Page 2 of Crown of Thorns
The snakes.
The dossier on me. On Rhys.
The queen.
I wasn’t safe. I had to run.
And then the crash.
Beep… beep… beeeppp…the monitors beep beside me indicating that, even thoughmy body doesn’t feel like it, I’m still alive.
“I’m glad you’re finally awake, hen,” Rhys says from a chair in the corner of the room, hidden in the shadows.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
“I told you I’d find you,” he says. Apparently, he had made good on the threat that he laid out while I was attempting to escape. He had begged me to turn around and I wasn’t willing to give up the last ditch grasp on my freedom.
Too bad it was only an illusion…
“Th-there was a crash.”
“Yes,” he replies. “Your car was tampered with.”
Tampered with? Meaning someone tried to kill me? Who would try to kill me as I was leaving? That feels too cruel to contemplate. I left so that I would survive. Now here I am, still trapped where I’m most unsafe.
“You barely survived. I’m told it’s something of a miracle.”
“What about Leo? Harris?” I ask.
“Leo is barely better than you,” he says.
“And Harris?” I ask. Rhys just shakes his head and a sob is ripped from my chest. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be alive. This is all my fault. Harris is dead because of me and all he’d ever shown me was kindness and loyalty.
“Shhh,” Rhys coos as he climbs into the bed with me, pulling me into his arms. This man—who I thought I knew, only to realize that I don’t know anything—istrying to console me for killing his driver. Can’t he see that it’s all so hopeless?
“You have to let me go,” I cry. Who else is going to have to die because of the crazy machinations of powerful men and kings? I’m so tired of being a pawn to men. I just need a rest.
“Never,” he says, his voice more of a vow than an answer.
“Please, this is all my fault. You have to. Don’t you see?” I’ll plead and beg and do whatever it takes to keep us all safe. But my being here in this beautiful country is putting us all at risk.
I can’t breathe. The crying, the accident, Harris’s death, and even Rhys being here. It’s all too much. I gasp trying to get air, but I can’t.
“I don’t see anything, Stella. There’s not one fucking thing you could tell me, or try to explain, that will make me part from you. I’ll never let you go.”
“I know everything,” I plead. If I could just breathe, I’d tell him I know about his affair and how I was all some big plan. How he never loved me. I was a politely chosen political match and I had no idea. I had thought that I was being swept off my feet by a handsome stranger in town for work. I fell hook, line, and sinker for his lies and now that they’re scattered between us, there’s no going back to what we were.
“You know not one goddamn thing,” he growls. His tone is low and menacing, not something he’s ever directed at me before and it sends a shiver down myspine. My internal panic ratchets up a few thousand notches.
I gasp, trying to suck in a breath but it’s no use. My vision is going in and out like a bad tuner on an old TV set.
“Stella?” he asks as he shakes me, but I can’t turn back.
I need to go back under the water, back to the murky dark of silent retreat where my life can’t bother me.
“Stella!”
I slam my eyes shut and just let everything go black.
