Page 41 of Married By Treachery

“No manners, remember?” She held two fingers at her heart as he had done.

Jake’s smile turned vicious, and his eyes burned with something that nearly stopped her heart altogether. “Yes,” he said lowly. “I remember.” But then a crease formed between his brows, and he glanced to the trees and waved a hand over his flask before lifting it to his lips again.

“How do you do that?” Raquel asked.

Jake pulled the flask away and licked his lips. “Do what?”

“Make things appear out of thin air?”

He smirked. “Those are fiercely protected kith secrets, my bride.”

“Like your curse?” She hadn’t meant to bring it back to this, but it was the question that had been brimming just below the surface ever since she’d entered this strange and rotting kingdom. A question he kept maneuvering around, but it would not be ignored.

Not now.

Especially not now.

Her question settled between them, as thick and cold as the surrounding mist. Jake’s entire physiognomy changed, and Raquel suddenly regretted her words—regretted calling back that dark and dangerous forest prince.

But she needed an answer; she needed to know. Unfortunately, she had been so distracted by him—bythis, whatever it was—and confused by her dreams that she kept forgetting to persist. To get the answers she needed so that she could stop Canna’s curse from plaguing her people.

“What happened to that stag, Jake?” Raquel asked quietly, though she realized the others were watching them now, listening. “Why are these trees dead but also alive? Where did your Depraved come from, and why is there nocolor?”

The camp had fallen completely silent, all of them looking to their prince to see how he would answer. To see what he would say.

Worried about what he would say.

Jake absently turned that flask in his hand, his gaze fixed ahead but unseeing. “You ask questions that I cannot answer.”

“Again, I ask you: cannot or will not?”

He looked sharply at her, his gaze predatory. “Life is a game, my bride. We win some. We lose some. And we drink”—he raised his flask in toast—“to endure it all.”

Raquel frowned, and he lifted the flask to his lips.

“That’s it?” Raquel snapped, irritated. “That’s all you have to say?”

Jake tipped back the flask and drained it.

The others still watched, though they tried not to appear like they were. A few uneasy glances were exchanged.

“It’s not as simple as that, though, is it?” Raquel persisted. “I saw you with that stag. Youfeltthat loss. You feel it now—you feel all of it—which is why you drink far more than you should—”

“You can’t leave well enough alone, can you, my murderous, thieving virgin bride?” Jake cut her off, a smile on his lips, but his eyes were full of fire.

Raquel might have been afraid, but she was mostly irritated by his last qualifier. “Leave it alone? It’s only what’s plagued my people for forty-two years!”

Jake tipped his head, and that fire burned. “Plagued? You mean losing six young maidens?”

His tone suggested herlosswasn’t loss at all, and it rankled her. She ground her teeth together. “Oneis too many, Your Grace. Just because you whittle your life away with your games and drink doesn’t mean that others are content to throw away theirs.”

In retrospect, she might have pushed too far with that last comment. Banon twitched forward, ready to defend his prince’s honor, but Jake held up two fingers, his dark gaze fixed on hers.

“I agree,” Jake said at last, his voice low and smooth and dangerous. “Oneistoo many. Would you care to know how many we have lost?”

“Your people are your responsibility, not mine. I am here because—”

“Tens of thousands.”

---