Chapter 14: The Captain

The cloak became part of me after that night.

I wore it everywhere, even when I was alone in my room, because the weight of it was comforting and the warmth of it was steady and the smell of it reminded me that someone in this castle wanted me alive.

I did not know what to do with that knowledge, but I held onto it anyway, like a drowning man holding onto a piece of driftwood in a stormy sea.

The first time I walked through the halls wearing the cloak, the nobles stared.

They had always stared, of course. Their golden eyes had followed me from the moment I arrived at this frozen castle, watching and waiting and whispering about the human whore who had somehow caught the king's attention. But this time was different. This time, their stares were not just curious or cruel. They were hungry.

I pulled the cloak tighter around my shoulders and kept walking; my head down and my eyes on the floor, the way I had learned to walk when I was a child and my stepmother roamed the halls looking for someone to hurt. But the cloak made it hard to be invisible. The black wool stood out against the grey stone, and the fur at my collar caught the light from the torches, and the silver clasp at my neck glinted with every step I took.

I was not invisible anymore, and the nobles did not like that.

"The king's pet," someone hissed as I passed. "Look at him, strutting around like he belongs here."

"He does not belong here," another voice answered. "He is a sacrifice. He should be in the dungeons, not walking these halls dressed in clothes worth more than his entire family."

I kept walking. My heart was pounding, and my hands were shaking, but I kept walking because stopping would mean admitting that their words had reached me, and I could not let them see that.

Then someone grabbed my arm.

The grip was hard and sudden, and I stumbled, barely catching myself before I fell. The noble who had grabbed me was tall, with dark hair and sharper teeth, and his golden eyes were burning with something that looked like anger and hunger and amusement all at once.

"Does the king know his whore is wandering alone?" he asked, and his voice was loud enough that everyone in the hallway could hear.

I did not answer. I could not answer. My throat was dry, and my lips were frozen from shock, and all I could do was stare at the hand wrapped around my arm and wonder if he was going to hurt me, wonder if anyone would stop him, or if the king would even care.

"Maybe I should teach you some manners," the noble said, leaning closer. His breath was hot on my face, and it smelled like wine and meat and something else, something rotten. "The king is not here to protect you now, little human. And I have been waiting for a chance to show you what happens to things that belong to other people."

I tried to pull away, but his grip was too strong. His fingers dug into my arm hard enough to leave bruises, and I felt the cold stone floor beneath my feet and the weight of the cloak on my shoulders and the fear rising in my throat like bile.

"Let go of me," I said, and my voice was smaller than I wanted it to be.

The noble laughed. "Or what? You will scream? You will cry? Or You will run to the king and tell him that I touched his precious little human?" He squeezed harder, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. "Go ahead, and scream. But no one is coming to save you."

Then someone grabbed the noble's arm.

It wasn't me. I had not moved. I had not done anything except stand there, frozen and terrified, waiting for the pain that was sure to come.

The noble's eyes went wide, and his grip on my arm loosened, and I stumbled back, pressing myself against the wall as I watched Capitán Dario step between us.

Dario was tall, even taller than the noble, with broad shoulders and cold grey eyes and a scar that ran from his left temple to his jaw. His hand was wrapped around the noble's wrist, and his fingers were squeezing so hard that I could see the noble's knuckles turning white.

"Touch him again," Dario said, and his voice was low and quiet, "and I will take your hand."

The noble's face went pale. "Dario, I was just…"

"I know what you were just doing." Dario's grip tightened, and the noble gasped. "You were touching something that does not belong to you. Something that belongs to the king. And the king has given me orders to protect what is his."

He twisted the noble's arm, and I heard a crack that was sharp and sickening, and the noble screamed. His wrist bent at an angle that wrists were not supposed to bend to, and his fingers went limp, and Dario released him like he was nothing, like he was trash, and like he did not matter at all.

The noble stumbled back, cradling his broken wrist, his face twisted with pain and rage. "You will pay for this," he spat. "The king will hear of this."

"The king will hear that you touched his mate," Dario said, and his voice was ice. "And he will not be pleased. Now get out of my sight before I decide to take the other one as well."

The noble fled, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor, and the other nobles scattered like leaves in the wind, disappearing into doorways and shadows until the hallway was empty except for me and Dario and the silence that stretched between us like a rope pulled tight.

Dario turned to look at me.

His grey eyes were cold, colder than the snow outside, and his face was unreadable, a mask of stone and scars and something else, something that might have been disgust or might have been duty or might have been nothing at all.

"Do not make me protect you again," he said.

I stared at him. "I did not ask you to protect me."

"The king ordered it," he said in an angry tone. "And I follow the king's orders. That is all this is. Do not mistake it for kindness."

I wanted to tell him that I did not mistake anything for kindness, that I had learned long ago that kindness was a weapon and that people who helped you always wanted something in return. But the words would not come, and my throat was dry, and my arm was throbbing where the noble had grabbed me, and all I could do was stand there and shake.

Dario studied me for a long moment, his grey eyes moving over my face, my cloak, and the way I held my body like I was expecting another attack. Then he shook his head, slow and weary, like he was tired of things he could not change.

"The king has never looked at anyone the way he looks at you," he said. "I have served him for fifty years, and I have never seen him care about anything the way he cares about you. I do not understand it, and at the same time, I do not like it. But it is not my place to question it."

He turned to walk away, and I should have let him go, should have stayed quiet, and kept my mouth shut like I had learned to do in my father's house. But I could not.

"Why?" I asked.

He stopped but did not turn around.

"Why does he care about me?" I said. "Why does he send me gifts and leave boots outside my door and order you to protect me? I am nothing. I am a sacrifice, and a human who should have died in the snow the first night I arrived here."

Dario was quiet for a long moment. The torches flickered, and the wind howled outside, and I stood there with my heart pounding, my hands shaking and my throat tight with questions I had been too afraid to ask.

"Because you are his mate," Dario said finally. "And the bond does not care about what you are or where you come from. It only cares that you are his."

He walked away before I could say anything else, his boots echoing on the stone floor, and his shadow stretching long behind him in the light of the torches.

I stood there for a long time, holding the cloak tighter around my shoulders, feeling the warmth of the fur against my neck, the weight of the wool on my back and the ghost of the noble's fingers still burning on my arm.

An enemy who protects me.

I did not understand it. I did not understand any of this.

But Dario had broken a noble's wrist for me. He had called me the king's mate, and he had said that the king had never looked at anyone the way he looked at me.

And I did not know what to do with that.

I walked back to my room on legs that were still shaking, closed the door behind me, pressed my back against the headboard and pulled my knees to my chest and tried to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

Somewhere in the darkness of the castle, the king was watching.

I did not know if that was a blessing or a curse.

But I knew that I was still alive, and for now, that was enough.