Page 117 of A Pact of Blood

I suppress a wince and grope at his shirt in the hopes of covering my reaction. Marclinus gives a harsh laugh and tosses the shirt aside.

As he lunges at me again, Raul stirs as if on the verge of springing forward despite my cautioning. I wrench my hand in another urgent gesture to stand back.

And mercy of all mercy, Marclinus’s fervor slows. He gazes down at me, the familiar drugged stupor coming over his face.

My breath spills out of me in a rush of relief, but I don’t love that the princes will have to see even this part of our typical interludes.

It won’t do for them to come into his view or for him to see me talking to them. I don’t know how those factors would merge with the hallucinations I need to provoke.

Smiling up at my husband, I repeat the sign forWaitas emphatically as I can.

Then I roll Marclinus over so I’m poised above him. Yank down his trousers just far enough that he won’t make a mess of them. Linger in his view while his mind conjures lascivious images of our encounter all the way through to his spurt of his release.

If I thought my cheeks burned before, they’re scalding now.

As Marclinus’s eyelids start to fall, I speak up softly in the hopes of directing the end of his hallucination. “Now that they’re gone, I can have you all to myself.”

Let him imagine that he’s dismissed the princes and decided to doze with me.

I wait until his eyes drift completely shut before hastily wiping him off with my chemise. As I yank my dress back over my head to cover myself, footsteps creak across the floor behind me.

“He’s out now?” Bastien murmurs.

I don’t know how well the waystation’s walls will muffle our voices. I scoot to the edge of the bed and keep my own at a whisper. “Yes. For a couple of hours. I’m sorry you all had to see that.”

Raul doesn’t waste another second in striding right over to me, his teeth bared. “It isn’t your fault. That spiteful asshole…”

He cuts himself off with a strangled growl, fighting to keep his own voice quiet, and slides his arms around me more carefully than I suspect he’d like to. I know it’s a miracle he managed to keep his cool as well as he did.

Because he wanted to protect me more than he wanted vengeance. Because he trusted me when I told him I could handle it best alone.

Lorenzo pushes in to offer his own embrace, pressing a tender kiss to my temple as if it can erase all the brutal affection my husband just inflicted on me. He won’t dare to conjure his illusionary voice while Marclinus’s guards are monitoring the room, but his message is clear enough.

Neven has hung back, the color drained from his face. When I meet his eyes, he drops his gaze. “I… Is that what you always have to do?”

I don’t know what he thought, but I suppose none of his foster brothers mentioned that I was knocking the emperor out on a regular basis. Even they couldn’t have been prepared for what an encounter like this would look like.

I lift my shoulders in a slight shrug. “It works. It’s better than the alternative. He isn’t normally quite so… aggressive beforehand.”

The young prince’s jaw works, and he raises his head again. “He shouldn’t— Treating you like that— It isn’tright.”

I have to stop myself from laughing. Of course it isn’t. Why should that surprise him after everything else he’s seen?

But he is only seventeen years old. Young enough to have a little faith left in humanity.

My own faith feels as if it’s drained away even more in the past hour. A wave of despair washes over me.

This is why the moments of gentleness Marclinus showed me in Rexoran couldn’t matter. This is why I can’t let the fleeting moments of guilt or sympathy shake me from my cause.

No matter how much my husband appears to soften, he always swerves straight back into awfulness before too long. We can never be even wary companions.

He’ll always be my enemy. And I’m stuck with him until I can fight my way out of this tangled trap.

“It is what it is,” I say, tugging my unlaced dress tighter around me. “I suppose you’d better stay a little longer until the guards won’t think it’s odd that he’d have drifted off.” Time passes faster in the drug’s hallucinations than in reality.

Neven’s hands clench, but he sits down on the floor by the wall. Lorenzo eases over to perch on the bed next to me and grips my hand.

Raul takes the spot by my other side, and Bastien hunkers down by my feet to lean his head against my knee,tucking his arm around my calf. My breath evens out in the joint embrace, but my heart thuds on.

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