Page 4 of A Crown of Darkness

‘No, please,’ she gasped but they weren’t listening to her. That got people killed as well. She’d tried befriending one of them, a younger man called Trin, in the hopes he would help her somehow. He had never even got the chance.

Trin was dead as well, strangled on orders of King Alessander, while she watched. They’d held her in place, right in front of him while he tried to babble out excuses and apologies. While he had begged for his life. They’d wound a silken cord around his neck like one of those collars they made the servants wear and then, slowly, tightened it, an inch at a time. His face had turned the most horrible shade of purple and he had wept. Or tried to. By the end he’d been unconscious so at least there was that small mercy, but he’d known all along what was happening. Guilt still ate through her at the thought of it and she woke from nightmares where he came to her and told her it was all her fault.

He wasn’t wrong.

It was getting harder and harder to tell her nightmares from reality in this place. But still she tried. She couldn’t giveup. Elodie wouldn’t have given up. Neither would Roland. Nor Finn…

Wren swallowed hard and pushed the thought away as hard as she could. She had to.

‘You bring this on yourself, you know,’ said her captor, almost kindly. And then a sharp point of pain jabbed into her neck. The numbness that followed flowed through her like encroaching ice. Her body went limp, helpless, and she slumped forward. When the guard let her go she fell. ‘You put more in that than usual,’ he said to his companion.

‘Serves her right. She got me right in the balls.’

Serves him right, Wren thought bitterly, as everything went black.

CHAPTER 2

WREN

A gentle hand woke Wren by tracing a line down the side of her face, along her jaw and down the column of her throat. It stopped in the dip between her clavicles, teasing the sensitive skin there. She drew in an involuntary breath and shivered. Lips brushed her shoulder, lips which smiled against her skin.

But for all that momentary pleasure, her head was pounding and her body was sore.

Blearily, she began to take in the room, and realised why. Her arms were drawn up high above her head and tied there securely. As her senses slowly returned to her, so too did reality and an understanding of where she was and what was happening. She jerked back, terrified.

But there was nowhere to go.

His hands caught her before she could hurt herself, pulling her forward against his body and holding her there. Weak and still fighting off the effects of the soporific drugs the stinger had delivered to her system, it was all she could do to open her eyes and look into his face.

Into his eyes. His beautiful blue eyes.

They were the eyes of another man now, cold and distant, laughing at her. And yet, she longed for him, ached to feel his touch. Her body betrayed her, even now.

‘Hush, little bird. How often are we going to play this game?’

It was Finn’s voice, Finn’s face and body and his touch. But by all the oldest magic, she knew it wasn’t him. This was Prince Finnian of the line of Sidon, as cold and heartless as his famed ancestor of long ago, not the man she loved. He even sounded like Leander, using that pet name for her. A prince of Ilanthus and her beloved no more.

But she couldn’t believe that. Not entirely. Somewhere, somehow, Finn had to still be in there.

‘Let me go,’ she told him as firmly as she could manage. Her voice shook and she hated herself for it.

He smiled again, a teasing, sultry smile which promised so many things she couldn’t allow herself to think about. All the things she still wanted. All her hopes and dreams…

There was a laugh buried in his words that made her insides twist. ‘I…don’t think so, princess. And that is not an answer. Shall we try again?’

Wren forced herself to breathe as his hands continued to skim across her flesh, teasing her. The stinger had numbed her all over as it stole her consciousness but now, as it wore off, it heightened every sensation. That was part of its design, he had explained. Part of the fun.

And oh, how he liked to play this game.

She didn’t want to think where he had learned it or how. It was a torment of pleasure.

Finn untied her hair and pulled it down from the knot she had made of it, threading his fingers through it. It fell to the small of her back now, black silken waves. He combed through it until he had worried out every tangle. Then he swept it to one side. His lips brushed against the nape of her neck, right at thetop of her spine, his teeth grazing her skin, and she couldn’t stop the groan of need which shuddered through her.

‘Why deny yourself, Wren?’ His breath played against her, still teasing her as much as his voice did. Desire thundered through her and she struggled to dampen it down. Tears stung in her eyes with the effort. ‘Just say yes. I thought this was all you wanted. I’m yours, you know? I always will be. Just as you are mine.’

Not like this. Not now. Not here… He was different here.

‘Let me go,’ she said again. ‘I won’t give you what you want. You know that.’

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