Page 71 of Heartless Prince

Tobias sneered at me. “What do you mean?”

“He was surprised when I told him I didn’t sell myself to your awful little society. He seems to think all the girls are here as willing prostitutes. That gives me the impression he won’t be too happy with you when he finds out you’ve been lying to him all along.”

I thought Tobias would look shocked, but instead he started laughing again.

“What’s so funny?” I said indignantly.

“Elias knows,” he said, leaning close to me.

My heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“He is well aware of the fact that you’re here against your will. It was his idea to make you think he didn’t know. He thought it would be amusing to play with you and make you think you had some sort of chance with him. As if he’d fall in love with you and swoop in to rescue you the second he ‘discovered’ that you were here unwillingly. He’s been laughing about it behind your back for weeks.”

A monstrous bird seemed to unfurl its wings inside my chest, and my vision blurred around the edges. Then a red film seemed to descend over it. After all the horrible shit he’d done, all the horrible shit he’d said, this was the thing that sent me careening over the edge into pure, unadulterated rage.

All those times I thought I actually wanted Elias, all those times I thought I was feeling something for him… I was just crazed from the isolation, the naked defenselessness, the sheer hopelessness. I convinced myself it wasn’t Stockholm, but I was wrong.

So wrong.

I wasn’t falling for him at all. With the truth laid bare before me, all I felt was blinding hatred. He knew I didn’t belong here all along, and he and his nasty, evil father had been laughing behind my back about the whole thing, as if my illegal captivity and torture were nothing more than a hilarious game.

Adrenaline rushed through my body and my hands shook with fury. I wanted to make these King bastards pay, wanted to destroy them the way they’d tried to destroy me.

“Fuck you, Tobias,” I hissed through my teeth. “I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to fucking ruin you and your son, even if it ends up killing me.”

“Again, that’s not very polite,” Tobias said breezily, lips turned up in amusement. “Very unbecoming for a young lady. Although I suppose we can’t expect much from a trashy little wh—”

“I said, fuck you!” I screamed, cutting him off. At the same time, I leapt onto the bed and grabbed the straightened bed spring I’d hidden in the wall vent all those weeks ago. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

As I shrieked, I jammed the thin metal lance down into Tobias’s neck.

His eyes went wide. For the first time, I’d caught him off guard.

Nothing happened for a few seconds, and the whole world seemed to have gone silent. Blood suddenly began to spurt out, coating the white sheets in thick streaks of crimson, filling my nostrils with the scent of iron. Tobias gasped out something unintelligible, spluttering and choking, and he finally slumped to the floor.

Then his eyes closed.

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