Page 28 of Royal Ransom

“Stop!” I hissed through clenched teeth as he raised the blade once more. There was a layer of red on the metal.

Cirro paused and idly wiped away some blood from the knife with an utterly punchable grin of triumph.

“Giving in so soon, warlock?” he asked. The stage laugh that followed grated on my ears. “I’ve heard about you. Most of the court has. It was a scandal when Olwen didn’t marry her intended. I must admit though—I thought the famed bruiser of the Scapegrace Coven would last longer under torture.”

“Leg,” I panted.

Cirro’s brow creased. “What?”

“Start on my lower leg or an arm, you moron,” I spat. “If you hit any big arteries, I’ll hemorrhage, and there goes your meal ticket.” He looked at me dumbly. “Have you ever done this before, you little bastard?” I didn’t wait for his response. “Because I have. And my last torturer was a hell of a lot better at it than you.”

Cirro blinked down at me in shock. I’d successfully tongue-tied the arrogant prick. Yippee for me. Now for my second trick: I’ll escape these restraints! Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

Tally,I thought to myself, trying to keep my desperation from reaching her. She couldn’t afford distractions at this point. Still, a small voice couldn’t help but ask, if only in the corner of my mind,where the spell are you?

Color flushed into Cirro’s cheeks. Well, as much as Winter faeries could flush. It was more a dusting of baby pink on the cheekbones, nose, and tips of their pointy ears. It made judging their emotions that much more difficult. If you thought a regular woman was enigmatic, wait until you’ve tried to date a faerie princess from Winter. I’d done calculus that was simpler than interpreting her moods.

“How dare you!” Cirro nearly choked.

How dare I what? Critique his torture technique? Speak? Give him a bad review on Yelp? Sometimes the illogic made me want to bash my head into the wall.

Cirro’s hand blurred, and a second later, a burning stripe of pain crossed my torso. Blood immediately began to well from a cut just beneath my clavicle. If he’d had more daring, he probably would have torn open my throat, but he settled for carving a furrow in my upper chest instead. I hissed in a sharp breath. It was the only reaction I was willing to give him. The screams would come once fingers and toes started coming off, but until then, I wasn’t going to let this bastard use my voice like a duck call to attract Tally’s attention.

The cold seeped into the wound as blood slowed, beginning to freeze on my skin like iron slush. Cirro’s temper had plunged the temperature below zero. Ironically, it provided just enough pressure to keep the wound from throbbing horribly. The cold was more a benefit to me than to him.

Hey, if criticism had worked once, I might as well try it again.

“And the cold isn’t helping you either,” I continued, trying to put every ounce of disdain I could muster into my voice. It wasan obnoxious amount, as it turned out. From the tone, even I wanted to kick my ass.

Cirro gripped the handle of the knife in a white-knuckled hand. A wind began to whip around the room, picking up the specks of my blood like loose snow.

“What in Her Majesty’s name are you on about, Depraysie?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“The cold. Within a certain range, all you’re doing is keeping me from bleeding and feeling as much pain as you’d like me to. A warmer room would have been better for this. A Summer faerie administering this torture could add some pretty horrifying touches, you know? Summon maggots and blowflies to enter the wounds and eat me from the inside out. Now that’s torture.”

The metal near my ear clanged so loudly that I yelped. Cirro had driven the point through the gurney, stopping just short of ramming it into my skull. My heart raced. I was ninety percent sure he was too politically motivated to actually kill me before getting the answers he sought. What was more, I figured I was more use to Janara alive than dead, but maybe I was wrong about that? Either way, pressing him could still be dangerous. There was always the ten percent chance I thought I was more important than I actually was.

“I ought to cut your useless tongue from your mouth,” he said, drawing the knife back from the table with a hideous screech of metal. The tip of his blade ran along the line of my jaw, an intimate and deadly caress.

“Kind of hard to pry answers from me if I don’t have a tongue,” I said with more flippancy than I actually felt. “I’d start with a pinky, if I were you. Or maybe the middle finger, so I can’t flip you the bird when my tongue’s gone.”

Cirro’s eyes flashed entirely white for a moment. I was sure I’d done it—pushed him too far and sealed my fate. But then something odd happened. His eyes rolled back into hishead, whites gleaming momentarily. The sudden slackness in his face was jarring—one moment animated in mid-sentence, the next a blank canvas of unconsciousness. A small tremor rippled through his shoulders before all tension disappeared completely.

His body went limp, arms dropping heavily to his sides like cut marionette strings. His knees buckled first, followed by a gradual collapse that seemed to happen in slow motion. He slumped slowly to the floor, his descent oddly graceful. A soft, rattling exhale escaped his parted lips—the only sound in the room besides the frantic pounding of my heart.

Standing where Cirro had just been was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Her clothes were torn, her lip was bleeding, and she looked like she’d gone mud wrestling with a troll. And she was so heartrendingly gorgeous that I wanted to capture the moment on paper.

For just a moment, I saw myself through her eyes. Pale, frightened, and utterly frozen—it was more than a little disconcerting. It looked like I might even be dead. There was enough blood spattered around the room to support that theory. I felt Tally’s rush of concern like a burst of energy through my veins.

She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her. The truth was that they were failing me too. So I just stared up at her, gratitude pooling in my heart.

“Mav,” she finally broke the silence. “Are you okay?”

I choked on a desperate laugh. “Never better,” I answered, shrugging as best I could within the confines of my restraints. “How about you?”

Tally chuckled, a touch of color rising in her cheeks. “Oh, I’m just ducky.” She paused a moment. “Actually, I think I killed a pond full of those, unfortunately.”

“Is that why you’re muddy?”

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