silver knife on the palm of my hand where I stood by the small table nearH the crackling hearth, watching how the flames reflected on the pointed tip. It had appeared along with a loaf of rye bread, cheese, and blackberries a good while ago. The latter, I’d immediately devoured. It had all been served by a young Raven girl shortly after I’d woken in this chamber—a room appointed with a large oaken bed, heavy blue drapery, and a wooden screen that hid a set of upholstered couches.
How long had I been here? One day? Three? Five? I had no idea.
After Malyr’s assault, I’d succumbed to a restless sleep, teetering between consciousness and delirium. Ones filled with hushed voices, fingers touching my throat, faces staring down at me.
And wingbeats.
Always wingbeats.
Lowering the knife back to the plate, I turned my head toward the door. The Raven girl had filled me a bath and laid out a simple blue dress—which I wore now—leaving me behind without a word spoken, and without a lock or bar thumping in place on the other side of that door.
My heart beat faster the longer I stared at it. I didn’t dare open it. Didn’t dare find out what awaited on the other side. Black-haired Ravens, undoubtedly, lots of them.
I walked over to the window beside the four-poster bed and leaned my temple against the cool pane. Even for someone who’d seen nothing of the realm, it had been easy enough to figure out that they’d transported me to Deepmarsh Castle.
Because I was in a castle.
Surrounded by deep marsh.
Miles upon miles of dark green wetlands spread out before my eyes, dotted with brown reeds, tall purple grasses, and red-tipped rushes. Soggy, cold, impassable. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I could run from this place, a coddled highborn with no idea which way lay Ammarett.
No, I needed to come up with another plan. For that, I needed to know what exactly they wanted with me. These Ravens probably held me for ransom, for I had no other value to offer that would justify the warm room, the meal, the dress.
The very fact that I was still alive.
Lorn had mentioned the escape of ‘that golden bitch.’ Obviously, she’d spoken about Mother. She was alive; a fact that relieved me more than it should, considering that they’d left me behind… My fingers wandered to my throat, brushing over those bruises that were dark enough I could see them in my reflection on the pane. They span across the entire area in broad lines, narrow tangles, and dots speckled here and there. Why had this… Lord of Shadows—Malyr—attacked me so viciously?
Not for the first time since I’d woken, I pressed down on the marbled skin. A dull ache flared up, yet I held the tension. Paid close attention to how the sensation spread, how it turned from a dull ache to a sharp twinge. It was strangely intriguing, this… pain.
At the upper edge of my vision, something dark came into view on the other side of the window. It
swelled. Grew large. Larger still.
Thud!
I jerked my head back, heart jumping from chest to throat at its next beat. Claws screeched over glass. Wings flapped. Before I could blink, the black bird disappeared from sight.
Dread stitched through my chest as I backed away from the window. One step. Two. Could have been a crow, might have been a raven. At my third step, warmth that hadn’t been there before wrapped around my back, freezing the blood in my veins.
“Beautiful.” Deep and predatory, that one word purred over the nape of my neck, quickening my pulse. “Turn. Let me have a look at my shadowmarks.”
Tense silence permeated the room for several shuddering breaths. Had I been born a boy, Father would expect me to be loyal, brave, and strong. Surely, I could manage all that without having a wrinkly organ hanging from between my legs.
Chin held high, I turned to face Malyr. He stood tall enough I suddenly found myself staring at his black tailored vest, the front adorned with a large sigil that flattened the breath in my lungs—a silver raven sitting on a skull cracked from temple to cranium, one claw curled into an eye socket.
The sigil of House Khysal?
Impossible.
I lifted my gaze to his strange eyes, gray around the edges of his irises that darkened to deep brown at the center, making his pupils appear dilated even against the light of the window. “Who are
you, really?”
Malyr stepped forward. Crowded me against the wall until hard stone bit into my spine. He lifted his hand to my sternum and ran his thumb over my throat, studying the marks he’d left with a self- satisfied smile.
“Does it hurt?” When I said nothing, refused to confess as much, his thumb pressed into one of the bruises until it throbbed, ached, sending unexpected warmth into my belly. “How about now?”
I hated how my breaths turned to panting, giving away what had to be distress. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to hurt.” His thumb pressed deeper, amplifying the pain as he leaned in, bringing his lips to my ear. “Want you to cry, and whimper, and sob.”
My voice trembled at the back of my throat, but I wouldn’t let it cave. “Why? What have I done to you? Why do you hate me so?”
“Because you’re so undeniably human, with your strands so… pale…” His fingers weaved into my hair and fisted it, pulling my head back until my mouth opened on a gasp. “It is in your gait, your gestures, the absence of even an ounce of magic. I cannot look at you and not see a human… my enemy.” He released my hair and gripped my throat, fingers trembling as they alternated between tender strokes and painful squeezes. “What’s even worse, I cannot look into those… fucking light brown eyes of yours, and not see your father.”
My esophagus jumped painfully at my gulp. “I am not my father.”
“No, you are so much better, with your skin unblemished, your soul uncorrupted, your body…” he eased his grip on my throat, letting his fingers glide over the swell on the side of my breast.
“untainted.”
“It would be in your interest if I stayed that way,” I bit out. “Where is Captain Asker? I want to speak to—”
Wings flapped, and my gaze jumped toward the door of my room, which stood ajar. A single raven appeared from the gap. The one who’d hit my window? It hopped a few steps over the stony ground before it took flight, aiming at its master.
When the bird collided with Malyr, merging with his human form in a gust of black plumes, the man’s fingers dug into my breast. They tightened just as wafts of shadows rose all around him.
Panic surged. Jutting my head back, I slinked around him, backing away from his strangling magic until I bumped against the edge of a table. A wooden cup tipped and the knife fell from plate to table with a muted clank.
Malyr spun around and closed the distance between us, pressing his warm body against mine, and… Oh gods, he was hard. “Are you scared of me?”
My throat narrowed, letting no more but shallow gasps through and into my searing lungs. “Should I be? Clearly, you need me alive.”
He ground himself against me, letting a deep moan vibrate between us and straight into my bones from there. “If you believe death is the worst I can give you, then clearly, you haven’t experienced much of life.”
Shaky hands clasped to the edge of the table, and I braced against his overwhelming nearness, the engorged flesh in his breeches. “Whatever it is you’re after, Father won’t waste a word on negotiations over a defiled daughter, possibly impregnated with a half-blood.”
“Nothing would amuse me more than to send you back home with my bastard in your belly. How fortunate you are that I would never breed with a human and degrade myself thusly.” He forced his knee in between my legs and quickly gathered up my skirts, sliding one hand beneath the fabric and
along my buttocks. “I may, however, just spill my seed where it cannot grow, and take you…” His finger pressed against my darkest hole, making the muscle clench on reflex. “Right here.”
“No!” I bucked and squirmed, slamming my hands against his chest to escape this kind of violation. “Get away from me!”
“It will hurt… I will make sure of it.” Smirking, he shoved his knee deeper between my thighs, rubbing his leg over my sex while his finger dipped into me a little, making the tight ring sting in protest. “And you shall cry so prettily for me. Right, little dove? You will give me all your tears?”
“Let me go!”
The numbing fear tingling my fingertips didn’t spare me the spikes of panic that carved a hollow in my belly. All the shoving, bucking, and writhing did nothing. Nothing but send the plate behind me trembling across the table.
That was when I felt it, the edge of the knife shivering where I grappled the wood for hold. I sent my fingertips roaming, searching. When I sensed the thick handle, I gripped it tightly. In one quick move, guided by fear and fury alike, I lifted the knife to his throat.
“Get off me, you fucking bastard!” I snarled, watching the blade shudder and quiver above a blue- purple vein flowing beneath alabaster skin. “Or I swear, I’ll cut faster than you can caw.”
“Mmm, what an unexpected but utterly intriguing offer. You have my full attention, Galantia.” A twitch tugged on his upper lip, pulling his mouth into a lopsided grin. “Do you know how to cut for the most pleasure? I do.”
Confused by his words, I pressed the blade deeper into his skin, eyes going back and forth between his unmoving stare and the drop of blood that pooled against the silver. “I’ll do it.”
“I can hardly contain my excitement. Feel…” He leaned into the blade until crimson rivulets ran down his throat, dripping warm onto my sternum as he rocked his hard cock against the junction between my legs. “You enjoy the first cut. I shall enjoy the second, and all the ones thereafter, carving myself under your skin the way your fucking father has carved himself under mine.”
An unholy tremble ransacked my hand, letting the blade stutter across his throat, leaving little cuts here and there while he didn’t even flinch. “You’ve met my father?”
“Oh, I know him… intimately. There is no cut, no bruise, no broken bone, no humiliation your father spared me.” He sneered, letting my pulse thud loudly in my ears. “Because of your father, I am a million shattered pieces, put back together all wrong. Now get that damn knife away from me before you accidentally hurt yourself. Only I get to hurt you.”
Malyr snatched the blade with his bare hand. Not a single tremor shook his fingers as he pushed it off his neck and turned it toward me. His bloodied palm slid to the handle, settling warm and slippery over my hand.
“Open your mouth, little white dove.” He forced the blade higher, placing the cold metal flat across my mouth. “Lick the blade, slowly, until it cuts into your tongue. Ah-ah… don’t turn your head.” He let one finger slip off the handle, stroking the bloody digit along my lips. “Open those pretty lips for me.”
With a slow push of his finger, he parted them. He stroked into my mouth, pulled back, stroked back in, spreading the taste of salt and metal across my gums. The blade pressed deeper into my mouth until the warmth in my belly dropped lower, infusing a strange thrill into the terror that throbbed between my legs.
The blade nipped at my bottom lip. Deepened the sting, quickening my breathing until my bosom rose and fell erratically. A whimper rose from deep within my chest, parting my lips, only to come out as a godless moan.
Malyr’s head jerked sideways at that sound, a reflex too quick and instinctual to be human, like a bird of prey who’d caught the squeak of a mouse. The motion let his black strands fall away from his face on one side, revealing a birthmark that sat beneath his earlobe.
Black. Round.
My pulse went wild, pounding against my temples until my vision blurred around the edges, focusing only on that familiar mark. I’d seen it before, but— No, this couldn’t be the boy from the dungeons.
That boy was dead.
I’d killed him!
The pressure of the knife lifted ever so slightly. “Have you seen this mark before?”
I quickly forced my gaze back to his narrowed eyes, dread pooling in my belly over how he’d noticed me staring at it. Perhaps he hadn’t seen me that day; perhaps he had but couldn’t recognize me. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t remember—he had hit his head, after all.
A strike of luck.
Because this Raven boy Father had kept at the Tidestone dungeons…? The prince? He’d apparently survived his head wound and had grown into a vengeful, vile monster. What would he do to me if he ever found out that it was me who had ruined his escape attempt?
I held his gaze. “No.”
“You father had someone needle it under my skin with ink so he may identify me should I ever escape those damn dungeons, forever leaving his mark on me.” He snatched the bodice of my dress with one hand, pulling the fabric down as his legs stepped wider apart, framing mine, caging me in.
The other hand lowered the pointed tip of the knife to my sternum, right between the area of exposed skin between my breasts. “Now, I shall leave my mark on his daughter.”
“No!” I shouted, writhing against the weight of his body. “You need me unharmed!”
“Not all parts of you. You shall keep your pretty face and precious womb. The rest, however…”
Tendrils of shadows seeped from his form, cold and biting. They wrapped around my wrists, my calves, my entire body, restraining me perfectly in place. “Shall I carve my name into you? That title your kind bestowed upon me? Lord of Shadows? Or perhaps… mmm, I think I know.”
One stab, and he cut into me.
But it didn’t hurt. Not the way he slowly dragged the blade down on my chest, letting my flesh rip open and blood bubble to the surface around the glinting metal. Not at first. No, the pain came a few seconds later, like a sharp, scorching burn that set me aflame.
“Whimper, Galantia,” he said. “Let me hear your sobs.”
I shifted and writhed, but the shadows tightened the harder I fought them, making me feel faint.
“Stop!”
“That is not what whimpering sounds like.” The blade cut deeper, all but scraping over bone.
“Cry for me, little dove, and I shall do my best to make it pretty.”
“Gods curse you!”
It was the last thing that left my lips before I clenched them shut, sealing away my screams, my pleas, my cries. He would get none of them! Instead, I breathed through the violent throb along the lines he carved into me with slow deliberation and precise movements, mind reciting the mantra of
my childhood.
Breathe in. Don’t cry, Galantia.
Breathe out. Don’t cry, Galantia.
“I shall get your tears in time.” Once the damage was done—my chest nothing but a ball of fire—
he yanked me to my wobbly legs by my bodice, and pressed his mouth to my ear where he whispered, “Run…”
His command came with a blast of plumes and shadows. Wings flapped, and the shuddering kra- kras of ravens resonated in my skull. Claws tangled in my hair, pulling and ripping, sending a wave of burning heat across my scalp. Something hard hit my skull. Tap. And again. Tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
They were pecking at me!
Pain stabbed into my brain, ripping a scream from me just as I threw my arms over my head. “Get away from me!”
I swatted with one hand while trying to protect myself with the other. Fabric ripped. Heat spread along my arm, burning deep into my flesh. With another scream, I ran toward the door and slinked through the gap. Away. I had to get away from these animals.
Gurgling croaks followed as I sprinted along the corridor, letting bone-deep terror overwhelm my senses as I passed doors, people, flickering fires that danced over the stone walls. Where was I?
Where should I run?
Wingbeats.
Close. Closer still.
My feet thrust me forward faster as I turned a corner, dashing along yet another corridor until —slap! Pain slammed into my torso, radiating toward my limbs as my legs pulled out from underneath me.
“Whoa!” A set of strong arms wrapped around me, steadying me against a leather-clad chest.
“You’re bleeding…”
I blinked, disoriented, searching for the source of the familiar voice, only to find a set of green eyes staring down at me. “Sebian.”
“Shh… it’s alright, sweetheart.” He slid an arm down the back of my thighs before he lifted me up. “I’ve got you.”
