Page 98 of The Prince's Captive

As he pulled her to her feet and the guards approached, she realized she didn’t have to force herself to take it.

While she was led back to her cell, she told herself she’d made good progress. He didn’t believe she didn’t hate him, but she didn’t want him to yet. This was going to have to be gradual and him believing she would swallow her pride and hatred just enough to keep herself off those tables was enough.

It was all she could swallow right then.

In her cell that night, she used the water and rag she was given to scrub at her face, trying to erase the feeling of his palms on her cheeks.

She failed.

Chapter31

MARCELLA

It was a few days before Marcella was brought out of her cell again.

She held her breath as they approached the intersection. What if it hadn’t been enough? What if she’d just been falling for Gavril’s lies again and they were still going to put her on the table?

Worse, what if he’d been honest about it all, but it wasn’t enough to keep her off the table?

They turned left.

She breathed a little easier as they got farther from the labs. She was being paranoid.

She’d woken up screaming that morning. She always woke up screaming.

Gavril wasn’t being honest. He didn’t have an honest bone in his body.

And neither did she.

If he was going to play her, she was going to play him and pay him back inch for inch. If she had to act like a scared little girl or a broken doll to do it, she would. As long as she was as sharp as the Inimicus tongue was, she could do this.

She hadn’t fallen for his act yet, and she wasn’t going to now. She just needed him to fall for hers.

When she was brought to the training grounds, however, Gavril wasn’t already at the rectangle waiting for her. He was in the courtyard, waiting for her, but not to spar. At least, he didn’t look like he was ready to spar as he was lying out on the grassy side with books spread out, open to various pages and with papers stuck between them. Scrolls were unrolled and had paperweights sitting on their edges as Gavril wrote in a notebook.

The second she stepped into the peristyle, he looked up from his book and his face brightened. The guards let go of her and stepped back to the edge of the courtyard. This time no one else was there but Gavril.

“Marcella,” he said as he stood, gesturing for her to approach.

She did so slowly.

Just when she thought she was getting him figured out enough to fool him… What was this?

She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t bring herself to call him Gavril. She didn’t know what would work better. Commander or prince? Both were too tangled up in his deception and so impersonal. But she couldn’t just say nothing.

But she also couldn’t bring herself to call him by his name.

“Gav.”

She sounded like an idiot who couldn’t speak, butchering his name so thoroughly in her harsh, heavy accent. Like she wasn’t even capable of forming the second syllable.

Although maybe that suited the pitiful act she was going for.

He stopped in his tracks and gaped at her. “Gav?”

Oh, she should have just kept her mouth shut.

Too late for that now. She stuttered, “It’s—It’s easier to say.”

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