Page 20 of Dare

The prince’s eyes faltered like a mistake, the pupils dropping to my lips. On reflex, my mouth parted. The reaction worked like an enticement—or an insult.

Shoving himself from the wall, the prince stalked my way. Long hair poured down his back, the color trapped between blue and slate, the mane tethered into a ponytail at the nape. Pacing himself like a wolf, he eviscerated the space between us while unsheathing his scalpel knife.

I tensed. My senses ran amok with fear, loathing, and something else. A strange emotion buzzed like a hornet in my navel. The instant his shadow touched my skin, the effect intensified, the threat causing my naked thighs to lock.

I held my ground as he braced the knife’s tip atop my lower lip. With visible deliberation, the prince grazed the tender flesh, tracing the edges of my mouth until they trembled.

Not out of fright. No, the reaction came from someplace I couldn’t name, from a horrible sort of restlessness, which increased with every skate of his weapon.

The prince spoke to my mouth. “You had a voice once.”

My lips snapped shut, blocking the weapon. He hadn’t bothered to examine me, so how on earth did he know that?

Taking my suspicious expression for a yes, the Royal angled his blade from my lips. “I’m a doctor,” he said, by way of explanation.

Prince of Winter, genius of The Dark Seasons. Yet that couldn’t be it. Not when he hadn’t so much as peeked down my throat. There had to be more, another detail about my voice that gave this way. Something he wouldn’t share.

Irises like glass reflected my features. What else did this fiend grasp about me?

The question must have sat on my face, because he saw through that too. “Sand drifters,” he acknowledged. “Nomadic seafarers with notable traits, including sand encrusting their fingernails.”

Seasons curse him. He’d noticed this.

“More than any group in Rhys and Giselle’s court, such drifters live apart from the greater populace, camping in the outer reaches of Summer where few people venture.” Winter cocked his head. “Where it’s easy to vanish. To spend one’s days drawing in the sand, perhaps.”

Heat scorched me from head to toe. In addition to recognizing the sand in my nails, he remembered my sketch in Autumn’s dungeon. Considering the battle I’d waged when he ordered the dirt pile swept clean, he must have reckoned it meant something to me.

That aside, it was still a marvel. To recognize any version of sentimentality or passion, this monster would need to possess a beating heart.

“I take it, there is more to your culture. But that is immaterial,” the prince continued. “Ultimately, they’re treasure seekers with mouths to feed and pockets to fill. That makes sand drifters susceptible to financial rewards, more so when the order comes from a Royal and the fugitive is a born fool. I suspect you will comprehend the rest.”

Yes, I already had. Renewed treachery squashed my insides.

My glower drew him closer when I’d hoped it would do the opposite. His shirt chafed my bodice, inciting a maelstrom of spiteful tingles across my skin.

“Tell me,” he intoned. “How did you lose your voice?”

So he knew the effect but not the cause. Again, I got the strange feeling there was more to this, some detail he wasn’t saying about my lack of voice.

Regardless, I contemplated spitting in his face, but he distracted me from that impulse. “I have learned the culprit behind your tattoo. Next, I would know more.”

I glimpsed those crimson-stained fingers again. Sometime between his appearance in the tower and now, the prince had found out who marked me, a gruesome hunch invading my mind about whose blood coated his digits. After how this Royal had treated Pyre in the tower, I couldn’t put it past Winter to react less violently about the tattoo.

What did he do to the guard? I shuddered at the possibilities. His actions shouldn’t make sense. The last thing this villain would do was punish someone for harming me. Then again, he’d stressed enough times that I was his property, and rulers didn’t take kindly to their alleged possessions being vandalized. That had to be it.

I sealed my lips shut. Winter might know broad details about my life, but he didn’t know the depths of them, and he never would.

My pain belonged to me. My losses were my own.

This shark had no right to them and wasn’t asking because he cared to understand. Incapable of seeing me as human, I meant nothing to him. But I wouldn’t become his next experiment.

When I denied him a reply, the prince lowered his timbre. “If I make an observation, you will respond.” He angled his blade toward my windpipe. “Or I shall force it from you.” The tip kissed the place where my voice should have been. “Nod or shake your head. Mouth the words. I don’t give a fuck which. But you will obey.”

My joints burned from the position, and my lips burned, and my throat burned, and everything burned in his proximity. The effects compiled on my tongue. He would keep me like this for a century if I didn’t respond. But if I had to give him an answer, I would make it count.

The word fired from my mouth. “No.”

A blast of sound to my ears. A silent one to him.

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