Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(114)

Henrick let out a cold laugh. “You might watch your attitude, Honor. This is hardly the right time for your antics.”





Honor



“Alis has told me the most interesting story.” Henrick stepped to the other side of the cross so he could see my face as he sipped from a teacup casually, as if I weren’t half naked and bound in front of him. “She said you have no memory from your childhood, just as we discussed on the dance floor the other day.”

I pressed my lips together tightly.

“Isn’t that true, Honor?”

I didn’t bother to answer him.

Then suddenly, his hand was low on my bare back, just above the crest of my ass. My whole body tightened in response as he leaned in. His lips grazed my ear, and I tried to jerk away as he murmured, “I do expect you to answer me respectfully every time I speak to you.”

“Fine.” I’d play his stupid little game if it made him so happy. I wasn’t sure anything I said would make him any less brutal. “I don’t have any memories before I was nine.”

“Because your father enchanted you.”

He sounded so sure of himself, and it made me rage. Henrick hadn’t known my father… or had he?

My anger boiled in my voice as I corrected, “Because I hit my head.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Your father was a liar just like you. You might not be his natural daughter, but you did inherit some things, didn’t you?”

“Don’t you dare talk about him like that,” I said fiercely.

He ran his fingernails up my spine, tracing slowly along the skin, his nails digging deep enough to hurt.

I tried to look at him over my shoulder.

“Your father lied to you,” he said. “He took your memories.”

The thought that my father could’ve lied horrified me, but I didn’t want Henrick to see the doubt squirm into my mind.

Father had always said that it was a blessing I didn’t remember what had happened to me before. But sometimes I thought that even though I didn’t remember the darkness, it had marked me anyway, wrapped its tendrils so deep under my skin that I’d never cut it loose. I had fears that went deeper than conscious thought, like my terror in the labyrinth.

And I felt a similar sense of terror now as, despite my best efforts to look calm, my wrists kept yanking at the restraints, my panicked body swaying.

No one had ever tied me up to hurt me before that I remembered. But my body seemed to remember. I didn’t feel like a grown woman or a dragon royal anymore, like someone who was easily equipped to handle whatever cruelties life could throw at me.

I was exposed and vulnerable, and the punishment hadn’t even truly started yet. A child’s blind, desperate terror blurred my vision before I shook it off.

“But I’m going to do you a kindness, Honor,” Henrick murmured in my ear, so close I could smell the sour tang of his breath. “I value honesty far more than your father. I’m going to help you get your memories back.”

“You planned this.” A ragged edge of fear broke through my voice. Because I was afraid of being hurt? Or because I was afraid of the memories?

I couldn’t stop myself from trying to fight loose of the leather. Every time I shifted, the brand pressed against the wood, burning me all over again.

“There is a story,” he mused, wandering behind me, just out of my sight, “about a very rich nobleman who lost his position once.”

Oh my gods. Were we really going to have story time now, while my flesh turned to goosebumps in the cool air of the drawing room?

“He had a young daughter, and she was the only one who knew where his treasure trove was.”

My breath froze in my chest. Was that little girl supposed to be me? Because my first parents had been cruel peasants who hurt me and abandoned me. They weren’t rich nobles.

Unless Mother and Father had lied…

I shook my head, rejecting that idea, as Alis walked in front of me, and a cruel smile carved her lips upward. She must have seen that just questioning my parents struck a blade to my heart.

I forced myself to listen to Henrick as he strutted behind me, forced myself to stay still despite the urge to twist to look for him over one shoulder, then the other. Alis wandered around the front of the cross, her teacup held in her delicate hands, looking as if she’d gotten lost at a society luncheon.

“Now the people who’d usurped his position very much wanted to get their hands on that treasure. He and his wife had both died trying to protect their young daughter. She was supposed to be taken out of the castle through a great labyrinth.”

I started at the mention of labyrinth. Luckily neither of them saw my expression at another mention of the tunnels. Were the tunnels tied to every sordid thing in this kingdom?

“But her family was betrayed. Aww.” He sounded mock sympathetic. “They took the little girl, and they tortured her, trying to get her to reveal her father’s untold riches.”

Was that supposed to be why I was so afraid of being bound? It was ridiculous, and yet the way my body wrenched at the bonds, the way my back arched helplessly as if I were afraid already of the falling lash, felt like the tattered remnant of another life.

Alis moved back into sight, and this time, she carried a silver tray, and on it was a coiled whip. Some of my terror cleared given how ridiculous she was, and I could’ve rolled my eyes at her theatrics.