Page 61 of Feathers so Vicious

Sebian gripped my arm; if to keep me from bolting or in support, I couldn’t say. Asker looked back and forth between Malyr and me, though his stare ultimately settled on me, heavy and expectant. No, I couldn’t do this. Not him.

“A wedding in exchange for a powerful ally,” Malyr mused as he turned away from the window and lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. He looked at me with nearly black eyes, then waved his hand, gesturing me to him. “Come to me, little dove.”

Sebian clutched me tighter for a second, as though he wanted to hold on.Oh please, hold on. Save me. Do something!But he had his loyalties, and how could I expect them to lie with me?

His hold eased away with a whisper. “Don’t make it worse for yourself.”

At his nudge, I stumbled toward the desk and around, my inhales nothing but stuttered gasps that seemed to suffocate me the closer I came to Malyr.

The prince clasped my waist in a manner too gentle to be trusted and pulled me onto his lap, only for his poisonous lips to whisper by my ear, “What a disappointment you turned out to be, hmm.”

His words carved at my heart, hollowing it, expanding the void. Yes, I was a disappointment… to everyone. Gods, I’d even failed at being a political hostage.

“A powerful ally, indeed,” Captain Theolif said, eyeing Malyr warily but not daring to remark on this inappropriate position of mine. “Archers, three thousand strong. Siege weapons. Not to mention a fleet of seventy-two longships, capable of carrying eighty men each.”

“Eighty men each…” Malyr combed his fingers through my hair. Detangled my strands. Brushed them behind my ear. Gestures that would have appeared loving to any oblivious soul—like Theolif—but I understood the threat in it. Sensed how his fingertips shook. How his shadows bit at my nape. “With such a generous proposal, how could I not forget that one of the before-mentioned siege weapons crushed my little sister’s skull during the siege of Valtaris?”

His words tied around my heart like a noose, pulling taut until it ached, the last petals of blissful ignorance wilting away at my core. That Father was responsible for that, and worse, was suddenly an easy thing to believe. After all the accounts? Theolif’s mention of past transgressions? The very fact that Father was cruel enough to abandon me to the monster he had created?

“How could I not forget that your lord had my ravens feast on my brother’s corpse to keep from starving?” Malyr continued. “That I drank from the guards’ piss cup? Chewed the moss off the walls? Eventually ran out of corners toshit?” Malyr’s shout had my heart lodge somewhere between my ribs. “That he aided King Barat in the near annihilation of my people? The scars he left on me?” His lips scathed the shell of my ear where he whispered, “That his whore daughter killed my brother.”

I shuddered. It was all true.

Every.

Single.

Barbarity.

Of course, Captain Theolif denied none of it, and merely offered another bow. “Prince Malyr, if I—”

“You came here to insult me by offeringnothing!”A burst of shadows cast the room into near darkness at Malyr’s shout, chilling the air by several degrees. “Let me adjust Lady Galantia’s value to the terms you proposed.” His warm hand shot beneath my skirts, and his hot whisper broke against my temple. “I should have done this much sooner.”

“My Prince,” Asker shouted. “Please recon—”

A yelp erupted from my chest even before I fully registered the pain, like a knife stabbing into my center, sending one cramp after another to ripple across my abdomen. Malyr thrust his fingers into me as deeply as my body permitted. They jerked, scraped, and jabbed with a violence that turned me nauseous, leaving me a little more cracked, a little more broken.

And a lot more worthless.

Malyr retreated his fingers and lifted them, a thin string of blood clinging to his glistening knuckle for everyone to witness.

Nobody was looking.

Asker stared at the ground while Captain Theolif and the priest turned their backs on me in the same way my parents had. Only Sebian’s gaze lifted some, his posture stiff and his teeth barred, but it never reached mine.

Malyr placed his lips by my ear. “Now I rendered you worthless.”

The burning cleft in my heart bled into my ribcage. Yes, I was worthless. Never wanted, never loved. And how could anybody love something so deranged? So broken?

I looked into his pitch-black eyes, my throat strangling tight. “No matter how much you want to hate me, it’ll never measure up to the loathing my father clearly harbors for me. You think you rendered me worthless? Don’t flatter yourself, Malyr. I wasbornworthless.”

ChapterTwenty-One

Sebian

Present day, Deepmarsh Castle, Malyr’s personal library

Head pounding and ears buzzing, I lifted my gaze to Galantia, putting such a nauseating sway into my surroundings, the bitterness of ale rose in my throat. It flooded the back of my tongue, rancid and sour, making me gag before I swallowed it back down into the depth of my roiling stomach. What the fuck just happened?

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