Chapter 5

Elowen

Father seized my arm and hauled me down the street. My bare feet stumbled on the cobblestones, but his grip didn't loosen.

"Throwing yourself at a cripple in the middle of the road." Each word came louder than the last. "In front of his entire guard. The whole district will know by morning."

He dragged me through the front door and shoved me into the hall. Rosalind stood at the foot of the stairs with her arms crossed. Chloe peered from behind her, eyes wide, already eager.

Before, I would have kept my head down. Taken it quietly, the way I always had. But my future had already been decided. Adrian tomorrow, or Adrian the day after. The worst was coming regardless. There was nothing left to protect by staying quiet.

"And being Adrian's mistress isn't humiliating?"

My own voice startled me. Loud. Unsteady, but loud.

Father stared at me. For one second his expression went blank, as if he couldn't quite process that I'd spoken back. Then his hand cracked across my mouth. My head snapped sideways and pain split through my lower lip, the same one he'd opened two days ago, reopened now against my teeth. Blood pooled on my tongue.

No one spoke. Chloe's smile had frozen. Even Rosalind looked taken aback. I had never raised my voice in this house. Not once in twenty years.

"Tie her up." Father's voice was flat. "She goes to Adrian first thing in the morning."

They bound my wrists to the bedpost with a leather strap and left me in the dark.

I pulled against it until my skin burned, then kept pulling. The leather bit into my wrists until something warm ran down my forearms. It wasn't much, but enough to feel. I kept pulling until the feeling stopped and my hands went numb.

The house grew quiet. Moonlight shifted across the floor, slow and indifferent, and I watched it move because there was nothing else to do. I thought about the forest, the clearing where Flick said wild spirits still gathered, where no one would think to look for a baron's unwanted daughter. But my wrists were bound and the window was shuttered, and thinking about it only made the room smaller.

At some point my body gave out. Not surrender. Exhaustion. My arms went slack and I hung from the bedpost like something discarded.

When the first light came through the window, the door opened.

Rosalind stood in the doorframe holding a garment I'd never seen. Bright red silk with gold embroidery, cut so low it looked like something from the rooms where I'd met Adrian. No lady would wear it.

"You look terrible," she said calmly. "We can't send you like this."

Two maids came in behind her. They untied my wrists and I nearly collapsed. My fingers were white and swollen, numb from the elbows down. Before I could steady myself, they gripped my arms and began pulling my torn gold dress over my head.

I twisted sideways. "Don't—"

"Hold her still."

The red dress went on piece by piece. The fabric was thin and gaudy, the neckline plunging nearly to my navel, the skirt slit up both thighs. It belonged in Adrian's brothel. That was the point.

When they tried to paint my face, I shook my head hard enough to knock the brush from the maid's hand. They gripped my jaw and dragged the lip color across my mouth. It smeared up my cheek in a red streak. My face was still swollen from Father's slap. The bruise spread from my jaw to my cheekbone, purple-green beneath the powder they pressed over it.

From the corridor, Father's voice: "Adrian is expecting her within the hour. If she won't cooperate, knock her out and put her in the carriage."

The maids' hands got rougher.

"That's enough."

A man's voice, but it wasn't Father's. It wasn't a servant's. For one instant, hope hit me, sharp and stupid. Someone had come. Someone had stopped this—

Adrian stood in the doorway.

Every muscle in me locked.

Father appeared behind him, bowing so deeply his back curved. "Your Highness! She's not quite ready, if you'd give us just a moment—"

Adrian ignored him. His eyes moved over me slowly. The smeared makeup, the bruised face, the red dress hanging wrong on my body. His expression changed. It wasn't disgust.

Interest.

"She has a certain charm like this." He smiled. "Leave us."

Father hesitated for one second. Then he ushered the maids out and closed the door behind him.

Adrian walked toward me. I backed into the bedpost.

"You've been causing trouble." His hand found my jaw and gripped it, turning my face side to side, the way you'd examine something you'd purchased at market. "Running to the cripple. Screaming in the street."

His thumb pressed into the bruise on my cheek. I flinched. He held tighter.

"Your father offered you to me once. Remember?" He leaned closer, his breath hot against my neck. "You said no."

His other hand closed around my throat. He wasn't squeezing. Just holding. Claiming. His body pinned me against the bedpost and his fingers slid from my jaw to the neckline of the dress, pulling the fabric aside.

I couldn't breathe, and it had nothing to do with his hand on my throat. No one was coming. Father had closed the door himself.

The door exploded inward.

Adrian spun. "What the—"

A young man walked through the wreckage of the doorframe. Dark hair, straight spine, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. Behind him, soldiers bearing the royal crest filled the corridor.

"Your Highness." He inclined his head toward Adrian. The word was correct. The tone was not.

Adrian's face went white.

I knew this man. The leather folio. The look of horror on the road last night, when I'd thrown myself in front of the carriage. Kieran's man.

Father burst into the hallway with pack members behind him. "What is the meaning of—" He saw the young man and stopped dead. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "Beta... Beta Rhys?"

"Apologies for the timing." Rhys's voice was pleasant, almost casual. "Though it seems we've arrived at a fortunate moment." His gaze dropped to Adrian's hand, still frozen near my collar. Adrian withdrew it.

Soldiers were everywhere. They moved through the house with practiced efficiency, separating Adrian's guards from Father's men, positioning themselves at every doorway and exit. No one in Father's pack resisted. They couldn't. These soldiers answered to the only man in the kingdom who outranked Adrian.

Rhys turned to me.

I flinched. I couldn't help it. I was still frozen the way he'd left me, pressed against the bedpost, arms drawn up to my chest. Rhys stopped where he was.

Then, slowly, he lowered himself to one knee.

"My lady." The casual edge was gone from his voice. "We've come to escort the Regent Prince's fiancée to the palace."