Page 112 of The Prince's Captive

Marcella moved back to her side of their rectangle. “Your girl is still not pleased with you.”

A sad light entered Gavril’s eyes. “You don’t even know the half of it.”

She threw a rune at him.

And so her days went. Every few days she would be brought out to spar with Gavril. He would hold back. She would hold back.

She didn’t cast more than one rune at a time.

There weren’t many opportunities for conversation, but one day, when Marcella was kneeling over Gavril, a lazy half-formed rune over his neck, she noticed the bags under his eyes were deeper. She said, “You don’t look well.”

He’d been quieter that day too. And he’d been holding back, but not as much. He’d barely let Marcella get any hits in. He’d been favoring his left side, his shields stronger on that side.

Gavril blinked. His hand quickly brushed over his right shoulder. Marcella’s eyes followed the movement but she saw nothing out of place on his shoulder. She nodded toward his face. “Your eyes. Are you sleeping?”

Gavril then reached up and touched the dark circles under his eyes, and he muttered something in his language. “—forgetting something—”

But then he just looked up at her and said in her tongue, “It was a rough night. Your people’s rock is eluding me.”

He was practically kicking the door open for her. She sat back on her heels and lowered her hands, banishing her rune. He pushed himself up onto his elbows. She shrank into herself, trying to ignore the way her skin crawled at her deception. She whispered, “If my people’s rock continues to elude you, what does that mean for me?”

Gavril pushed himself up fully, brushing his hand over her shoulder and ducking his head closer as he said, “Nothing. Nothing. I will not let anything happen to you. I am handling it. The rock is my problem to solve. Believe in me, please.”

Marcella didn’t even realize she had shifted closer into his arms until she turned her head up to look at him. “But it is tormenting you as well.”

His lips quirked up. “So you should be celebrating.”

“Yes,” Marcella breathed out. The way the words left her, she no longer knew if they were yet another lie, a part of her scheme. “I should be. And yet, I am not.”

It didn’t feel like a lie.

He reached up and brushed a hand over her cheek. He breathed out, each slow word spilling over with a hope she only had ever reserved for herself and her prayers, “And yet… you are not.”

She nodded into his palm. She repeated it again. “I am not.”

And she could not pretend to herself it was a lie.

It was completely and utterly true.

She could not keep up her denial. His misery hadn’t lightened her own. His suffering hadn’t chased her nightmares away. If it was justice that he suffer for as long as she did, it had brought no reprieve to her fractured soul.

She knew that when she had her freedom, his suffering would not make her any happier than it did when she was at his mercy.

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear before pulling back and saying, “Come, we are done for the day. You are right. I am not well.”

She took his hand and let him pull her back to her feet so he could clasp the limiters back on. As his head was bowed low, she murmured, “Then be well.”

His fingers fumbled on her left wrist. He clasped the limiter on but didn’t let go as her guards stepped up to take her. He squeezed her hand and, in a whisper so soft and broken she wasn’t entirely sure it was real at all, he said, “I believe I will be.”

The broken whisper haunted her the rest of the night, causing her to stumble over her prayers.

When had it happened? When had she decided his agony did not please her? And what was she going to do about the fact that her orders were to capture him or kill him?

Chapter36

GAVRIL

Gavril wasn’t certain why he had thought he’d be able to get anything done regarding the rock.

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