Rise of Fire (Reign of Shadows #2)(36)

I cringed at the stink of his onion-laced breath gusting in my face—and there was the stale aroma of that drink that had made me fuzzy-headed. “I don’t suppose it makes a difference that I don’t want to be here either.”

He continued as though I had not spoken. “The king doesn’t understand, but I do. You’ll bring war to Lagonia.”

“Aren’t we already at war? With this eclipse? With dwellers?”

“Precisely why we don’t need the addition of a war with Relhok.” He reached out and closed his hands around my neck. “I could open those doors and toss you off the balcony. It’s a long drop down. Can’t even see the bottom at midlight. No one would ever know what happened to you.”

I gasped at the dig of sausage-thick fingers around my throat. “Let me go,” I choked out, clawing at his slowly tightening grip. I hadn’t been through so much, come so far, to let it end like this.

“I could end you now. Save us all. God would forgive me.”

My legs thrashed, nails scoring the backs of his hands as he squeezed, crushing my windpipe.

I couldn’t breathe. A roaring filled my ears. It seemed the worst thing. Not dying, but dying like this. I had assumed it would be at the hands of dwellers.

The pressure in my head suddenly lightened and I felt like I was drifting. I didn’t feel the sweating, fat hands at my throat anymore.

Then the lightness vanished.

Pain returned as air filled my starved lungs. I clutched at my burning throat. It was a blissful sort of agony, though, because it signaled life. I wasn’t dead. Those crushing hands were no longer on my throat.

Dimly, volume returned. I sucked air in over the sounds of scuffling and harsh voices. Bone cracked against something thick and solid. Frand cried out shrilly.

I sat up, listening, one hand still wrapped around my throat, massaging the tender skin.

“Please, please, Your Highness,” Frand blubbered, dragging himself on the floor to get away from the prince. “I beg you! Stop!”

The prince’s boots followed after the large body, biting hard into the stone floor. His silken voice slid over me, filling me with a strange sort of relief. “You’re fortunate I’m nothing like my father, Bishop Frand, or you would not be leaving this room alive.”

“Th-Thank you, Your Highness! You are so generous,” the bishop babbled. There was the sound of a sloppy, wet kiss on the prince’s boot.

“Get off me before I change my mind!”

Frand whimpered and retreated, bringing his hands up to cover his blubbering face.

Chasan crouched over the pathetic man. “Now heed me. If anything, anything at all, happens to this girl, I will come for you. Your head on a pike in the courtyard. That will be your fate . . . your legacy.”

The viciousness of his threat startled me. I would not have thought he cared enough to bother. When his father proclaimed that we should marry, he did not seem any more happy about it than I was.

The bishop gasped. “I can’t be the only one here with a thought to harm her. Your Highness, your admirers alone . . . any one of them or a member of their family might think to harm her. Half the noblemen at court have been pelting their daughters at you in a bid for marriage!”

“Then you best hope they don’t harm her,” he cut in smoothly.

I swallowed, wincing at the pain of the action. The bishop here was not my only danger? I’d landed myself in a vipers’ nest.

“Your Highness,” the bishop edged, his voice cautiously deferential, “you know marrying her is a declaration of war on Relhok—”

“Such matters of state do not concern you. Keep to what you do best: delivering lies from your pulpit whilst you lose yourself in gluttony and groping the serving maids. Never cross me again. Someday I’ll sit on the throne. Never forget that. Now go, before I decide to toss you into the dungeon.”

Frand lumbered to his feet with great panting breaths. “Yes, yes. Of course. Th-Thank you, Your Highness.”

His heavy tread shuffled from the room. The door thudded behind him and it was just the two of us.

“H-How—” I stopped, my voice coming out a hoarse whisper. I swallowed, cringing against the raw scrape of my throat. “How did you know that I was in trouble?”

“When I walked past your door, the guard wouldn’t meet my gaze. It seemed strange.”

I nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

He stopped beside my bed. I scooted to the edge, dropping my legs over the side. I couldn’t stand without coming chest to chest with him, so I stayed sitting, attempting to hide just how much I was shaking.

When his hands landed on my throat, I jumped. I should have sensed his impending touch, but pain addled my head. I inhaled his warmth, the musk of his skin, his rich, windswept smell. He had been Outside recently. Since I last saw him tonight. I felt a stab of envy that he had the freedom to come and go.

He pulled back slightly, his fingers a brushstroke on my neck.

The air crackled as I felt his stare on my face, so close and probing. I resisted the urge to reach out and feel his face so that I would know him, so that I would have a sense of this face staring at me.

“W-What are you doing?”

“Just checking your neck. Should I call for the physician—”

“No,” I blurted. “The fewer who know about this, the better.” I didn’t want anyone to think I was an easy target. Now that I knew precisely how much in jeopardy I was, I would be more guarded against attacks.