Torrent of Tears (Scourge Survivor Series Book 3)(63)
“That’s a shame. I’ve already arranged a surprise for you.” Zale strode to the bar console and slid the marble countertop backward until some hidden mechanism clicked. A moment later, a viewing-screen rose from inside the cabinet. He swiveled it toward me.
I was just about to tell him where he could shove his surprise when the screen flashed to life. No. Oh, hells no.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Rowan naked was a beautiful sight, but not like this. I closed my eyes but the image of his hands running down the silk sheets, contouring my mother’s curves, had seared in my mind. Wearing nothing but a gold slave band around his neck he kissed her arm, her shoulder, her collarbone.
Rowan—No, don’t!
I swallowed but my mouth remained dry. My fingers clamped against my thigh, searching for a hilt to grab hold of. My first impulse was to find a knife and the consort chamber and peg her through her shriveled black heart. My second was to turn the blade on Zale. Or maybe on Rowan.
In any case it would involve pain, a lot of pain.
“Truth is tough to stomach, isn’t it?” Zale said, smug amusement thick in his voice. “While you’re here worrying about your little urchin, how to escape, and what tomorrow will bring, your whore boyfriend is sheathing his sword inside another woman and telling her every little secret you ever whispered in his ear.”
Anxious, hurt, and generally mind-fucked, I stared at the screen. Rowan would not betray me.
“He was only too happy to let us ambush you, Gracie. He invited us in, even hid me in the back room.”
I wanted to smack the confidence from his perfect pretty-boy face. Rowan couldn’t do that—he wouldn’t—unless Elani was threatened. Then, maybe.
“See what he does when he’s not with you.”
My eyes widened as Rowan pulled back the sheet. My mother wore a midnight black baby doll, so sheer that I could see his hand as it slid beneath the fabric and cupped her breast. In the back of my mind I wished that she had declined more, sagged more, aged more. But no, she was a sleek cougar on the prowl and Rowan was caught in her clutches.
Her head fell back, mouth open, no doubt to let out a moan. Gods, I could feel it.
My skin tightened as a phantom memory caressed my skin, gentle in touch, but the slightest bit rough in texture. My eyes stung. I blinked quick, and then not at all. Gods, what a picture she made lying next to him, her long black hair strewn over the pillows, tangled around Rowan’s thick biceps, her eyes as emerald green as Jade’s.
Zale prattled off beside me, a steady stream of verbal diarrhea bouncing around in my ear. I was pretty sure that’s where the buzzing in my head was coming from. Either that or my cranium was about to explode.
Shut the hell up. “So what, Zale? The Queen and Rowan have sex tapes. That’s old news where I come from.” My chest cavity hadn’t been this cold since my meltdown at the pond, but I kept my tears at bay. “Does my mother know you’re circulating her porn?”
Zale scowled. “Just watch, this is where it gets good.”
Rowan lay perfectly still as she slid her hands up his chest and behind his neck. She fisted his hair and yanked his head back. I stiffened.
Zale’s smile broke wide.
As Rowan got pushed onto his back, the Queen mounted him. I drew a labored breath searching Rowan’s lifeless gaze as he stared straight up at the ceiling. Misery shone in his eyes—utter desolation—as the Queen leaned forward and moved her mouth slow and demanding over his. Broad mechanical arms wound around her, stroking up her back as it flexed and relaxed.
“Seen enough?” Zale asked. “Your white knight is quite literally a mother-fucking whore. You’ll do well to realize that, and stay in line for the next twenty-four hours. I’m respected in this city. I won’t have you embarrassing me.” All his posturing made me want to knee him in the crotch. “Ready to go to our reception and play your part?”
“Oh, I’m ready all right.” I met his smile with a genuine one of my own. He’d made one mistake in his screening. The Rowan in his little film noir didn’t have a shiner. His skin was beautifully unmarred. No sign of where my fist had connected with his face and no scratches on the back of his shoulders where I’d marked him during our own sextathalon.
This tape was old news. The knowing didn’t erase the ache in my chest completely, but I could breathe again . . . and worry. If they had to use an old tape in their ploy to break me, what was happening to Rowan right now?
Lifting my chin I sucked in a breath and cleared my throat. “Let’s get this party started.”
Following the crescendo of lutes and harp, the chamber orchestra slid into a light and lovely couples’ dance. The glittering crowd spun and twirled, hands and bodies linked, gowns trailing in graceful arcs. It was an Attalosean who’s who. All the Eligibles, past and present, wore all the right gowns and drank all the right multi-hued drinks. We sat on display on the raised dias, lined up for inspection while the aristocrats of the Noble houses, the Strati commanders, the upper echelon of the city and the respected clergy twirled around on the ballroom floor below.
The Princess to my right—Hope, I thought, but could have been Faith or Charity, they were all the same to me—was a bubbling fountain of intel for the evening’s festivities. She knew nothing of any use, clueless about where prisoners were held, or in which part of the palace I’d find the Queen’s personal consort chamber rooms.