บททั้งหมดของ Chosen by the Wolf of the Sleeping Prince : บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 5

Nerissa POV"Don't look at her arm," the guard beside me muttered, which was the quickest way to make me look at her arm."Too late, I already looked," I said.It was cut open from the elbow to the wrist in four long gashes, and the edges had already gone black, with dark lines crawling toward her shoulder. Hettie Doyle lay on the silver floor, kicking at nothing."Mama! Ahhh, ugh, it's in me, it's in my arm, AHHH, somebody get it out, get it out!""Hold her still, damnit!" a healer snapped. "Hettie, look at me. Breathe, girl, you're not dying."Two guards hauled her toward the doors by the shoulders and ankles, smearing a dark streak across the moon carved into the floor. Yarrow stops bleeding, I told myself. Plantain draws out infection. Comfrey for sprains. I kept listing, because it was that or throw up on somebody's expensive shoes."Nine," said Lord Cormac, the Regent, from the long stone bench where the Council sat. He said it the way a man says the price of bread. He was big a

Nerissa POVThe key turned a little past midnight, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my boots already on."You're awake," Dunstan said from the doorway. He sounded disappointed."Somebody locked me in. It's hard to sleep when you're being kept like a pie in a cupboard."He looked at the key in his hand as if it had insulted him. "Regent's orders.""Do you always do what the Regent says?""Only when I agree with him, which is less often than he thinks. Come on."The tower stairs wound up forever, with one torch on every landing, and Dunstan took them like a man who climbed them a thousand times."The healers call it the Long Sleep," he said over his shoulder. "The wolf takes over and the body shuts down. Some wake up. Most don't.""How long has he been like this?""Since the Harvest Moon. He went down in the middle of a toast. Eight months now. I read him the grain reports every morning, and he's never once told me to shut up.""That's a very patient man.""That's a very st

Nerissa POV"I eat when I'm nervous too," I said. "On things. Once I ate on a goat."Dunstan's eyebrows climbed. "On a goat.""A small one. It was a bad week.""And the room?""He's a wolf. Don't wolves run hot?""Not like this." He brushed the crumbs off the blanket with the side of his hand, sniffed his fingers, and frowned. "Madam Vane's honey cake. She'll be glad somebody's eating it." He straightened. "If I find out you're lying to me, girl, I'll...""You'll what?""I haven't decided. Go to bed. Court's at sunrise. And Madam Vane's cake stays off the prince.""Yes, sir.""Don't sir me. Sir is for people I like.""Hold still," said the girl pinning my hair, "or I'll stab you, and then I'll have to explain it."She had introduced herself in one breath an hour ago: Bess Tuckett, kitchens, promoted because she knew everything and couldn't keep it to herself. She was nineteen, quick as a sparrow, and she talked as if the words were on fire."The whole palace is talking about you," she