Page 19 of Dare

The hounds peeled me from the ground and shoved me through the door, away from the ciphered map in the ceiling. I tore my head over my shoulder, gazing toward the lyrics and their hidden image before the company yanked me from the cell block.

I made it rough for them, made them toil to get me moving, my limbs flailing like the fins of a netted fish, my teeth seeking purchase on a row of knuckles. In the end, it took every soldier on duty to drag me down the corridor.

The stairwell’s fathomless pit spiraled like a conch into an abyss. My breathing grew shallow, and I ground my heels into the floor.

The white-haired knight shook me in place. “Be still, fool!”

“Or we’ll take it out on your tower friends,” a Summer warden gloated.

Hellfire. I went willingly, but for good measure, I shrugged his furry fucking hand from my elbow. He’d always been a wooly one, his skin germinating with shaggy thickets of hair, including his neck and back, to the point where he might be flammable. If only I’d gotten the chance to find out.

We hustled down the stairs, the stone uneven beneath the sandals they’d jammed onto my feet. A draft rushed up the corridor, surfing through my hair and making the tips dance. The ropes chafed me raw as I hobbled down the shaft, the air changing from tepid to muggy. Light bloomed at the passage’s end, and that light became a gate, a giant mouth waiting to cough me out.

I reared back, my heart clattering. Frustrated, the knights hauled me forward as the gate croaked open to reveal an enclosed quad banked in torches and lined with columns.

We spilled over the threshold. Or rather, I spilled across the stone floor. The trained knights remained upright while I toppled forward and smacked the tiles. My wrists and knees smarted, but that wasn’t what caused the jolt through my limbs.

It was a pair of steel-edged boots. Crossed at the ankles, they clung to a set of limbs fitted in obsidian pants.

My gaze climbed high, ascending to a set of narrow hips, to the shirt gripping every defined contour of a masculine chest, to the corrupt face angling down at me. The monster’s dark silhouette leaned casually against a wall with his arms folded. Shadows clutched his frame, blotting out half of his features while the other half loomed into view.

“Stand,” the prince murmured.

As usual, the command sounded polished yet lethal. Except if I hadn’t made it clear by now, this monster would have to work harder with me.

I stayed put, hoping he’d abandon the wall and give my canines the opening they needed. But damn him, the prince was ten steps ahead. Having predicted my intention, he pushed off the wall, then squatted at a distance instead of coming nearer.

No fur coat tonight. In the deep V of his shirt, his pendant swung like a severed head, the vial backdropped against a smooth plate of muscles. Limbs spread, the prince rested his forearms on his thighs, those evil hands dangling off his knees.

The posture brought the Royal’s digits into stark relief. Blood stained his fingers like paint, the color reaching to his knuckles. Whatever he’d been up to today, he hadn’t bothered to rinse off the evidence.

Twin pupils pierced through me. Tipping his patrician nose, my captor bore down with cold elegance. “Get. Up.”

Before I could decide the most satisfying way to defy this order, the prince’s eyelids hooded. Unsurprised by my refusal, he tossed the troops a flat look, clicked his head toward me, and stood.

The female knight looped her arms beneath mine and hauled me off the floor. While the prince resumed his position at the wall, a clunking noise resounded from above. Chains plummeted from the ceiling like slugs. A single manacle clamped around my wrists, layering over the rope cords.

Plucking a chalice from the concrete table, the prince watched. His lips touched the vessel and sipped. Above the rim, the shards of his eyes observed as the links hoisted my arms overhead.

High.

So high they elongated my body, forcing me to balance on my toes. The hem of my chemise lifted, barely covering the private bits, my lack of drawers about to become public knowledge yet again.

I mashed my lips together, raised my chin, and skewered him with a glare. Instead of perversion or lechery, the prince absorbed my grimace with indifference. All the same, his mouth gripped the chalice’s rim with more force. He drank deeper, his throat pumping in tandem to my pulse.

Imagining the liquid slipping across his tongue, I squirmed. My resistance pulled the chain taut.

The prince’s attention seized on the movement—the jutting of my hips. His crimson digits flexed around the chalice’s stem. Swallowing with precision, he lowered the vessel as the knights bowed and backed out of the room.

The gate shut with a wincing noise. Then silence engulfed the quad.

Yet nothing happened. He simply waited, and the longer he did this, the greater my impulse to keep moving. That had to be what he was after. This man wanted to see me unhinged, intimidated, under his thumb.

I went still, uninterested in gratifying him, much less boosting the chemise another inch. One more twitch, and the patch of hair between my thighs would peek from the material. As it was, a current of air brushed across my breasts, the effect toughening my nipples through the fabric.

By the Seasons’ grace, the whelk I’d swiped at least remained tucked between my wrists and the cords.

Our gazes crossed like murder weapons. Minutes passed. Or maybe it was seconds.

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