Page 5 of Scourged

The servants who brought her meals were always female, shuffling in and out on quiet feet like dutiful mice.

These steps … they did not belong to a servant.

The steps grew louder, and the hallway beyond her iron-grated cell door filled with the silver-gold light of anallumelamp. Three tall shapes emerged, keys clinking as they neared.

Dread pulsed deep in her gut in time with the light, right alongside her hunger and betrayal. After weeks of solitude and isolation … why was she receiving a visitnow?

Whatever the reason, it couldn’t be good.

She may be weak and starved and cut off from her magic, but she still had some fight in her. If these men were brave enough to see what they could scrape from a destitute, fallen queen, she was prepared to fight.

They’d likely win, but she’d make it clear that no matter how much they abused her body, they would never touch her soul.

Never again would she be so weak.

The moment the light shifted to touch the faces of the approaching men, all her resolve vanished like smoke on a breeze, carried into the clouds to dance with the gods who’d forgotten their chosen.

Two of the men were strangers, faces cut into harsh lines and dressed in the red and black livery of House Shawth. But the third … he was so achingly, painfully familiar. His onyx hair was longer than before and fell into characteristic loose, errant waves over his eyes, brow slightly arched as his lips tilted into that devastatingly beautiful smirk he wore so well.

His eyes, though—those brilliant, wild, magnificent tanzanite eyes—held an edge of madness to them, something unreadable dancing in their depths.

Andrian Laurent, the only man she’d ever loved, stepped to the bars of her cell, eyes gleaming brighter.

A guard slid a key into the lock, pushing the door open on squealing hinges.

Andrian’s smirk morphed fully into a smile.

“My, my, princess. I must say, you’ve never looked better.”

Chapter 2

Andrian’s grip on her right arm was both foreign and familiar.

The calluses on his hand were the same. Even in just a few short months, the feel of his skin against hers had become ingrained into her psyche, her very soul. But now, there was something …differentabout his touch. Something strange. Something possessive and wicked and frightening.

While Andrian had, at one point, been—or tried to be—all those things … his touch never had. He may have hidden his feelings behind a wall of ice, but his hands always gave him away.

Until now.

Mariah was dragged down the hall, her weak legs barely able to take lurching steps. Her stumble earned her a sneer from the guard on her left and a firm shove to her shoulder by the one at her back.

That same awful, gleeful smile still stretched across Andrian’s face. “What’s the matter, princess? Having trouble keeping up? Don’t tell us you haven’t been enjoying our hospitality here in Khento these past few weeks.”

The guards snickered.

Mariah only gritted her teeth, straightened her spine, and forced back the growl of fury and defeat crawling its way slowly up her throat.

Andrian led them down a long tunnel, a thin layer of melting ice coating the uneven floor. The tunnel ended at a steep, narrow staircase, the stone slippery and dripping with moisture. Andrian released her arm, taking the first few steps up the stairs in a graceful leap, not deigning to see if she followed. The first guard followed him, and the other, the one who’d shoved her before, brusquely hit her again, pain blooming in her weakened shoulder.

“Climb,” he ordered, humorless distaste dripping from his voice.

Mariah narrowed her eyes at the staircase but held her tongue as she took her first few steps.

The stairs weren’t extraordinarily high; it wasn’t more than thirty steps to the top. But the sudden, forced exertion quickly proved too much on Mariah’s starved and atrophied body. Eighteen steps up, chest heaving, she faltered, bare feet slipping on slick stone, sending her careening forward. Her knee crashed against the stone, the sharp edge of a step slicing the bare skin of her forearm.

Her entire body barked in agony. She hissed, blood already welling to her skin.

The guard grabbed her again, his grip on her arm bruising, and dragged her to her feet and up the remaining steps. “Pathetic,” he jeered in her ear. “Can’t even handle a few fucking stairs.”

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