My father places a protective hand on my arm. “Your Highness, she didn’t mean it.”
Tyros exhales a slow breath out his nose. “I see she is uncivilized, untrained. She will learn. I would strike her myself if it wouldn’t soil my person on this blessed occasion. And ordering one of my men to strike her would create too much of a vulgar stir at a feast honoring my father’s descent into twilight. Fortunately, it seems, he’s too ill to be here tonight. So,” he adds, almost lightly, “Ivrilos. Hurt her. Quietly.”
My guardian appears at my side before I can blink. His eyes are sharp, heated.
“Ivrilos—” my father begins, pleading, but the dead man cuts him off.
“That was your idea of restraint?” he snaps at me. “I would tell you to remind the crown prince that I don’t answer to him, but that would only challenge him to get more creative with your punishment. You leave me no choice.”
Before I can wonder to whom the dead man answers, he bends far too quickly for me to dodge, dipping his mouth alongside my ear. His words, quieter than a whisper, keep me from jerking away. “This is where you gasp as if you’re in pain.” A heartbeat passes as I’m too stunned to react. “Do it!”
And then I feel it: a pinch on the back of my arm, hard enough to make me jump and elicit the gasp he wants, but not hard enough to really hurt.
The dead man can hurt his wards in ways I don’t yet understand—some of which I witnessed with my father—and yet he just pinched me? I was expecting something much worse. Icy hands of death chilling me to the bone, gouging into my flesh, sucking the life out of me, or … anything else.
Before I can burst into hysterical giggles, my brain finally catches up. He’s trying to help me. To avoid hurting me. I won’t argue with that, even if I won’t thank him for it. I add a low moan and a near swoon on the heels of my gasp, though I don’t have to reach far for the swoon. I’m suddenly dizzy, and have no idea why. Maybe even from a touch so light as a pinch? My father steadies me.
He, himself, doesn’t know I’ve mostly faked my reaction. He looks furious. But he doesn’t say anything.
“You and Ivrilos both must teach her to behave,” the crown prince says to him. “The sooner the better. After all, think of her future. Think of her mother.”
The threat is barely veiled, as practiced as a fighter resting a hand on their sword. The base of my spine grows cold. Still, we can’t just stand here and do nothing while this man does whatever he wishes with us. At the very least, we can talk back to him. I turn to my father, practically begging him with a look.
But he bows his head, eyes downcast. “Yes, Your Highness.”
I can’t believe it. This is the man who nearly died to protect me, now allowing me to be punished with barely a protest? Accepting a threat to my mother? Bowing his head to the family that had destroyed our lives, and the lives of so many he loved?
Tyros moves away without another word, turning his back on us. Something churns in the pit of my stomach. It’s the knowledge that while my father once fought for me, he has also lived in this palace for nearly thirteen years. He’s been taught to behave. To bow.
He’s a man who no longer fights. Out of fear for me and my mother, yes. But his fear has made him weak.
My father turns away from me, too, as if he can see the judgment written in my face, a sigil spelling out my shame. He thumps his way down the dais steps, leaving me. Again. I can only stare after him and hope that tears aren’t forming in my eyes. Kineas smirks at me.
I won’t cry. Not in front of them.
The dead man is still standing nearby, watching me. “Rovan, I—”
Lydea walks right through him without knowing. “Now that that’s over,” she says briskly, “I need a drink. How about you?”
I do. Goddess, but I do. It’s probably a terrible idea to go with her, but I don’t care. If anything, I have to get away from Kineas before I smack the smug look off his face. I let the stunningly beautiful princess take my hand and drag me away from the dais. I throw one last glance back at where Japha and the dead man have been standing, but they’ve both already vanished, one into the crowd and the other into thin air.
It’s just me and Lydea.
8
I don’t know how many hours later, how many plates of food listlessly picked at, how many glasses of wine guzzled, or how many falsely polite guests mocked by either me or the princess—knowing looks exchanged between the two of us—that I find myself in a dim hallway outside the banquet hall, perhaps a servants’ passageway, with Lydea still leading me by the hand. Everything blurs behind a pleasant, alcoholic haze. The princess’s tinkling laugh, as musical and sharp as breaking glass, fills my ears, and her pale face burns like a lantern.
She might be drawing me away to murder me, for all I know. And still, I can’t help but think, Goddess, she’s beautiful.
I glance over at Lydea, see another one of her sparking looks, and decide to hell with it. Murder plan or not, I push her up against the wall. Wonderingly, she lets me with a short gasp. In the breathless moment that follows, the princess’s dark gaze swallows mine. Her hand trails down my arm.
A caress, with pointed nails.
“You know,” she murmurs, “they say that Kineas and I were a lot alike. We were inseparable as children.”
“What changed?” I ask. I don’t know for sure they’re so different now, but somehow I can feel it. Even if she’s still just as dangerous, she is not like her brother.
My response seems to ignite the sparks in her eyes. “I amend what I said—I really, really like you.”
I can’t help it. I kiss her. Something inside me mutters of caution, and so I only brush Lydea’s mouth with the lightest of feather-light touches. Her lips are as soft as silk, and as red as blood.
I can’t believe what I’ve done. Or why I’ve done it. Maybe because the crown prince won’t like it. Maybe because it’s akin to hurling a table across a room for something to do. Or maybe because the princess is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and I’m always one to kiss as many beautiful girls as will let me.
And maybe because I’m incredibly drunk. I’ve done less intelligent things under these conditions.
Before I can wrench myself away, maybe even run, Lydea spins me around, presses me against the wall, and kisses me with far less hesitancy.
Her tongue is like intoxicating, overpowering wine in my mouth, but I freeze. The princess must sense it, because she pulls away a hand’s breadth.
“If you don’t want to give me this,” she murmurs, “I’ll not take it from you. I’m not my father. Not my brother.” A hectic flush lights her cheeks as she meets my eyes. It seems important to her that I understand this. Or maybe she’s scared to admit it, in this place. “Though you did give me some indication that such advances were wanted,” she adds with a wry twist to her red lips, the color now slightly smudged.
Her breath is warm against my face, sending tingles from my scalp to the tops of my feet. I struggle to parse the situation, but my brain isn’t working. There’s only Lydea, filling my vision, delicious and decadent, like a forbidden dessert that I want so badly to devour.
“Don’t…,” I begin, and her expression falls a fraction. “Don’t stop.”
Her wicked smile returns. As do her lips to mine. And just like before, it’s not a tentative kiss. It’s a kiss that curls my toes and sends my senses buzzing. I forget for a moment that I’m somewhere I don’t want to be, with someone I shouldn’t want to be with. My head threatens to float away from my shoulders.
“Is this flying?” I gasp, when my mouth is finally free enough to do so.
Lydea’s delighted laugh makes me want to kiss her again. Before I can, the wall suddenly slides out from behind me. Rather, I suppose, I’m sliding down the wall.
My first thought is Poison! And then my next is Oh right, I’m drunk.
The princess catches me with surprising strength.
“Oh dear.” She sighs into my hair. I think she
might sniff it, like a bouquet of flowers—which I find terribly charming—before she asks, “Are you utterly wine wrecked, Rovan Ballacra?”
“You sound like my mother,” I mutter into her shoulder, which smells quite nice. And then I remember my mother, imprisoned. My father, cowed like a whipped dog. The crown prince and Kineas, eyeing me like a piece of meat at market. I groan in a mixture of despair and disgust. Belatedly, I realize Lydea might think I’m disgusted with her when she doesn’t ease me to the ground so much as let me drop the rest of the way. At least it’s not far.
“Let me fetch some servants to take you to your apartments,” Lydea says somewhere above me, and then her voice fades down the hall. “We can continue this conversation later, when you’re in a more fit state.”
Before I know it, I’m hoisted to my feet by impersonal hands.
The trek back to my father and Penelope’s apartments, with my spiraling thoughts and dawning mortification, is sobering enough that I’m able to walk on my own by the time I arrive. I awkwardly dismiss the servants before I reach the outer doors, and fortunately the common rooms beyond are empty and barely lit. Penelope and Crisea left the banquet hall well before I did, and I haven’t seen my father since he walked away from me. They’re all likely asleep.
Perfect. Once I change out of my wretched dress, there will be no one to bother me if I go in search of another carafe of wine.
Except my guardian, of course. “I’d advise you to go to bed.” His voice comes out of the darkness as soon as I’m alone in my oversized, overdecorated bedroom.
Already, he knows me too well.
Any thought of the strange protection he provided during my meeting with the royal family, of my wonder at it, evaporates in the heat of my sudden anger. He has a horrible hold on me, he’s keeping me trapped here, and now he wants to give me advice? I spin toward his voice in the candlelit dimness, and he’s there, standing in the shadows, black-robed arms folded, as if waiting for my tirade.
I’m more than happy to give it to him.
“Don’t advise me. Don’t talk. Just, just”—I shove a finger at his nose and carefully emphasize—“fuck you”—I stab again—“in the face.”
He raises a dark eyebrow. “I don’t think you could manage that.”
I goggle at him. “That wasn’t a proposition!” I wave a hand and almost lose my balance. “And how typical to think such a thing could only be done by a man. I feel sorry for your lady friends, if you have any.”
“I don’t mean it’s impossible for you as a woman,” he says, the slightest bit of exasperation entering his tone for the first time I can remember. “I mean it’s impossible for you due to my state, which is immaterial, and yours, because you can’t see straight.” He narrows his eyes and mutters, “I can’t believe we’re discussing this.”
Of course this is what makes him react. It never fails—the best way to goad a man is to insult his prowess in bed. Even a dead man, apparently.
“I can too see straight,” I say, and then squint. My rose-shaped desk appears to be actively blooming, even though I’m nearly positive it isn’t. “Maybe not. But believe me when I say you’re the last person whose face I would want to sit on, unless I was trying to suffocate you.”
“Also impossible.”
“I meant,” I say as if he hasn’t spoken, “fuck yourself in the face.”
“Now that’s most assuredly infeasible,” he says with a too-flat expression.
“Because you can’t bend like that or because you’re dead?”
For all the world, it looks like the dead man is trying not to smile. Is he laughing at me? The thought enrages me further, as does his sigh. “You’re very drunk, Rovan. Please just go to—”
“Don’t call me Rovan!” I burst. “You don’t get to call me that.”
“What should I call you, then?” His tone is patient, which makes me want to take an ax to it.
“You can call me Mis”—I hiccup—“Mistress Rovana-la-la-laaa”—that part I extend into a cracking, wavering song—“the Most Excellent.”
The dead man, circlet glinting on his dark crown of hair, drops his face into his hand, as if taking a break from our conversation.
I widen my eyes in a parody of remorse. “Am I embarrassing you? Making you mad?”
“There’s a distinct chance of both.” Maybe it’s my imagination, but it still sounds like he’s trying not to smile. I can’t see his lips to be sure.
I suddenly want to see his lips, and the thought makes me flush for some reason. Maybe that’s the wine.
I sweep an arm out as if rejecting him. “Then I need to try harder.”
“In any event,” he says into his hand, “as fittingly unique as that name is, I can’t even repeat it—”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He carries on, head still bowed, “So I will persist in using your given name, Rovan, until you provide me with a better option.”
I sneer at him. “That’s all you get, my friend. No, not my friend. My enemy.”
He drops his hand to stare directly at me. “I’m not your enemy.”
I can’t hold his dark gaze anymore, so I twirl away instead. “That’s right, you’re my guardian. So guard me. Hey, guardian, look, I’m falling. Save me!” I teeter toward the bed and let myself tip over backward. But my aim is poor. My shoulder cracks into the treelike corner post hard enough to shiver the leafy canopy, my hip bounces off the edge of the mattress, and I crash to the floor in a rush of sapphire silk. I rub my bottom, belatedly discovering my elbow hurts. “Ouch! Hey, where were you? You’re supposed to catch me! You’re a terrible guardian. I hate you.” And then I’m crying.
Where have these idiotic tears come from? I suppose I’m still very drunk and very tired. And I’m a prisoner in the palace, bound to a dead spirit, and I’ve just embarrassed myself in front of a viper of a princess I had the foolish audacity to kiss. Besides, my elbow hurts a lot. Maybe a few tears are allowed.
I assume the dead man will only stare imperiously down at me, or maybe vanish, fleeing. But suddenly his eyes are level with mine, close—close enough to startle me. I choke on a sob, swallowing hard.
“You can hate me,” he says quietly, “but I can’t touch you for anything other than true peril, because the costs are too high.”
I stare, tears forgotten. “The cost for you … or for me?” I remember that even his pinch, as soft and as brief as it was, left me dizzy. I remember that I still have questions about how he can affect me, all the ways he might be able to hurt me, but my mind is able to focus about as well as my eyes.
He ignores me. “I would’ve liked to have caught you. It’s a shame to see you in this state.”
I spit at him. It passes right through his cheek and spatters the floor beyond him. “Fuck your shame! I don’t need it, and fuck you—”
“—in the face, yes. Rovan, get into bed.”
I thump my head obstinately down—at least there’s a rug underneath me—and close my eyes, sniffing wetly. “I’m tired. All the time. But especially at the moment. I think I’ll just stay here.”
“Suit yourself.” He stands then, vanishing from the narrow view between my cracked eyelids. I think he’s gone, but then I hear his voice from somewhere above me. “I can’t lift you, but I suppose I can do this.”
The soft, comforting weight of a blanket settles over me. I would like to have seen what his hand looks like when it’s more material, but I can’t feel much of anything because I’m suddenly asleep.
9
When I open my eyes, I think that a fitting name for hangovers would be morning regrets. Kissing Lydea was probably a terrible idea. And just what exactly did I say to the dead man? And did I really sleep on the floor out of sheer stubbornness? I definitely regret the vicious crick in my shoulder and neck, which only amplifies the ache in my skull.
I smack my lips and croak, “Dead man?”
“I have a name,” comes his voice from the shadows.
When I turn my head, the shaft of sunlight from the window hits me like a spear in my brain. Another regret: not shutting the curtains. “I don’t need it. But I do need some water. I don’t suppose you can get me some?”
His voice is nearly as flat as before, but it’s somehow lighter. Somehow gloating. “I don’t suppose you remember what we discussed last night?”
“Unfortunately, I remember too much.” I sit up, resisting the urge to vomit on the rug I used as my bed—that would be a poor way to repay it. “It’s not too much to hope that you were somehow drunk as well and don’t remember any of it?”
“Unfortunately,” he echoes, “I’m incapable of getting drunk.”
“Pity for you.”
I’m suddenly staring at his studded leather greaves as he stands over me. He’s back in his usual fighting attire.
“I would offer you a hand as well as water … but as I mentioned—”
“Not another word!” I shout, and then hunch over, assaulted by my own volume. “Ugh.”
There’s a soft knock at the door, followed by a voice—my father’s. “Rovan? May I come in?”
I almost prefer the dead man’s company, but he’s already vanished. While my mother has seen me like this plenty of times, my father hasn’t. But then, the state I saw him in yesterday is worse, in my opinion.
We may as well get to know each other as we are now.
“Yes,” I moan, not bothering to drag myself off the floor.
My father slips into the bedroom. He leaves the door cracked, as if to allow a hasty retreat if need be. He won’t meet my eyes. “You came home late last night.”
“This isn’t home, and last I checked I could go to bed whenever I wished.”
“It’s just that you don’t want to draw attention to yourself. I’ve already gotten word from Penelope, who was only too happy to share that you were drinking heavily and in close proximity to Princess Lydea.”
In the Ravenous Dark Page 9
