Page 52 of The Prince's Captive

He felt the blow deep in his chest. How was he ever going to prove to her that she could trust him? That everything he was doing was to try to protect her?

She started to shift away, but he moved before he could think better of it. The palm of his hand just barely brushed her bicep, but enough that it stilled her. He asked, “Bad dream?”

She shrank in on herself a little with a nearly imperceptible, “Memory.”

“Tell me?”

She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering. As she did, she looked down at her left wrist. Her voice cracked. “This… brand. It will protect me from your heretics?”

“Yes,” he breathed out, shifting even closer. He unclasped his cloak, and she looked up as he moved to wrap it around her. He settled the fabric over her shoulders now that he finally could since she was his wife. He took his clasp and secured it around her before sliding his hands over her shoulders to rest on her back. “I will prove. I will protect.”

She bit her lip, but he could still see the tears welling up in her eyes all over again, and his resolve broke. He was not made to just sit there and listen to her cry.

He pulled her into his arms, crushing her to him in his lap as she curled in on herself. She covered her mouth with one hand as he wrapped one arm around her waist and the other sank into her curls, cradling the back of her head as he pressed it to his shoulder. She shook all over and her arms stayed pinned to her front as she made no move. He just held her tighter.

He murmured her name and the few words of comfort he knew in her tongue.

His left hand was the one on her waist, tightening his grip on her as her breathing started to even out once more and she sank into his arms. Her name was etched into the metal piece that sat on his left wrist.

He hadn’t known how to say it in her tongue when she’d told him her name, so he’d said it in his.

“Pulchra nomen, contumax puella—mea sponsa, mea spes.”

“Beautiful name, stubborn girl—my bride, my hope.”

His thumb brushed over her skin, and he felt the scar beneath the fabric of her thin peplos.

The very real scar.

In order to make her Hypatia’s perfect replica, her people had given her a scar to match Hypatia’s.

The fury and horror that had overwhelmed him upon the realization struck him right in his chest all over again where Marcella’s head had drifted to. He pulled her even closer, fingers sinking into her peplos as he had nowhere else to direct his rage.

He wanted peace more than anything, but he would pretend like there was not something still savage about her people.

How could they? How could it be worth it? To make a perfect decoy, they would brutally and permanently mark someone whose only crime was looking like Hypatia?

And they claimed to be righteous.

Gavril rested his head on top of hers, continuing to gently run his thumb over the scar hiding underneath the fabric. And he’d almost just sent her back to the people who valued her so little they would scar her and send her to die to protect a demon.

But… Gavril swallowed as he spotted the lines of his wrist.

How was it any better now that he’d condemned her to be his for the rest of her life?

His people called them healers. Hers called them ‘heretics.’ He did not fully grasp the meaning, but he knew it was despicable in her eyes, and he could not argue. At least he could protect her from them.

The law was on his side now. He’d said in his vows he would protect her.

She would hate him.

But the mark on his wrist and the slight hum of vitae that wasn’t his proved he was onto something. While he’d been mostly certain his plan would work, based on seeing her cast two runes at the same time, there had of course been the chance he was wrong. The common belief was that the Runai and the Sordes were incompatible because of the corrupted vitae. The tradition ofreligoin a wedding ceremony, the process of marking each other with their own vitae wasn’t supposed to be possible between Runai and Sordes.

That was something Cyprian had screamed at him. That if he did this, the Sordes’ corrupted vitae would kill him. So he’d lied. And he was alive. It had been an incredibly risky thing to attempt, but it was worth it.

His vitae felt no different than it had before he had a token of Marcella’s coursing through the lines on his wrist. This could not be corruption.

The girl in his arms might not have been the girl he was sent to capture in order to bring peace, but he would bring peace through her all the same.

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