I closed my eyes and pictured Jetsun in the shower with me, his gentle hands massaging lather into my scalp, running over the slippery curves of my body, aching with desire. I wondered where he was, if he’d done those same things to Camila, or if he pictured her while he was in the shower the way I was picturing him.
When the water went off, I startled back to myself. The maid roughly dried me and shoved me out of the bathroom, where I stopped short at the sight of three guards in my chambers, Gabor among them. His eyes went wide, and for a second, all I could see was him. I watched his dark eyes with their infinite depth sweep down my body quickly, taking me in with one glance. My heart might have broken if he looked away then.
But he didn’t. His gaze began to travel back up my body with agonizing slowness, raking over my skin and making goosebumps rise over every inch as his examination climbed my thighs. I fought the urge to turn my back, to hide myself from his penetrating gaze. Instead, I forced myself to stay still, to watch his gaze catch on my newly shaved mound and linger. He swallowed hard, then tore his eyes away, his gaze dipping into my navel and tracing the curves of my hips. I could feel the weight of it on my skin like a physical touch. My brown nipples puckered painfully when his gaze brushed over them, and he swallowed again.
At last, his gaze lingered on my mouth for a moment and then rose to my eyes. I wasn’t ready for the intensity of our connection when our eyes met. A shock went through me, and I felt wetness spring to life between my thighs, my sex tingling with arousal.
I opened my mouth, acutely aware of the way his gaze dropped there, that he was watching my lips, waiting for my words.
“Were the Cherry Pops from you?” I asked, instantly cursing myself for the asinine question that rolled off my tongue.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
His eyes were a pit of infinite depth, turmoil swirling in his gaze when it met mine again. I didn’t know what to say to him. Words weren’t enough. He may not have been my True Mate, and I would never know either way, but there was something between us even now, when he loved Camila. I wondered if it would be so bad if we just fucked and got it over with.
But no. There would be no just fucking Gabor. I wasn’t even sure guards were allowed to have sex, and even if they were, it would never be that simple with him. I loved him. I wouldn’t be able to casually walk away. And he’d never betray his love for Camila that way, anyway. Even if she kept him in the background his whole life, he was not the sort of man who would fuck around while his heart was with another woman. He had too strong a moral code for that.
The maid shoved me further into my room, snapping at the guards for gaping. I’d forgotten there were two more of them in the room. When Gabor was looking at me like that, no one else existed.
“Thank you,” I managed to call out, though I wasn’t sure Gabor heard me before they left the room.
“How are you going to dress me without undoing my hands?” I asked the maid.
“I’m not,” she snapped, then gave me a smug smile before leaving the room. I glanced around, but the window had been barred, and there was no other escape but the door. I sat on the edge of my bed. The king wouldn’t have brought me out and cleaned me up if today wasn’t the day of my execution. I wished I could see my mates one more time before I went. Or go see Lilith and ask her what to do. But of course I couldn’t do that without my magic. I’d had it for such a short time, but I already needed it so much.
I couldn’t get to it, though. The fucking cuffs were still blocking it, though I could feel it swirling angrily like a storm inside me, wanting to get out, to be used. In truth, I wouldn’t have minded rubbing one out after that look from Gabor. I considered my cuffs. I wasn’t opposed to masturbating against the metal cylinders, but I didn’t want the guards or maids or my father to come in when I was in the middle of it. Even if they didn’t interrupt, I had no way to wash my mess off the cuffs or myself after I came.
Damn it. Apparently, there would be no more orgasms before I died. There was nothing for me to do but wait and hope my mates or Camila or Gabor or my father would have a change of heart.
When my door swung open that evening, I scrambled up from my bed, feeling painfully exposed, since no one had come to dress me, and I couldn’t do it without the use of my hands. I had already decided to make a run for it, but when I saw the six guards standing outside my room, my bravado deflated.
I searched the group, hoping for Gabor, but he was not among them. Two of them took me roughly by the shoulders and dragged me out of the room. “I need clothes,” I protested, struggling against their hold.
“Shut up and don’t try anything,” one of the men growled. They began to march me down the hall, the other four guards on our heels.
If I thought it was humbling to walk through the palace in filthy rags with dirt all over me, this was a new level of humiliation. I tried to duck my head, but I could still hear the snickers of maids as we passed the hallway to the kitchen, could see their shoes from the corner of my eye.
But this wasn’t my choosing any more than I’d chosen to walk through in my prison-worn garments. I shouldn’t be ashamed of what was happening. My father was the one who should be ashamed. He was parading me through the halls without a stitch of clothing, hoping it would teach me a lesson in humility. Hoping it would show me who had the real power around here.
I lifted my head, my eyes flashing as I met the eyes of a guard we passed in the hall. Fuck all that. I had nothing to be ashamed of. This was my body, but I wasn’t showing it to them like a whore. My father was the one who had put me on display. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me cower, even in my last moments. I knew what the cost of freedom would be, and I’d already turned it down. It wasn’t freedom at all, anyway. It was magical servitude to the man who had killed my mother and dozens—probably hundreds—of others.
With every person we passed, I felt stronger. I marched down the hall standing straight and tall, my shoulders back, as if I were marching into battle clad in armor. I met all their eyes with determination, even defiance. They did not get to determine my strength, and neither did my father. I replayed Gabor’s words in my head. He’d always rejected me, but I didn’t blame him for it. He was the strongest man I knew. A man strong enough to deny himself love in the name of duty. A man who had given his heart to a monster to preserve his honor.
I would be as strong, as stoic, as unflinching. I would die with dignity, if I had nothing else to my name, not even clothes to cover my body.
The guards marched me through a door and down a flight of stairs, along a familiar passageway I knew all too well. It wasn’t the dank corridor that led to the prison. It was a brightly lit stone tunnel with wall sconces befitting the ceremony of the occasion. The one my father walked with me and Camila and a procession of other royals and dignitaries every time we went to the arena.
Of course.
My father wanted my execution to be public, to teach the people of the Ocelot Nation a very important lesson. Even a princess could be executed for treason, so they shouldn’t feel safe for even a moment. After all, he’d burned hundreds of people to death just for daring to come meet me when I arrived back home. But they were just humans. If he’d kill a princess who was, as far as they knew, his own daughter, he was capable of anything.
We reached the hallway that veered off from the passage and led up several flights of steps to the top deck, where the royals observed festivities from above the crowd. Instead of splitting off, though, the guards marked me onwards. We passed through a door, and I could hear the crowd, the restless murmur of excited voices waiting for the spectacle to begin.
I swallowed hard, my heart lurching in my chest and my knees giving way. Until this moment, it hadn’t seemed real.
I was the spectacle. I was about to be executed. My short life would be severed, and this time, there was no coming back. This time, Kenosi wouldn’t put his cheetah into me. There would be no way to heal me, anyway. Behead
ing was the method of choice for traitors, and even shifters couldn’t heal from that.
The guards dragged me forward, along a narrow corridor that led to the arena floor. I could see two more guards on either side of the exit, but I barely noticed them, even when I spotted Gabor among them. My breath came in short, hitched little gasps, and my vision seemed to be blurry, closing into an even smaller tunnel than the one they were escorting me through. The guards dragged me out into the arena, and a cheer went up.
My mind ping-ponged from one random thought to another. How ordinary this was, the arena filled with shifters and a few humans; the same bloodthirsty cries that always accompanied the appearance of a victim of my father’s wrath; the crackle of anticipation tinged with an undercurrent of unease. How the last time I’d been here, I’d seen Tadeu killed, and now it was my turn. How the last time I’d set foot on this floor, I was playing chase like a child with Tadeu, though it had been less than a year ago that he’d caught me and held me down so his friend could shoot me with a paintball while I was distracted by his hand in my shorts.
“A strong nation acts swiftly and decisively when attacked,” my father was saying to the crowd. Tonight, he stood on an elevated podium, addressing the crowd himself instead of having his announcer call out the evening’s festivities. “This attack, not just on every person in this land, but on our monarchy itself, was shocking in severity. During the past few weeks, I lost sleep as I tried to handle this situation in a way that would act as a healing balm to our nation’s people—all its people.”
He paused, every eye in the place locked on him, no one daring to make even the slightest move lest he think they weren’t fully invested. I wanted to snort at his words, though. He didn’t give a shit about the majority of people in our country, but he’d pay the humans lip service when they were a threat. The uprising must have been pretty fucking dire for him to want to offer a soothing balm instead of just murdering them all.
“Before I announce my decision, I owe you the truth about Princess Itzel,” King Ocelot went on. A shiver ran through me, and I wanted to shrink back against the guards, hide my nakedness behind them. Instead, I stood exposed for all the world to see and judge. “Although I raised and loved the princess as my own since the day she was born, she is not my daughter.”
Even I sucked in a breath. He was admitting this in public? But of course. He’d look like less of a monster if the princess he was killing wasn’t part of his own family. Somewhere in the high seats above the floor, I knew that Camila sat watching in disgust. My mates would be with her, looking at my body for the last time.
A murmur spread through the crowd until it was a low roar, but my attention was yanked back to my own predicament when the guards dragged me forward across the floor to where a small rectangle of stone waited. It was about waist high and a bit longer than that. At one end stood a metal pole about as tall as a man, and atop that, a scythe blade hung at an angle. A hoarse croak escaped my throat, and I dug my heels into the floor, bucking against the guards’ hold. Their fingers only cut deeper into my upper arms as they shoved me toward it. I tried to stand straight and walk to my death like a regal princess. At least in death I could be as poised as Camila.
My father held up a hand, and the crowd fell silent. “Yes,” he said. “My wife, the beloved late Queen Ocelot, was raped. I caught the perpetrator and justice was served, but it was too late to undo what had been done. Upon finding out she was pregnant, my wife chose to spare the child and bring her into this world. Because she didn’t want to bring shame upon her husband or our family with rumors and speculation, she removed Itzel’s ocelot at birth. But the princess is, in fact, an ocelot shifter like I am.”
I didn’t know where this was going, but a heavy stone of sickness pressed into my belly at his words. Whatever I’d imagined, I knew whatever was coming was worse.
“You have probably seen her enough throughout the years to know I afford a great deal of leniency to my wayward daughter,” King Ocelot said. “I wanted to give Itzel the world, to give her everything she could ever want. Because, you see, although I raised her as my child, in the past few years, our love has grown to something quite different.”
No. NO NO NO.
At his words, panic took over, and I writhed like an angry cat, hissing and snarling at the guards as they hoisted me onto the stone, dragged my hands above my head, and looped the chain of my cuffs over the pole before lowering me onto the stone. I writhed on the cold stone and jerked at the cuffs, feeling them bite into my wrists until blood ran down my hands inside the metal cannisters. Inside my head, I screamed for my mother, for my real father, the demigod, and for Lilith. I didn’t try to stop the panic. I fed it, hoping that somehow, it would free my magic of the bonds trapping it inside me.
My father had said the cuffs were stronger than he expected, that they could hold my magic in check. That meant there was a chance, however miniscule, that my magic could overcome them. I used all the energy I possessed, all the fear and rage, and I blasted it toward the cuffs. I could feel my magic churning to a frenzy inside me, but every time I tried to shoot it out like I had when I removed the curse from my mates, it stopped cold behind the block Gabor had locked onto my hands with the cuffs.
King Ocelot was still speaking from a platform above me, looking down on my naked, writhing body. “You might wonder how a love can turn from the purest love, the love of a father for his daughter, into the carnal love a man feels for a woman,” he said. “I wondered the same thing, until the reason was revealed to me. Princess Itzel has a very special, enchanting magic. You will see it for yourself tonight.”
The excitement of the crowd was almost palpable, rushing over me like greedy hands. I ripped at the magic inside me, shaking and almost sobbing with desperation. I didn’t know what my father had planned, but I didn’t want to find out.
“But first, I’d like to announce my decision regarding her recent actions and the tensions that have been simmering in our beloved nation. As you now know, Itzel has a claim to the throne, not through my royal blood, but because she was your beloved queen’s daughter, too. Which made this the most difficult decision of my life.”
The crowd was barely in their seats, a low buzz of conversation charging them like electricity.
“You may remember, Princess Itzel accompanied Princess Camila on her sacred amulet tour. On that tour, Itzel gained each amulet, and at the end of it, she tried to keep them from Camila. At first, though it broke my heart to think of it as a betrayal by my beloved, I considered the recent attack just that. I thought I would be forced to punish her as law dictates, though it would crush my spirit to lose the mate to my soul for the second time in my life. But then I came to realize the attack by humans was only our nation’s way of saying they approved of Princess Itzel’s choice to challenge her sister. They were choosing their leader, not following tradition but their own hearts, just as Itzel and I chose each other as mates four blissful years ago.”
Somewhere far above, I heard a faint cry, like an injured bird. Camila had just tasted our father’s betrayal for herself. I twisted around, toppling off the side of the stone and wrenching my shoulder in the process. My arms were twined around each other as I crouched beside the stone, looking up at the monster who wanted to make me his queen. It was so much worse than what he’d offered before.
“Instead of punishing Princess Itzel for daring to claim her birthright although she has lost the ability to change into an ocelot, I am offering her a pardon. I did not come about this decision lightly, and it was not until I consulted with many wise men and the amulets themselves and learned that Princess Itzel is, indeed, chosen by fate to rule this great nation. I would also like to announce our impending nuptials, as all eight feline amulets are in our possession, and upon fitting them together, Itzel was shown that I am her destined mate, as we knew would be the case.”
“Liar,” I ground out between my teeth, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. No one but a fe
w guards could hear me. Surely the world would know he was lying, though. They couldn’t buy this bullshit, could they?
“And now, I will offer a demonstration of my fiancée’s astounding magic, and I think you will find that it answers any questions you have.”
With that, he waved to the crowd, and his platform was lowered as the audience’s conversations rose to full volume, roaring through the arena. King Ocelot strolled across the floor, a self-satisfied smirk on his lips.
“Congratulations, Your Majesty,” said one of the guards, the young boy who had delivered dinner with Gabor the night before. He bowed nervously as the king approached.
“Congratulate the bride,” King Ocelot ordered. “I’ve just made her the queen.”
Twelve
For a moment, I only gaped at the king, the man I’d always known as my father. He’d given me more status and power than I’d ever dreamed of, even in my wildest fantasies of ruling at Camila’s side with Tadeu in my bed at night, all of life a fairytale. But I didn’t want anything my father offered. His gift was laced with bitter poison, with the loss of my heart and my freedom.
“You’re a fucking monster,” I growled at my father when the guard had congratulated me on my impending nuptials. “I will never use my magic on these people, so you better get that blade down and just slice off my head, because that’s all the demonstration they’re getting tonight.”
“Such harsh words from my tender young bride,” he purred, running a hand over the top of my head. He sank his fingers into my hair and yanked my head back. “You will show your magic tonight. It’s the only way they’ll understand why I have to have you.”
“I’d rather die than marry you,” I snarled. “That’s my fate anyway. Everyone in this kingdom knows you’re sacrificing me. They all know you ate your last wife alive.”
No one could hear us but the guards down on the floor with us, who were eternally loyal to him, but his eyes narrowed with fury nonetheless. “This is not the time for your delusional ranting,” he snapped.
Fallen Princess Page 17
