Page 203 of Bride of the Midnight Prince

If I can delay the inevitable, it might buy me just enough time.

“There is one thing you can do to ensure your loyalties remain as they ought,” Lady Nothril continues, a slow smile twisting her lips.

My focus narrows on Pelarusa. There is one thing I can do to protect Pavi’s life.

Lady Nothril waves her hand, gesturing at Kat. “Execute the Ivy Mask as we instruct. You will be restored to your former position and glory as our heir. We will put all of this nonsense behind us.”

She is out of her mind if she thinks I will seriously consider murdering my wife.

“What sentence would please you? She took your slave girl, after all. It is right that you should decide.” Lady Nothril regards her husband.

“I have considered this,” replies Lord Nothril, his pupils dilating and glittering. “She must be executed very slowly. A table will be brought forth and she will be pinned to it with a blade through her naval, her hands and legs pinned to the table with stakes. Then hot tongs will be used—”

“No!” cries Pavi.

I flinch at the sound of her throwing herself to the ground before Lord and Lady Nothril.

“Pavi!” Pelarusa cries, fear staining her voice.

“Please, don’t make him do this to the woman he loves!” Pavi begs, and my world turns cold with dread. “She wasn’t trying to hurt our people! She just wanted to help her own! She was being kind and brave. She shouldn’t have to endure a horror like this!”

Pavi, no. No, no, no, no.

I just need you to stay alive for a few more minutes longer until—

The air turns deadly.

Stay out of this,I scream in my mind.Let me handle this. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Please, Pavi!

But she cannot hear my frantic thoughts.

“I cannot bear to watch this!” Pavi is openly weeping now. “You always make me watch such horrible things and I can’t do it! I can’t do it!”

Pelarusa does what I cannot, and marches across the room to grab Pavi by the arm, to drag her back to her place, temporarily leaving Kat unattended. “Be silent!”

Pavi wrenches free. “I’ve been silent long enough!” She whirls on Lord and Lady Nothril, either not noticing the dark thrum of energy coming from the twin thrones, or not caring. “Mama, please! Papa! Don’t do this horrible thing. Can you not see how this would destroy Rahk?”

“Pavi,” Lady Nothril says with deceptive calm.

She looks up, hope filling her innocent face. Every muscle in my body braces. I scan the room for the hundredth time, trying to sort out exactly how to get us out of this mess.

“You can only interrupt someone’s sentence if you are willing to take the punishment on behalf of the accused.”

Pavi’s face pales.

“Will you take the place of the accused?” Lord Nothril asks.

Pavi glances helplessly between me and the wide-eyed Kat beside me.

“You do not have to,” Lady Nothril says with gentleness that I don’t know if I’ve ever heard before, “but if you do not, then you cannot speak on these proceedings.”

“You’re saying I mustdiein order to say you shouldn’t make a husband kill his wife?” Pavi asks, outrage turning her foolish. “That is ridiculous, and you know it!”

“Silence!” roars Lord Nothril. He grabs Pavi by her hair, yanking her to her feet as she screams. “You have refused to conform to the ways of Nothril for long enough. You will now choose between your tongue or your life.”

He throws her to the floor. She lands hard, her fear palpable as she tries to scoot backward, toward me, away from the person she just called Papa. “What do you mean?”

He strides toward her, withdrawing a long, curved knife. “You will give me your traitorous tongue, or you will give me your life.

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