Page 1 of The Prince's Mage

Chapter1

MARCELLA

Marcella woke up on the table.

This time there was sunlight. Her injured wrist was throbbing from how she’d abused it further to pick up the cloak off the ground the last time she’d been awake. At least they hadn’t taken it from her again. It was tucked under her front, between her and the table. As she slowly woke up, she could hear voices in the room that had her staying completely still even if she could have done more than flail her injured wrist at them.

“—want—heal—wrist—or after?”

Marcella caught a few words from a woman’s voice. There was something slightly familiar about it, but she couldn’t recall from where. It wasn’t like she knew one Inimicus from another. She’d spent the majority of her time alone in their dungeons.

But the fact that she was hearing anyone at all was a bad sign.

Her mind was still sluggish and fuzzy from the constant pain beating at it, but it was a little more rational than it had been when she’d woken up before.

Which meant she was rational enough to know she wasn’t having a nightmare. Rational enough to know she was on a heretic’s table. Rational enough to be terrified of what they were going to do to her.

There was no use in playing dead.

They cut open their dead anyway.

She opened her eyes right as another voice spoke in the Inimicus tongue. “—heal—after—hide—all at—do it at all—in pain—weaker—control—She’s so broken—answers.”

Prince Nikias.

She had a vague recollection of him in the throne room? And then in a hallway with thepuella—Aimilia, but for some reason they’d been fighting. She didn’t remember much of it.

Marcella blinked open her eyes and tried to see past the curls in her face and the cloak she’d been burying her head in. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, him and a woman in a chiton with trimming Marcella recognized.

The kind marking her as one of their heretics.

If there had been any doubt in her mind or hope this wasn’t what she thought it was, seeing her removed it. It was the same heretic that had started to cut her open before.

And there was no Gavril this time to stop them.

He was gone.

Or dead.

Marcella prayed he would ride fast.

If he was alive. If he wasn’t…

She prayed she would die fast.

The heretic replied with a grin that would have had Marcella retching if she weren’t laying on top of Gavril’s cloak and doing so would ruin it. “—tomorrow—rock to look—getting—build the anticipation.”

Prince Nikias gave her a nod and then started for somewhere else in the room, but as he did so he looked over at Marcella. Since she’d shifted after waking, lifting her head slightly at their voices, the cloak could now be seen under her. He narrowed his eyes at it and snapped to the heretic. “—she doing—take it—demon—commander’s cloak or a prince’s.”

The heretic’s eyes widened when she spotted the cloak. Her face went ashen and she started toward Marcella, saying, “—Princeps Nikias—grabbed—injured wrist—”

They were going to take the cloak. After what she’d put herself through to pick it back up? After she’d promised Gavril she would keep it?

The savage animal they all thought her and her people to be rose up in her. That cloak was her territory.

“No! No!” Marcella screamed in their tongue. She twisted as best she could, covering the cloak with her body and lifted her injured wrist as her only shield. “Back! No!”

The woman startled at Marcella’s screams but kept coming toward her anyway.

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