Page 68 of The Captive's Curse
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Fuck, give me a couple of minutes,” and laid me out on the floor, my cheek coming to rest on what seemed to be a particularly hard, cold, and pitted bit of flagstone.
Everything faded in and out around me, dark and then light, slow and then fast. One blink, and a flare of lightning filled the window, thunder booming; another, slower blink, and Enzo was pressed against the wall by the door, face grim and body poised.
Another flash, another gap in my perception, and Enzo and the guard were wrestling, a sword flashing vermilion along its edge in the torchlight, and then the guard was down on the floor.
Blink. Something black and gleaming spread in a pool from the guard’s mouth and reflected in his fixed, staring eyes.
Oh, I didn’t want to see that. I closed mine. Stone under me, so very, very chilly. I missed my onion bed.
Clashes of metal and shouts of alarm rose up, echoing in the stairwell. I thought I heard the Mad Lord shrieking over it all. Didn’t he ever shut the fuck up? No wonder he’d had marital troubles.
One more blink, and the world faded away completely.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“…have better things to do than listen to your ravings,” Enzo was saying briskly. “Lord Montefime can deal with you when he gets here, which I presume means taking you to the queen and lettingherdeal with you. Anyway, you should be grateful. IfIhad to be the one to deal with you, I’d cut your throat and toss you down the ravine. I’m out of patience.”
Lord Montefime? What the hell did Bruno have to do with anything? Cominghere?
“Better things,” snarled a ragged voice I almost didn’t recognize as Hans’s. It sounded like someone had throttled him, or possibly beaten the shit out of him. Good. “You mean like buggering the fuck out of that little bi—”
He broke off in a thud and then a low groan.
“Thank you, Finn,” Enzo said.
“My pleasure, believe me.” Finn sounded extremely satisfied, in fact. “Anyway, you got your hands full.”
Finn! He was alive, and…so was I, although I hadn’t really thought I was dying, merely taking a very uncomfortable nap. My magic had been drained, but not critically. Warm. I was also warm, and no longer on that filthy, horrid floor in that crumbling, horrid tower. Oh, gods, I was never going up that high again. I’d live in a little hole in the ground like a gopher, only with more wine.
“Cyril?” Enzo sounded a lot more worried than I felt. Actually, I didn’t feel worried at all, because every single oneof my cares had floated away on the tide of magic that had successfully saved Enzo’s life and left me without any other responsibilities. I’d known he’d take care of everything if I could get him free. And he’d killed the guards, captured Hans, and then picked me up off that floor like he’d promised. “Did you say something?”
“I thought I heard him say he wanted a gopher and some wine.” That was Leander’s puzzled voice, and my cheeks hurt with the force of my smile.
I summoned up the strength to open my eyes. Enzo’s face filled my vision from the vantage point of my head leaning on his shoulder. He was still as unshaven and messy-haired as he’d been in his cell, and that intense, breathtaking gleam still lit up his black eyes.
No one had ever been so handsome. My scruffy ruffian.
And at least he didn’t look quite so surprised this time.
Right. He’d looked like that because I’d told him I loved him.
By the irrepressible welling-up of soft, helpless warmth in my chest as I gazed up at him, I really did love him.
Fuck. Well, if he didn’t love me too, he had no taste or judgment.
But I wouldn’t put it past him, and…oh, gods, what if he didn’t love me too?
“We have wine,” Enzo said softly, and the corner of his mouth quirked. His arms tightened a bit around me. Mmm, that explained why I had the overall sense of everything being right with the world, despite the aches and pains in every part of my body and my possibly rejected tender feelings. “I’m not so sure where we’d get a gopher. Also, I’d really like to know what you want it for, first. Just in case.”
How had I fallen in love with such a prick? Running off to live in a little hole in the ground was a fuckingmetaphor.
“None of your business,” I whispered, my throat too dry for anything louder. “You don’t know anything about poetry. Why’s my brother coming here?”
Enzo’s mouth moved, forming the wordpoetry, and one eyebrow climbed all the way up.
“Is he all right?” Leander asked, and now he sounded worried as hell. “Did he hit his head?”
“No,” Enzo said, his smile widening, and his eyes never leaving my face. “He was born this way, and that’s why I love him so fucking much.”
