Page 78 of Nightingale

“Or else,” He chuckled, shaking his head as he lowered his chin. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

Rian murmured, “You want a Greenvass dead, Eamin?” He went one step further. His teeth latched on to his ear, jerking his head in a quick motion and spitting the chunk of flesh as the taste of metallic blood filled his mouth.

Eamin screamed.

It was music to his ears.

Rian chuckled darkly, crimson dripping from his mouth and splattering on the polished floor as he said. “Thenyou’llbe the one I kill first.”

The doors slammed open as Rian dropped the cowering Prince to the floor, falling back as four guards rushed in. He held his hands up by his head. His surprise was handed to him though as the one in charge stared back at him.

A woman, tall and lean.

Her attention slowly dragged to the ground, watching Eamin as he slithered across it like a wounded snake, hand cupping hisbleeding ear as he struggled to find the missing piece that Rian had bitten off.

The ear was a couple of feet away.

“Let me guess,” She started with a glance up at him, hand resting on her blade, but in a stance that alerted Rian that she wasn’t about to whip it out. “He was being an asshole?”

There was no desire to slit his throat for assaulting an heir, no move within her to clap him in irons and drag him down to the lowest levels of the castle. There wasn’t even a hint of astonishment at his actions. As if she knew the male would act like that.

As ifshe’dbeen the one to let him in.

His eyebrows flicked up in delighted shock. “Obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have threatened him.”

Her grin was practically lupine as it rose up one side. “I figured as much. Get off the ground Eamin, you look like a simpering child.” Her boot kicked at his side and he swatted at it like a hissing cat.

“Fuck off, Imogen.” He pushed upwards, swiping the bit of flesh and shoving it into his pocket as he glanced at his hand, covered in red. “Why are you just standing there?!?! Arrest him, kill him, do something other than just standing there!”

“No, I’m good.” Imogen raised and lowered her shoulders in false consideration. “Besides, I don’t answer to you, I answer to Vrea. Last I checked, you’re too much of adickto be her.”

His focus swung towards her at the name.

“You’re friends with Vrea?”

“Friends is alooseterm. I’m her assigned guardian whilst she’s here. All the stuck-up heirs have one, for extra precaution.” She quickly glanced back towards Eamin, who slunk towards the door with a grunt of pain. “Though, I’m not sure where his is.”

She checked around, as if he were somewhere in the room with them and found no one, returning her attention to him.

“Where is she?” Rian knew he didn’t have to clarify, since there were only two women of importance within Vasthold, and anyone would know that he didn’t mean the Queen, but the one he’d come here with.

Imogen’s chiselled jaw slanted upward at the ceiling and he followed with his eyes. “Waiting for an audience with the Queen. About you, actually.”

Eamin scowled, “You shouldn’t be giving away private, confidential information about anyone, Imogen. That’s not part of your job, that’s not what we pay you to do.” He released the side of the door, a bloody print left on the white wood.

She flipped around to him. “Actually, you pay me to make sure that your sister doesn’t die. Or at least to make sure that it doesn’t happen for quite some time. Oh wait, it’s your mother that pays me, not you. And guess what, Eamin? Even if she doesn’t care who you kill, try to kill, or hire someone else to kill,” Her thumb jerked in Rian’s direction, “It doesn’t stop me from being able to killyou. And considering that I like your sister far better than I like you, I would maybe take that under consideration. Now get your snivelling ass out of Rian’s room before I shove my foot so far up there that you won’t be able to find it for days.”

One of the men choked down a chuckle, trying to disguise it as a cough.

The Prince turned to ice, as white as snow.

She only waved her fingers at him, slouched over and batted her eyelashes in a dramatic, flirtatious way. “Bye now.”

His lip twitched in rage, his face straining vermillion before he cursed and slammed the door behind him with a loudbang.

Imogen pinched her crooked nose, broken from what appeared to be a long-ago fight if the curve in the middle was any indication. “I’d apologise for him, but then that would show that I care enough to clean up after his messes, and I truly don’t.”

---