Page 12 of Nightingale

“I highly doubt it. I don’t care if you are a pretty Princess or a prisoner of war, I don’t hit women. Regardless of if they hit me first or not.” He turned the handle and pushed it open, refusing to step foot over the threshold as if he were some creature thatlurked in the shadows, requiring permission for entry.

“That surprises me.”

His arm left his side as he pointed inside. “It shouldn’t. But goodnight,Vrea. I’ll come around eight to join you for our night together.”

Her lips pursed as she struggled to find a sarcastic retort. “Any way I can ignore it all together and feign an illness? I’d much rather succumb to that than be forced to spend a night in your proximity.”

His rumbling laugh was light. “I could poison you, if you’d like.”

Vrea couldn’t help her smirk as she said, “You could poison yourself, instead. That would be a huge help.” She stepped inside, already more than ready to be rid of the dangling bits and excessive gems they planted on her. Servants would come in within the next ten minutes, summoned by Castil to get rid of anything that could be used as a weapon in her hands and leave her with the plain frock that she slept in.

“It wouldn’t work, I’m afraid.” Castil angled his head to the floor before spinning on his pointed heel and leaving her standing there by herself. “But please, I implore you to try.”

Five

His heart was an uncontrollable thing, beating rapidly enough that he thought it might give him away as he stalked down the hallway, hands trembling at his sides. Castil curled his fingers inwards, his nails biting into his skin. Vrea Greenvass had always set him on edge, the teetering point of a blade turned on its side. Toppling to one side meant his death, by his father’s hands or hers, and he couldn’t decide which would be worse.

The other side-

Was also death, if he was honest with himself.

Leaving the only thing for him to do was to remain tiptoed on that precarious point, balancing his life and hers, before anyone came and pushed him over.

She was close to that, every single day she remained at Hawksmoor Keep, stuck in that dreadful room that had become her golden cage over the last few years. Even the prettiest of birds required freedom, no matter their size, no matter how glorious their bars had become. Vrea had fought for her freedom for the majority of her capture, refusing to sit down and die- which was admirable.

They all played such a dangerous game.

Queen Casta Greenvass and her entire brood, his father and his siblings. Death wasn’t something that they should have been messing with and yet both sides treated war like a simplechildren’s strategy game, meant to keep their minds sharp and their steel even sharper. They both involved all of their heirs in one way or another. Either sending them to fight and die, drowning in blood and bones on the battlefield or selling them off to a marriage bed like breeding livestock should one with a handy alliance appear.

Both equally disgusting.

Castil was grateful that he hadn’t been sold like a stallion meant for producing heirs, but it didn’t make the constant battles worth it. Either way, he was fucked. Truthfully, he was fuckedbothways.

He’d seen the way Vrea’s green eyes had darkened as she watched the girl on Rian’s lap tease him, skillful fingers toying with his clothes and finding the secretive slips of skin. The way her breathing pattern had changed, the way she’d clenched her legs tighter, as if she too lusted after that. Castil didn’t need sex as often as some of his other brothers, but he couldn’t imagine going three years without it, at least not without any madness following suit.

Sex wasn’t just the act of penetration either, but all those intimate acts that surrounded it. The closeness it afforded the partners engaging in it. The trust and companionship that came with it, regardless of whether a relationship blossomed or not.

There was a passion in the Princess that was slowly overflowing with a desire to be explored, and held. One that might drown her if it wasn’t tended to soon enough. A passion that she transformed into anger in the right moments. Ones that he pushed her to because their father forbade anyone from entering her bed in that way, so riding Rian was not an option for her to look at.

Castil refused to let her die.

A slip up on her part would confirm her execution and the King was itching to swing the axe down on her neck.

She was too important, a great power in ending this war. Vrea Greenvass wasn’t only the last surviving daughter of the Niroulian Queen, but her known favourite child and chosen heir. Which was why he kept fighting for her life, to use her as a bargaining chip for those desperate things that the King wanted more than blood.

The monarch was growing impatient.

This meant the grains of sand in the glass were running short, and there was only a matter of time before he dragged the woman to the butcher block and sawed at her throat until it separated from her head.

Castil needed to act fast.

Six

He was late, which was unusual for the vain peacock of a Prince. She’d gotten dressed in the surprisingly chaste clothes as if he didn’t want to see any inch of her. The dress was covered in the areas that his elder brothers insisted on showing, much to her surprise. There was still a bit of her stomach to be seen, where the leather skirt came up to her navel and plunged downwards in an arching triangle design. The top matched, falling three inches from the skirt.

The shirt wasn’t truly a shirt, but a leather vest crafted of cerulean panels and sewn together with chestnut that mimicked her skin along the capped sleeves and hem. The bottom portion was of a similar pattern and fell in pointed wefts that split up the sides where her legs were. He’d given her matching boots that were held together by cords that zig-zagged through the holes and knotted at the top.

Castil hadn’t dressed her like a Princess, he’d dressed her like a fighter.

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