Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(141)

“You can’t make me stay,” I add quickly, squeezing his hand. “I have to choose it. You’re beginning to understand, I can feel it.”

“I want you to stay. I want to crown you. You were made for one.”

“I don’t want a crown, and I don’t want to be a replacement for your lost princess.”

“There is a history there you do not understand.”

“Then tell me.”

“Follow me.”

He stands and waits for me to rise alongside him, and I walk.

“Where are we going?”

“The torture chamber.”

I stop in my tracks. “This isn’t a time for jokes.”

“I’m not going to torture you. I’m not joking, either. Please, Penny. I’m not ordering you. I’m asking you. There are things about me and my family that you need to understand.”

As I walk with him he says, “My forebears were always of two minds, two warring natures. My ancient ancestor wanted to preserve the rights of the people. This was a barbaric land, and the local lords were little more than petty chieftains. They practiced the right of the first night… When a woman of their lands married, they would rape her before her husband was allowed to consummate the marriage and steal the child if one was born. The soil of this valley is stained with the blood of women who slit their own throats rather than bear a bastard born of a monster’s lust. To free them, he gathered those men together and roasted them alive. Always there has been such madness in my family.”

He sighs. “Except with us. Me and my brother. We were born together, and nearly killed my mother in the process. She always told me that in us, the greatness and madness were divided between myself and my twin brother.”

“There were two of you?”

“Yes.”

“You both loved the same girl?”

“No. You misunderstand.” He stops, sighing. “It pained me but it was our way. Cassandra was betrothed to me when we were both thirteen. I was the eldest…by three minutes. That made me the heir.”

“Your brother…”

“There was a festival, the May festival when we came of age. That is when the bride was chosen. She was beautiful in her flowing gown, flowers in her hair…and I looked at her and felt nothing. It was Kristien who loved her, madly and totally, the way only a boy can. They spent every hour together. They carved their initials into the wall in the library. My father would have had their hides if they were anyone else.”

He turns and walks again, stopping where a staircase meets the corridor. He throws a switch and harsh lights thump to life, illuminating the narrow passage.

“Follow me.”

The steps are narrow and steeply sloped.

“My ancestors would roll their defeated enemy down the steps first,” he sighs, all the pride gone from his voice.

At the bottom is a heavy door with hammered iron bands. He draws a key from his pocket and opens it, holding it for me to pass. I step inside.

It’s well lit, and that makes it worse. The things in here turn my stomach just to look at them. I tell myself it’s rust on the iron spikes and chains, not something else. It doesn’t look like some sideshow museum’s house of horrors or something like that. It’s somehow worse in the simple utility of the devices I see before me. Irons ready to be heated, knives and surgical tools laid out on tables.

“Tell me you’ve never used this. Please.”

“The madness is in me, too. I dip into it every time I put on that armor and unsheathe that sword. It’s like a tiger stalking behind me. I can never forget it is there, or it will devour me and there will be no one left to hold it back. No, I don’t use this room. I have my own. The techniques have…evolved since the time this room was created. It serves another purpose now.”

Why am I surprised? He pushes one of the stone blocks that makes up the wall and it slides inward easily, with the lightest pressure, until it clicks. There is a steady hiss and a section of the wall pulls inward, sliding along a track in the floor beyond. It opens just enough for him to wedge through, and I have to turn to follow.

Once we’re past it he throws a lever and the wall closes behind me again. I’m entombed with him now.

“This way,” he says, perhaps to reassure me. There’s only one way to go: down.

“You didn’t tell me what happened to your brother. Is he still—”

“No. He’s dead.”

I stop on the stairs. “How?”

“Come.”

I follow him around and around, spiraling so far down we must be inside the mountain now. It keeps going, the same tight turn, until we finally reach the bottom.

There’s a door, but nothing medieval about it. The prince rests his hand on a glass plate, it scans his palm, and the door opens.

“I killed my brother,” he says, his voice breaking. “Because of this.”

I step inside and freeze with a gasp.

There’s armor in here.

Lots of it.

There must be hundreds of those suits. The prince steps in behind me and rests his hand lightly on my shoulder, as if testing whether I will accept it.

“My great grandfather preached a dream to his children after the second world war. An iron dream. He looked beyond the borders of his tiny domain and saw the great wide world and what happened in it. He saw what the future could be: the industrialization of warfare. Murder by assembly line.