And when I was King, I could do exactly as I fucking liked. Even if it meant locking myself away with Iris for weeks at a time.
I took strength from that, from the idea of finally having the freedom to do what I wanted, how I wanted. Just knowing that she was in my quarters, waiting for me, made this whole shitshow of an ordeal more bearable as well. I closed my eyes and thought back to her—to that line between her nipple and her breast, to the mole on her inner thigh, to the way she closed her eyes when she came. She was my Dutch courage; she was my shot of whiskey before a fight.
Once I’d had a solid drink of her, I told the herald, “Yeah. Go ahead.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and pivoted on his left foot, rapping the stone floor hard with his staff.
“My liege lords and ladies, your attention please!” The herald bellowed. “All rise, for Prince Randal, son of the King!”
Chapter 13
Iris
I waited and waited for Randal to return.
I finished my wine and apricots, and then I wandered around the dungeon. I walked carefully over the meticulously polished stone floor, stepping gingerly because my hips and body were so sore from being ravaged again and again. I ran my fingers over all the things he’d used on me, all the places he’d had sex with me…and looked with nervous anticipation at the many things we hadn’t yet done.
There were feathers and gags, waxed cord, and leather—so much gorgeous, new leather. Thinking back to what we had done brought a blush into my cheeks and a rush between my legs. I had never felt so loved, so cared for, so cherished.
He is mine and I am his, forever.
A long looking glass hung on the wall across from me and I looked at myself carefully. I ran my fingers over the bruises on my body and turned to see the best one of all—a mark on my right hip of Randal’s right hand, all five fingertips and his thumb, a deep plummy purple bruise on my bottom. What a man.
All my thoughts of him did nothing except make me more impatient for him to return. Useless to think of anything else, there in that room, where we had done so much already.
Standing in front of a ceramic basin in the corner of the bedroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. On my throat, in what the old ladies called the vampire spot, was a love bite that Randal had given me the night before. The memory rushed back as if it was happening all over again, the way he’d devoured my skin like a starving man.
The thought of it made me groan with pleasure as I splashed my face with the cool water. But as I dried myself, a noise jolted me out of the luscious memories. I paused to listen. At first, my heart leapt at the thought of Randal returning. But it didn’t sound to me like his heavy, cocky footfalls. Not it all. Instead, it sounded like a scuffle. A fight. I froze with the soft towel pressed to my cheek. A yell, a clank of a sword, a clatter of armor, and a guttural cry.
Oh no.
As silently as I could, I made my way to the door through which Randal had left, trying hard not to let the sound of my feet hitting the stone give me away. Though the bolt was huge and old, it slid easily aside. I peeked out into the small hallway but saw nothing out of place, nobody injured or hurt. For a moment, I waited, thinking and listening, and then I saw it… a trickle of blood coming down the steps from beneath the second door that led to where I stood.
No, no, no, no.
I was naked; I knew I had to cover myself before I went any further. Trembling, I searched the room for my things, but didn’t find them. And then saw a neat pile of simple clothes there in the corner, and I knew they must have been left for me. I finger-combed my messy hair as best I could and slid into the skirt. It may have been plain, rather than showy, but it was soft as silk and fit me perfectly. I slipped on the shoes, and a cotton blouse with sleeves that billowed and narrowed, and then left the dungeon and ran up the small stairway, avoiding the trickle of blood on the stone.
As I worked the second bolt free, I prayed that whatever had happened hadn’t meant Randal was hurt. Opening the door, my heart leaped up into my throat. I was both relieved and shocked to find a different man slumped, dead, on the other side of the doorway. He was dressed as a guard, and, I guessed, was the man who had come to get Randal earlier that day. But I didn’t know for sure, nor did I know why Randal would be a man who had a private guard to do his bidding.
The hallway outside the dungeon was dank, dark, and empty. For the moment, anyway. But I knew that whoever had killed the guard was surely after me—they’d come for me at the farm and they’d come for me here. Though I didn’t know what was happening exactly, I had a gut feeling that I was in big, big trouble. I closed the dungeon door, searching for a key to lock myself inside, but saw none. Randal had them with him, surely.
I knew I wasn’t safe here. I was a lone deer in a wide-open meadow—a perfect target. I looked down at the man in the pool of blood at my feet, feeling a wave of terror spring up from deep in my stomach, hollowing me out with fear. I was bait here. Trapped. If I waited, I would be cornered. I knew I had only one choice.
Run.
The dark hallways were confusing and nightmarish, long and twisting, and as one led to another, I started to realize Randal hadn’t told me the whole truth about where we were. This old building wasn’t just some outhouse or warehouse.
No.
As I followed the long stone corridors and empty halls, I knew exactly where we were: Ironhaven Castle. I knew I had to be right—where else could we be? But the realization made my head spin with so many new questions. Why had he brought me here? What did he mean when he said that the building belonged to his family?
Exactly who was he that he had private rooms in the kingdom’s finest and best defended stronghold? But there was no time to wonder about such things. I had to find my way to safety, and I had to do it fast.
Somehow I found my way to a small door and into a tiny stairwell with worn and slippery steps. I tripped up them, clinging desperately to a rickety old banister, and then slipped through the soft folds of a thick velvet curtain, meant to keep out the cold in winter and the heat in summer. Blinking against the sudden light and sounds, I found myself in an opulent hallway full of maids and servants rushing to and fro, carrying silvery trays and gleaming, half-finished glasses of sparkling wine.
It was disorienting at first, all these people and all these things; my whole universe for the past few days had been limited to Randal and our small and perfect world. All of this outside, it seemed so noisy and foreign. And unwelcome.
But inhaling deeply, I steadied myself. From a nearby rack, I took two glass jugs of milk to help myself blend in. I was already, thankfully, in plain dress that easily passed for a servant’s, and nobody gave me a second glance. As the servants and people passed me, I heard snatches of hurried conversations.
The king is dying. His bastard will take the crown.
I rounded a corner, searching for an exit.
The king’s bastard is an animal — have you ever seen him? A monstrosity. An abomination. A curse on the land.
These words were familiar to me. The King’s bastard was the favorite boogeyman of Aramoor.
Since I was a child, I had heard horror stories about him, about his deformities and terrible temper. Some said he had two heads, some that there was a second set of eyes in the back of his head. There were tales of fang teeth and long, sharp talons like his father had taken up with a dragon.
Children who stayed out past dusk were told by their parents that the bastard would come for them. When sheep were found dead, there was always talk that the bastard had killed them. He was a shapeshifting sort of monster, something uniquely horrible to every person—a bespoke nightmare. My own father had threatened me with the bastard, when I was younger and had such difficulty waking up before dawn to milk the cows.
“He’ll come for you, girl. They say he likes little blondes best.” I shuddered at the memory.
I had heard time and again that the bastard son of the king had to wear a mask so that all
those who saw him didn’t go mad upon the sight of his awful, horrible face. They said that just looking into his eyes was enough to turn a man to stone. How much of that was true, I had my doubts. But rumors of the bastard always hung around Aramoor. The poison fog of gossip.
But all at once, my thoughts of the bastard son of the king vanished from my mind. Because through the halls, I heard the firm, clear, beautiful voice of the love of my life. Randal. He was somewhere close.
I followed the sound of his words, “Lords and ladies. By now, you have heard the news of my father’s illness…”
It was definitely him. He had told me himself that his father was unwell. Where is he? And why is he speaking that way about his father, like he’s someone everyone should know? I hurried through the hallways, moving with the flow of servants, following the sound of his voice.
Randal’s voice boomed, “…I saw him just this morning. He asked me to come to address you…”
Address them? Why would Randal need to address anyone? Why was his father’s illness so important as that? My mind turned with the new information bombarding me from all sides, itching with some new insight that I couldn’t quite see.
I turned left, and found myself in a great, vast hallway, lined with gleaming suits of armor affixed to the sandstone walls. In front of me was a huge hall, with cathedral-high ceilings, packed with women and men in the finest, most elegant clothes I had ever seen. All of their heads were turned to a man who stood before them, addressing them. He was masked, but his body was undeniably Randal’s, and it was his voice, it was him.
I froze, with my jugs of milk in my hands, staring, trying to marry the image before me to the world that made sense. I knew his body, I knew his voice, but he was masked. Why in the world would he be…
“And so it is time that I show myself to you. Not as the bastard prince,” he said, now lifting his mask. “But as your future king.”
The crowd gasped, all at once, like a flock of ravens taking wing together. But the face that was beneath the mask wasn’t the horrible face of the bastard prince. It was no monster. It was Randal. It was him. So, where in the world was the bastard?
Unless… could it be?
All at once, every lord and lady went to their knees and knelt before him. As they dropped in unison, I clapped my hands to my mouth, and the jugs of milk fell to the floor, shattering at my feet. I was shocked, stunned. The sight of him there on the dais winded me, like I’d been hit with a cannon ball. And yet, he had been a prince to me since they very beginning. My prince. My King.
The crowd rose again, and my direct line of sight to Randal disappeared, leaving me bewildered and dizzy.
A hand on my shoulder startled me back to reality. I turned to see a young woman, with kindly eyes and a warm smile.
“Are you lost?” She asked me.
Oh, such relief. So lost. So very, very lost. I stared down at my feet, at my clothes. I must have looked entirely out of place. A servant girl gaping at the future king inside the royal palace. But I had to get to him. I simply had to.
“I…I’ve…I need to…” I stammered. She narrowed her eyes at me, not impatiently but definitely with confusion.
“Here, come with me,” she said. “There’s milk all over your pretty outfit. It’ll spoil the fabric if we don’t rinse it clean. Let me help you.”
Finally I found my voice.
“I need to speak with the prince.” I turned over my shoulder to get one last glimpse of him before she dragged me around the corner.
He hadn’t seen me; I was sure of it. I was too far away. He looked so commanding up there. So regal. I could have kicked myself for not realizing it before; now that I had seen him for what he really was, it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I have a very important message for him.”
“Of course, of course,” she said, warmly. “My name is Lisette. I’ll bring you right to him.”
I was so relieved that I had to stifle a sob. So relieved, in fact, that I felt tears spring to my eyes. I realized I was absolutely terrified, so uncertain and so confused, but now I was going to see him. Thank goodness.
But as we moved away from the great hall, the maid’s demeanor seemed to stiffen. Her face gave away nothing, except for the occasional cold glance from the corner of her eye. Her grip on my forearm tightened and went from helpful to hostile. She wasn’t guiding me. She was all but dragging me. Once again, my instinct said what my mind could not.
Run.
Run.
Run.
“On second thought,” I said, stopping short, “I need to get back to my cows. I’m a farmer’s daughter and it’s calving season, you know. I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble.”
When she turned to face me, the kindly face had transformed completely. The warm, bright, blustering maid was gone. The set of her jaw was firm, her lips pursed and nasty. It was as if she had aged a decade in an instant.
She seized my arm brutally and yanked me around the corner into an open-aired courtyard garden. Without even having to think about it, I knew it was a sinister place—every plant was ruthlessly groomed, sterile and solitary, everything planted in horrible symmetrical rows and grids. It was the garden of someone with an icy heart and no love for the messy beauty of nature.
Whoever planted this garden didn’t know how to love at all.
The maid shoved me forward and I stumbled out into the white-bright sunlight in the center of the courtyard. And before me stood Queen Patara, with a poisonous oleander flower behind her ear.
“So you’re the bastard’s little cocksucker,” she said, looking me up and down like a pig being auctioned for slaughter.
The what? I backed up instinctively, but the maid blocked my escape, holding me from behind with one hand on each shoulder. Her hands felt so strong and cold, they were hardly human.
“I’m…. Please,” I stammered. “I’m just…”
Confused. I’m so confused…
The queen stared at me for a long moment, while my heart pounded so hard, I could feel it in my eyes. Then she removed the oleander flower from her ear, crushed it up in her palm, and said, “Take her.”
And just like that, the guards dragged me away, screaming.
Chapter 14
Randal
Once I left the great hall, I booked it back to my quarters as fast as I could—one single hour away from Iris was way too goddamned long. Showing myself to the court had gone well, way better than I had expected, but the whole thing was still utterly fucking surreal. Felt like some other world, some other life. And I was hungry to get back to the world and life I knew, the world with Iris that I had fantasized about for all that fucking time.
But as I came around the corner to go down into the side stairway to the dungeon, I found Erik slumped on the ground. There had been a scuffle, that much was clear, and I doubted his attacker had come away unscathed, but Erik’s throat had been sliced open and his eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling.
I felt total fucking disbelief for one half-second, followed by all-encompassing rage. Those motherfucking monsters.
Anger gave way to panic. Iris. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Goddamnit,” I growled from between gritted teeth, taking the stairs down to the dungeon two at a time, with my heart pounding. The door at the bottom was wide open. I ran inside, fully fucking expecting to find her dead on the ground as well. But the place was empty, undisturbed.
Except that all of the clothes I’d left for her were gone.
Rage blinded me; it narrowed my vision like a fucking mist. I slammed my hand on the table, making the buckles of the restraints clatter. With my fingernails digging hard into my palm, I sucked a breath through my fist and forced myself, fucking forced myself, to calm down and think clearly. This was homicidal rage, no fucking doubt about it. If I didn’t get control of myself, I’d be ripping every palace guard limb from limb to get to her. When it came to her, it would be mass murder first and questions later.<
br />
Not a great fucking plan for the new king.
With a few deep breaths, I managed to get some quasi-control of my rage and assess the situation as best I could. The door out to the grounds was still fastened shut; only the door that led to the stairway had been opened. There was no blood, no sign of struggle. If she’d been taken by force, whoever had her wouldn’t have given her the time to change out of her robe and into her clothes.
So she had to have done it on her own. She must have heard Erik and made a run for it.
Only the Queen could be behind this. That fucking cunt.
Within seconds, I was running down the hallways of the castle, searching for Iris. It was the first time I had walked those hallways unmasked, and people cowered from me like I was a blood-covered bear.
Fucking right. Given the chance, I’d have ripped the goddamned throat out of any one of them who got in my way—and I would have enjoyed every second of it.
As I neared the Queen’s private garden, I spotted a maid up ahead. I recognized her at once. Lynn or Lizzete or something, one of the queen’s women. Not that I could blame her for that; servants had no choice in who they were assigned to serve.
And staying alive serving that bitch was a miracle in itself.
I fully expected her to shrink from me like the rest of them, but she didn’t. She was studying my face, not just cowering like a terrified animal. Her body gave her away. She knew something; I fucking felt it in my bones.
Grabbing her by the arms, I shoved her up against one of the stone columns that lined the garden.
“Where the fuck is she?”
The maid seemed so terrified that she struggled to speak. In her eyes, I saw genuine fear as she looked at me. And for the first time in my life, I felt glad that I was such a fucking monster.
Masked Prince (Fated Royals Book 2) Page 11
