The words still felt foreign on my tongue, but my heart warmed with the understanding that doing what was right was not always easy.
“Shut up, you animal. Who will follow you? You’re disgusting. A horrific joke. A half-breed.”
Now I pointed my finger and pressed it into her bony chest. “Watch your language, Patara. You’ll be kneeling before me before long.”
At that, she made a noise that sounded a shitload like an actual hissing snake. “Never.”
“And by the way,” I added, making her back up into a clump of foxglove, which I knew would give her a rash on her ankles. “I know all about your affair with the captain of the Queen’s Guards. And your relationship with the young groom who strangely disappeared two years ago never to be seen in the kingdom again. Or, the many before that…Should we go ahead and tell my father right now, so he can hang you? Or do you want to wait for me to do it?” I lifted my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Doesn’t much matter to me. Either way, I’ll be glad to watch you swing.”
She stumbled back, catching herself on an alabaster column, and pointing at me as she barked, “You bastard!”
“That I am.”
My father was no saint, but one thing Patara knew he would never tolerate is her being intimate with someone else. It was unfair, I knew. My father had his own dalliances, and one such created me, but the queen knew in no uncertain terms there were things he would and would not tolerate.
Ironically, his queen’s infidelity was one of them. I loved my father, but perfect he was not.
Why I’d never told him before now I couldn’t quite understand. I hated her, but perhaps it was the embarrassment it would cause him that held my tongue. Or perhaps it was more the idea of having her blood on my hands, and the fact it felt like stooping to her level.
In its own strange way, her seeing me fight back dirty, the way she would? That felt like a win for her. The royal life is wrought with complexities others may not understand, and sometimes neither did I. But perhaps, somewhere deep down inside me, there was a royal instinct that kept me silent.
I turned to go. But as I did, her demeanor changed. I mean instantly. The hissing, snake-like anger was replaced by a sudden and very spooky calm.
Whatever. Didn’t make shit for difference.
“I’m fucking out of here.”
“You shouldn’t fight battles you can’t win,” she said to my back.
In response, I lifted my hand and raised my middle finger, without turning to face her.
“That’s right, do what you always do, you monster! Walk away. Hide your face!” She shrieked. “And now, hurry back to that little milkmaid whore you’re screwing. Maybe you’ll even get a chance to see my guards take turns raping her!”
I froze. Everything slowed down like I was stuck in a nightmare. Just turning around to face her again felt like it took a fucking eternity. “What the fuck did you say?”
She smiled. “You heard me. I’ve been watching you. Keep your friends close and enemies closer.” She said, pointing at me. “You and your little woman. I sent my guards for her as soon as you set foot in the castle.” Now she took a few strides toward me, with her fists clenched at her sides. “Don’t mess with me, Randal. I will destroy everything you have. I will always win. I’ll always be three steps ahead of you.”
Her words rang in my ears as I near fled the garden. She may be a snake, but she was no liar and she didn’t bluff. If she said her guards were attacking Iris, I had to get back to her.
And I had to do it right fucking now.
Chapter 8
Iris
I was nearly done with Nellie’s second milking when I knocked over the full milk pail with my injured leg, spilling it everywhere. I rested my forehead against Nellie’s massive side and let the tears come.
Since the moment Randal had been taken away, I’d tried my very, very best to stay strong. But I was a ball of worry and sadness—over the farm, over my increasingly costly clumsiness, and especially over Randal.
I was heartbroken. I had no idea if I’d ever see him again, and each minute that passed without word or sight of him made me more concerned that those guards had seized him and imprisoned him for good for neglecting his duties. It wasn’t simply that I needed his help; I wanted his company. I adored being around him. Now that he was gone, I’d never felt so alone.
“Are you alright, Miss Iris?” Said a voice behind me.
It was Bonny, a young girl from a nearby village, who sometimes came to help me during calving season. I had been so wrapped up in my thoughts of Randal and my work that I had forgotten she was even there with me. She’d arrived not too long after Randal and the guards had vanished in the distance. All afternoon I had tried to stay strong in front of her, suppressing my tears. But now that they’d started, I felt like they’d never stop.
“I’m fine,” I said, sniffling and trying to pull myself together. I wiped my tears on the edge of my milking apron and righted the milking pail. “But I’ll need some help cleaning up this stall.”
“Of course, of course,” said Bonny, with a gentle pat of my back. “Not to worry, miss. I’ll fetch a bucket of water and the broom.”
Bonny’s soft steps leaving the milking shed were replaced by the noisy racket of my father approaching outside. Bonny had learned years ago to stay well clear of him whenever she saw him, and I knew that for as long as he was in the milking shed, she would stay out. It was for the best. Buckets clattered as he kicked them, and the chickens clucked and flapped, trying to get away from him.
“Fucking birds,” he snarled. One of them squawked out a scream as his foot connected with her side.
“Please don’t hurt them, father,” I called out to him, cringing as I heard frantic wing flaps. “Please just leave them alone.”
“I’ll do as I damned well like!” He roared as he stomped into the milk shed. One look at him told me he was spirit-drunk, and dangerously so. It was much different than ale or wine drunk and all I could think of was, anything but this right now.
He blinked his puffy eyes hard to adjust to the low light in the shed. Instantly he locked in on the huge puddle of milk at my feet.
“Now just look what you’ve done, you can’t do anything right, can you?”
He took a long swig of spirits from the brown bottle he held. From the way he leaned back as he tipped it into his mouth, it was clear to me it was empty. When he realized it was empty as well, he angrily tossed the bottle at my feet, making it shatter into a hundred dangerous pieces around Nellie’s hooves as I flinched back. The residue of the alcohol caught her sensitive nose and she shuffled uncomfortably. Any one of those pieces could have sliced her feet open, creating a terrible danger of infection…even death.
I could put up with being mistreated myself, but I wouldn’t stand for him coming in here and scaring the animals.
I stared at my father. “Get out.”
“You don’t order me,” he said, shuffling straight-legged and woozily around the shed. “I know you’ve got some cider in here. I fucking know it.” He smacked the table with the flat of his hand, which made Nellie jump.
I grimaced as she shuffled backwards and used my injured foot to scrape the shards of glass out of her way as best I could. My father crouched down beside me, taking my arm hard in his hand—hard enough that I knew it would leave a bruise.
“Father, stop! Please!” I said, trying to twist away from him. While I struggled with my left arm, I rubbed Nellie with my right to try to calm her.
“I don’t have any cider. I promise. You’ll have to go to town. I can give you some money.” Nellie leaned to the side, making my father stumble back.
I looked up at him to meet his bleary-eyed scowl as he steadied himself on my old repurposed cupboard by the wall. It had been my mother’s, and my father wouldn’t allow it in the house. He wouldn’t allow anything that reminded him of her anywhere near where he was likely to go.
He leaned in close to me, as
if to get the scent of a lie on my breath. But I wasn’t lying about the cider, thank goodness; Randal and I had finished off what I had, because I insisted his best cider was too expensive to drink all the time.
But as my father began ransacking my things, I saw that Randal’s gallantry backfired on me badly—my father opened the cupboard to reveal that Randal had generously replenished my stash with the royal orchard’s most expensive variety. I gulped hard and braced for an explosion of anger.
“You always were a terrible fucking liar. Might be the only good thing about you,” he said. He yanked one of the corks out with his stained teeth and spat it into the milk and glass on the floor.
From behind me, I heard footsteps—but they weren’t Bonny’s. For one instant, I thought it might be Randal, but as I turned, I was horrified to see three uniformed guards. They weren’t the same men who had come for Randal, I knew that much. They walked into the shed like they owned the place, and I knew right away that their intentions were neither helpful nor good. They looked like criminals, not guards at all but when I thought of the guards that can to take Randal, I surmised they were here to chastise me for distracting him from his work.
“Can… can I help you?”
One of them drew his dagger, staring straight at me as he flipped it end-over-end, catching the hilt in his palm again and again. “Fuck yeah, you can help me,” he said, grabbing his groin and giving it a pump as he guffawed like a sailor in a bawdy house.
Oh my God. If their intentions hadn’t been clear before, they were certainly clear now. Behind the guards, I saw Bonny peeking into the shed, just one eye visible past the door frame. She locked eyes with me, and I willed the words through the air, without speaking. Go! Run! Get help!
She nodded and took off down the path, moving silently through the chickens who had known her since they were chicks.
My father’s responses were slow and sloppy, and it had taken him that long to realize the guards were in the shed with us. He staggered around in a confused circle, looking at them in astonishment.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Who the fuck are you?”
The guards glanced side to side at one another, all grinning.
“Save it, you worthless piece of shit,” the one with the knife said to my father. “Go back to your house to get your drink on. We have some business to take care of with your daughter.” The second guard, the one on the left, began to undo his belt.
Once, I’d seen a salmon frozen in crystal-clear river ice. Eyes wide, gills open…stuck and terrified. I’d worked hard to free it and send it deeper, hoping it would make its way downstream. I felt exactly like that, except I doubted anyone was coming to help me.
I was paralyzed, for one terrible instant, by the purest fear I have ever known. I glanced around for any kind of weapon to use to defend myself, but my father’s poor judgment extended to trying to grab the guard’s dagger—blade first.
“Fuck!” He screamed. “Now just look what you’ve done! Get out of here! Get off my property!” He grabbed a spade from a nearby shelf and tried to use it as a weapon, which got him nothing but a roar of laughter from the guards.
The third one, who was by far the biggest and most imposing, picked up a pitchfork from where it lay leaning by the wall. The other two guards nodded their approval and stepped aside. And then in one, astonishing, horrible movement, the guard plunged the pitchfork straight into my father’s belly. With a sound like a knife cutting into an apple, the four prongs ran him straight through and emerged, dripping with blood, from his back.
I shot backwards, sending the milking stool flying, trying desperately to help him. He lay face-up on the floor, his eyes red and bloodshot, looking confused and far-away. He placed his hand to his bloody stomach and stared at his red palm in amazement feeling like this was some horrible nightmare.
“Father, just…” I wanted to tell him help was on the way, but I didn’t dare. “What have you done?” I screamed, looking up at the three men. “How could you do this?”
The one that seemed in charge grinned at me. “We had our orders. And now, we’ve got some orders for you, pretty little thing.” He looked straight at my sex, while he spun his blade again and again.
Ignoring the pain in my leg, I scrambled up the main post of the milking shed, while the guards grabbed at my ankles and the hem of my skirt. I had made the climb a thousand times, and I was grateful for my own strength, as much as it hurt. I scampered up and over, so that I was above them on a horizontal beam, clinging to it with both arms and pinching it with my knees.
Below me, I watched the life drain out of my father’s eyes. I felt so helpless, so terrified, and so far away from him. For all the terror he had caused me, I had tried—always—to treat him with kindness. I had always tried to smother his rage with love, because despite it all I had loved him. But now, in his dying moments, I could do nothing to comfort him, as I watched the life drain away, away, away.
It was too much to take in. I was so shocked, so overwhelmed, that I just stared at him in mute terror. But slowly the hot tears found their way to my eyes and clouded my vision. The guards became blurry through them. I had to hang on. I just had to. All I had to do, I told myself, was hang on until Bonny sent someone to help me.
But that could take forever. The guards were there to take what they wanted of me and dispose of the rest. It was only a matter of time before I joined my father in bleeding to death on the milk shed floor.
The guards prowled around me from below. The memory of that frozen salmon unlocked another memory, one I had tried desperately to forget. When I was a very young girl, while my mother was still alive, a pack of wolves spotted me and drove me up a tree, where I stayed for hours until my father appeared, driving them off with his shouts and the fire of a makeshift torch.
The guards were exactly like those wolves—hungrily circling and circling, and this time I knew my father wasn’t going to bravely come to my rescue. They made no movements to follow me up into the rafters; I could tell they were very much enjoying the chase. One of them used the tip of his sword to slit my skirt up the length of my thigh. The wood grain dug into my skin as I gripped the beam so tightly that it made my legs burn.
“I’ll give you anything you want. But please...” I begged them. “Please don’t kill me.”
They chuckled, like I’d made a joke.
I’m not going to survive this. I’m not.
“Oh, we’ll kill you alright,” said the big guard. “But I fucking promise to make it nice and slow.”
This could not be happening. It simply could not. My arms trembled so hard that splinters dug into my flesh.
Nellie was getting increasingly worked up as the guards circled. As many animals do when they’re nervous, she took the opportunity to relieve herself. Before she was even done, one of the guards had grabbed a stinking pile of her hot dung and threw it right at my face.
I spat it out and tried to wipe my eyes with my knuckles. They just roared with laughter as one after another handful of cow dung splattered my body and head. The more of it they threw, the more slippery the beam became and the more difficult it was for me to hang on tight.
Once they’d finished with the dung, they moved onto whatever else they could find—tools, buckets, and finally the full bottles of cider. The first hit my shoulder, the second hit my hip, both of them causing a shooting and horrible pain. But before I could even cry out, I saw a third one, heading directly for my head.
I shut my eyes and tried to turn away, but it connected with my left ear, making me feel as though my brain had been shaken up and torn apart. My skull was full of a shrieking, disorienting pain.
Instinctively, I pressed my palm to my head; as I did, I began to lose my grip and slip off the beam. I felt myself beginning to fall. I clung to the beam with one arm, knowing that I would surely be killed if I fell and landed on the hard floor of the milking shed. As I blinked away the horrible pain in my ear, I realized that death by fall
ing might be a much less painful death than whatever the guards had in store.
In the haze of my tear-streaked vision, I saw a shadow darken the doorway, followed by the sound of two heavy steps and a gurgle. Below me, I saw one of the guards slump to the floor with a slash that ran clean across his throat. On the ground were a pair of boots that I did not recognize, but by their sheer hugeness I knew who it had to be…
And it was. It was Randal.
He was dressed differently than he’d been when I saw him last, and now he was looking as savagely angry as I had ever seen another human being in my life.
He looked up at me without saying a single word, but from his glance, I drew enough strength to hang on. Just hang on a little longer.
“You really are one ugly motherfucker,” said one of the remaining guards. “Time to do the world a favor and get rid of your ungodly face. Not like anyone will miss you.”
Randal gave no response, but widened his stance. The two guards drew their gleaming long swords, and Randal adjusted his grip on his dagger, holding it high and parallel with his face. There was a long, tense pause. And then with his free hand, Randal signaled them with a flick of his fingers.
“Bring it on, you fuckers.”
My heart sank and my fingernails broke with the effort of hanging onto the beam. I had just watched as my father bled to death. Helpless and terrified. I couldn’t bear to lose Randal, too.
Chapter 9
Randal
The guards put up a fucking decent fight, but I had the advantage.
I’d been trained by the man who trained the man who trained them, and he kept the most important skills—how to fight dirty and fight hard—for those who might need them. They didn’t stand a goddamned chance. I was one step ahead of their every move. I sliced one across the jugular, and the second one I killed with a twisting stab to the heart.
Masked Prince (Fated Royals Book 2) Page 6
