by Riley Pine
“Young, vital blood runs in those veins of yours. And soon, when I taste the eternal water, it will run through mine. Only then will I be able to dispose of you. But first I have to tell you the good news. It seems that Jasper—despite his severe and life-threatening injuries—has taken to talking in his sleep. And hell if he isn’t trying to tell us what we need to know now that it’s almost too late.” She hums. “By the light of the moon, Evangeline. Remember. By the light of the moon.”
The words might as well be another language. All I ever knew of my brother was his quiet nature, his love of art. This Jasper she speaks of is a stranger to me. But he is still alive. It is this thought alone that keeps me from going under. I can still save him. Somehow. Even if it means lying through my teeth to do it. All I need is to buy myself time and hope that my call to X went through, that he knows I’m in trouble.
I try to feign a look of realization but doubt anything can be read from my expression other than pain and fear.
“You know what he speaks of. Do you not?” the Madam asks.
I nod.
“And yet you would have me believe otherwise?” She leans close enough that I feel her on my skin. “Evangeline—it seems you need to be punished.”
She nods toward the woman who holds me upright, and in a flash I’m on the ground, the heel of the brutish woman’s boot pressing into my knee. Something cracks, and I scream, the pain white-hot as it shoots through me.
But then the pressure is gone, and I hear the sickening sound of flesh being pierced before the woman who was towering over me pitches toward the ground. I have to roll out of the way to avoid being crushed.
My vision clears to show her lying beside me with a dagger protruding from her chest.
The Madam hisses, and she jumps in front of Gideon, her eyes darting from left to right.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she singsongs, but there is a heightened edge to her tone. “Surely you know I have your angel,” she says. “If you want me not to finish her off, you’ll be smart and show yourself.”
I try to scramble backward, but the pain in my leg is too great.
That’s when I see him. As if born from the darkness, Benedict emerges, haloed in a pool of light.
I’m dead, I think. I’m dead, and my prince—my love—has come to welcome me into whatever afterlife will have me. This can’t be heaven. I don’t deserve it. The sight of the man I betrayed must have been sent to torment me.
“Release her,” Benedict says. “You have committed enough crimes against Edenvale. I’m sure you don’t want to add another murder to the list.”
He speaks so calmly and of such things as sparing me that I almost believe he might be here to rescue me.
The Madam cackles and steps aside, revealing Gideon.
“No,” I croak. If Benedict really is here, I will not watch him perish, too. “No!” I cry louder, pushing myself up to my elbow.
My prince’s eyes find mine, and I watch the color drain from his face. His jaw clenches.
“You,” he says to Gideon. “You did that to her?” He moves to strike, but not before his gaze falls on me again. This is all it takes to give Gideon his opening, and he delivers a swift kick to Benedict’s ribs.
He grunts and stumbles, but he does not fall. Instead, he straightens, his face split into a knowing grin.
“You’re going to have to do better than that, boy,” Benedict says. “Because I’m not leaving here without Evangeline—without making you pay for hurting her and betraying your sworn duty as a royal guard.”
Gideon strikes with his fist this time, but Benedict ducks the blow, taking Gideon by surprise as he punches him in the face. Gideon’s head swings to the side, and I see crimson streaming from his nose.
He laughs, his tongue lapping at the liquid as it flows over his lips. The Madam crosses her arms and grins at the display before her.
Gideon strikes again, this time catching Benedict in the jaw, and I yelp as I see a spray of blood fly from his mouth. But he still doesn’t fall, this time sweeping his leg across Gideon’s, the boy falling to his back.
Benedict sneers at him, but Gideon rises with lightning-quick speed, as if he thrives on the pain. Because despite his bloodied face from what must be a broken nose, he acts as if it is nothing more than a scratch.
After one of Gideon’s blows, Benedict calls out. “A little help now, X?”
And out of the shadows walks the prince’s guard, twirling another dagger in his hand.
Gideon freezes, as does the Madam.
“I thought you were doing quite well. But if you require assistance, I am, of course, at your service.”
X points the knife at the Madam, and she takes a step away. Then he points it at Gideon.
“No!” she yelps.
Benedict shakes out his hand, his knuckles bloodied. X nods toward the stone slab and the map.
“Your choice,” X says. “You can leave with the map or with your progeny.”
Progeny? Gideon is the Madam’s son? But how? She couldn’t be more than a decade older than me.
“Look at me,” the Madam says, a certain desperation in her tone. “Do you know how many procedures, how many injections it takes to keep myself looking like this? I was the most beautiful woman in The Jewel Box, but now I’m surpassed by all those girls with their youth and dewy skin. I’ve had enough of doctors and needles. Nightgardin came to me last year. They made me a promise. Deliver the map—deciphered—and I’d get to drink from the waters. No more going under the knife!”
“Not tonight, you’re not,” Benedict says with quiet confidence.
The Madam’s lips curl into a wicked grin. “She will never be safe. Your precious Evangeline.” She spares me a glance. “Not as long as we still seek the Spring and she holds the answer.”
X strolls toward Gideon, touching the pointed steel of the dagger to the boy’s chest. He traces a small circle over his heart, and the Madam takes a deep breath.
X pulls up his sleeve to reveal the mark of The Order. Behind him, several more men and a few women—all dressed in black from head to toe—step forward, as well.
“As long as we are here,” X says, “and we will always be here, Nightgardin will not harm the children of Vernazza again—or any member of the royal family. If so, we will seek retribution, and I do not think your benefactors want a war. You’ve lost. Accept what is true. The location of the Spring will never fall into Nightgardin possession.”
The Madam reaches for Gideon’s hand and tugs him to her side.
“We are not through, X,” she hisses, then turns toward a passageway I had not seen before.
“I’m through with you,” I say, then despite the pain that rips through every muscle, through the bones in my leg I know are broken, I launch myself forward and grab the Madam by the ankle. She pitches forward, landing face-first on the stony ground.
A guttural roar rips from her chest as she scrambles to her feet, blood streaming from her now misshapen nose.
“I’ll kill you!” she cries, lunging for me, but she is intercepted by one of the hooded women of The Order. Gideon is subdued by one of the men.
“It’s fake,” I say, knowing this woman will kill me if she ever gets the chance, but I need Benedict to know. “The map is fake. I painted a replica and hid the original.” My eyes meet Benedict’s. “I needed you to believe the betrayal so you’d be safe. She said they’d kill you if...”
The last of my adrenaline seeps from my pores, but before I slump to the ground, Benedict is there. He scoops me into his arms, and tears stream from my eyes when I see his bruised and battered face.
“You came for me,” I say, my voice trembling. “After what I did, you came.”
He nods. “And I almost lost you,” he says through gritted teeth. “Evangeline—” But he stops himself, his voice
cracking on my name.
The Madam—shouting furiously—and Gideon are dragged away, hopefully where they can never harm my family again.
“We need to get her to the hospital at once,” X says. “I’ve just received word that Jasper is there, too. My brethren will stand guard at his door. No one else is to be trusted now.”
“Of course,” Benedict says, pulling me closer to him. He opens his mouth to say something more, but no words come.
“We got here in time,” X says to him. “That is what matters.”
Pain courses through my bones, through every nerve ending, but I wrap my arms around Benedict’s neck, afraid if I don’t I will lose him forever.
“The game table,” I whisper into his ear. “I hid it beneath the game table. Please forgive me.”
Then darkness pulls me under.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Benedict
THE DOCTORS SAY she should have regained consciousness by now. They come by on their rounds and examine her with furrowed brows. I dislike their thoughtful, pensive frowning. Once, not so long ago, I, too, was a man of pondering, of reticence. Now the time for measured thinking seems too slow.
I am not the person that I once was.
I want action. Fuck it. I want them to take action, and bring her back. But the choice to wake is hers and hers alone.
“Evangeline, angel, please. Open your beautiful eyes,” I urge her. “I have so much to tell you, my love. So many things are now in perspective.”
“Love?” a deep voice says from the hospital room doorway. “What the hell is going on here, son?”
I glance up to see a man standing there, watching me with a stunned expression etched into the weathered lines of his face.
“Father,” I say. What is he doing here?
“X rang me,” he says, answering my thoughts.
He steps forward, posture perfectly erect. “I say, it was presumptuous for a bodyguard to use my personal phone line, but he seems to think that you and I have some talking to do. I didn’t know what he meant, except now I can see. While I’ve been busy handling Edenvale diplomacy at the United Nations, you’ve been busy with a whore.” He snorts. “I was skeptical about your older brother choosing his matchmaker, but at least she made an honest living. This woman... Son, you employed her to tempt you from the cloth, and she has succeeded. Why should I rejoice?”
I cross the room in a flash. “That woman you are so quick to disparage almost died to protect me—to protect Edenvale. Tread carefully here, Father. Because if you call her a whore one more time, I will make sure it’s the last word you ever utter.”
The two hulking men who stand at a short distance behind the king make menacing sounds deep in their tattooed throats. I ignore their little alpha charade with a sneer. If they want to bark, then I’ll show that I have bite.
“Evangeline is not a whore,” I say. “And even if she were, it is of no matter, for I have given her my heart forever and more.”
Father’s mouth opens and closes. “Impossible.”
“I am not going to join the priesthood.” The words aren’t as difficult to speak as I feared. In fact, they feel like the most natural thing I have said to him since I can remember. “You will have to punish me in a different way.”
His brows raise. “Punish?” He crosses his arms in a gesture that makes him look, for the barest second, exactly like our missing youngest brother.
“For being the bastard,” I snarl. “For being the living embodiment of mother’s shame. But all she wanted for me was happiness. And making the woman I love the happiest woman on God’s earth is my new mission in life. If you knew what she did for our kingdom’s protection—”
“Bastard?” Father retreats a step. “You can’t mean to say you believe those discredited old rumors. We never were sure of the source, but they seemed to have been started by our enemies in Nightgardin.”
Rumors? All my life I’d grown up with whispers. Worse yet, I heard no one deny them. So yes. I believed in the stain that I thought I bore, in my responsibility to cleanse it.
“I am truly your son?” The impact of his words hits me with unexpected force. I physically brace myself with the door frame.
He inclines his head, a look of shame crossing his face. “If you ever heard lies and believed them, the fault is my own. I’ll admit I once had a brief moment of doubt, to the point where I requested a paternity test from the doctor who delivered you. It was the only serious fight your mother and I ever had. The tests showed that you were my son, and I spent the rest of our short marriage trying to make up for my lack of faith in her loyalty and love.”
“But I look the least like you,” I murmur.
“Yes,” he agrees. “You are your own person. But if you are willing to fight for the woman you love, I can see that we have something in common.” He clasps me on the shoulder. “I won’t deny that family tradition is important to me, as is my faith. To have you become a priest would have filled me with great pride. But I also want you to choose the path that is right for you, my son.”
Pounding feet echo up the corridor. There is shouting. My brother Nikolai bursts around the corridor, his new bride, Kate, hot on his heels.
“Jesus, Benedict.” He pulls up short. His skin is tanned a golden brown from their Hawaiian vacation. “X sent a Learjet for us and a dossier bringing me up to speed.” He looks over my shoulder. “We go on a short island vacation and the whole palace goes to hell. Is that her? The woman?”
“The woman I love,” I correct. “The woman I hope to make my wife.”
“Benedict?”
My throat tightens as I slowly turn around.
Evangeline’s lids flutter. Her pupils are dilated, but her gaze is strong and intense.
“Angel—you’re awake.”
Evangeline
I try to sit, but everything in me screams in pain. I shudder, and Benedict is at my bedside before I can exhale.
“You need more morphine,” he says. “I’ll call a nurse. I...I need to let the doctors know—”
I use what little strength I have to rest a reassuring hand on his—a hand now adorned with medical tape, an IV and a pulse monitor on my finger.
“No medicine yet,” I say, my swollen lip making it hard to speak. “I want to think clearly. Are we... Are we safe?” I ask, the events of the late-night hours coming back with unforgiving force. The pulse monitor starts beeping, and Benedict leans over to smooth my hair.
“You’re safe, angel. They cannot hurt you again. I promise you that.”
“And Jasper? Did you find Jasper?”
He nods. “He is not conscious yet, but members of The Order stand guard outside his room, and the doctors say his body is healing. You both are under The Order’s protection for the entirety of your existence. You will not be harmed again.”
His voice catches, and I run a thumb over the bruises and small cuts that pepper his face. He leans into it, pressing a soft kiss to my palm.
“I’m fine.” He answers my questioning look. “In fact, I’ve never felt better.”
I laugh, even though it hurts. “We’re quite a pair. Aren’t we?”
He nods. “I would do it again, angel. For you I would do anything.”
I open my mouth to speak, but the words catch in my throat.
He kisses my palm again. “I know why you didn’t tell me the truth. You felt it was your only choice. But know this, Evangeline. You can trust me. You need not put yourself in danger for my sake. Not now or ever again.”
I peek over his shoulder to the three people standing outside the door, and despite my blurred vision from the eye still swollen shut, I recognize them all—the king, the heir apparent and his wife.
“Did you really mean what you said to your father, or was I still out?” I ask, not sure I’ll be able to take his answer eit
her way. If I dreamed it, it means I will still lose him in a matter of weeks. If what I heard was real, then Benedict is giving up everything. For me. And I cannot ask him to do that, no matter how much I want him for myself.
I glance the length of my body to see the plaster extending from the bottom of my thigh to my ankle and clench my stomach muscles.
“You’re not okay,” he says. “But you will be. And I will spend the rest of my days making sure of it.”
“But I can’t ask you—”
Benedict doesn’t let me finish. “You aren’t asking. I’m choosing, Evangeline. I choose happiness. And my happiness...is you.” He clears his throat. “That is, if you’ll have me.”
I pull him to me as best I can, kissing him regardless of the pain. Because he is my prince.
“You saved my life,” I say against his lips, tasting the salt of our mingled tears.
“And you saved mine right back.”
He kisses me with such tenderness, such carefulness, and my heart bursts with a love I never knew could exist.
“I love you, Benedict. God, I love you,” I say but then gasp. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to use the Lord’s name in vain.”
Benedict leans back and raises a brow. “I am still a man of faith, angel. Always will be. But you are my earthly ruler. My very own heavenly body. I pray to your altar now and expect no apologies from my soul’s savior.”
“All right. All right,” I hear from over Benedict’s shoulder. “I’ve waited long enough. It’s time I thank the woman who tempted my brother from the cloth.”
“Nikolai!” the princess calls out, following on her husband’s heels. “I’m sorry, Benedict,” she says from where they stand at the foot of my bed. “You know your brother is impossible.” She flashes me a warm smile, and my heart swells at the sight of the future king and his bride, the way he looks upon her with unrivaled adoration.
I swallow hard when my gaze falls on Benedict. Because he gazes at me with that same reverence.
“Tell me, brother,” Benedict says as he stands to greet our visitors. “Is it I who should be thanking you? Did you send Evangeline to my tower?”
