Page 100 of The Night Prince

“Isn’t this horrifying?” he says. Moonlight illuminates one side of his face. The other is cast in darkness.

I try to speak, and I taste my own blood.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” His gaze travels up the strings to the control bar, which is cloaked in shadow. “Who controls you? Who would I find, if I climbed to the top, I wonder? Your father? Brother? Callum? Me? Perhaps your mother, or something more abstract—like duty, or honor. Has it ever occurred to you thatyouare the one pulling the strings? That you are binding yourself? That you could break free, if you wished it?” He drums his fingers along the arm of the throne. “Probably not.”

I try to pull against the hooks, and warm blood dribbles down my arms.

“You looked like a queen tonight,” he muses. “You could be one, if you wished it. Philip sleeps in my infirmary. You could creep down there while the castle sleeps. There’s a beaker of water on the table beside him. A few drops of wolfsbane would do the trick. I would do it for you, if you asked me. Your father is old. He will die, eventually, and when he does, the throne would be yours.”

He stands and straightens his coat. He strolls down the dais and stops in front of me.

“It pains me to see you like this, darling.” I’m not sure if he’s telling the truth. “Think about what I said.”

He slips his hands into his pockets and walks away. His footsteps fade. The floor opens up.

I’m falling through endless darkness once more.

***

I jolt upright in my bed. My skin is clammy, and the sheets stick to me. I can’t control my wild pulse. The night is still dark, but I can’t go back to sleep. I was dreaming of Night’s prison. I was dreaming of Blake.

With shaky fingers, I light the candle beside the bed. I pull the book that has answers about our bond from beneath my pillow. I start to read.

The light of dawn is straining through my window when my eyes snag on a particular page in the book. Realization slams into me with brutal force. An emotion I can’t understand threatens to tear me apart.

I dress hurriedly. I grab the tome and earmark it at the appropriate page. I hurry out of my room—almost tripping over the male who sleeps against the wall. He has a bushy red beard and a blue kilt. I recognize him from when Callum first took me from the Borderlands. Fergus, I think his name is.

He doesn’t stir as I hurry down the stairs. So much for keeping guard.

I need to speak to Blake.

Chapter Forty-Four

The castle is awakening. I battle through the current of people who light the torches, carry food, and make their way outside with weapons.

That wildness in my chest I have felt since James bit me rears its head. My blood roars and my heartbeat howls. Dots dance before my eyes. My body is trying to shut down my emotions.

I pass the kitchens, and barely register Mrs. McDonald shouting at Kayleigh for burning the porridge. Blake strolls toward me from the direction of the infirmary. I grab him and shove him against the wall before he can speak. He makes a low sound in his throat. I grab his shirt and pull it out of his breeches.

He grabs my wrist. “If you’re reaching for my cock, darling, that is off limits.”

His voice is far away. There’s a long scar that curves down his abdomen. My breathing is hard. Fast. My eyes flick to his, and the corridor swims around me. “Who did this to you?”

He nudges me back. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter?!” I shove the book at his chest and he pulls a face. I open it at the page I earmarked. “Do Wolves’ internal organs grow back when removed? Incision was made on the right-hand side of the test subject’s abdomen in order to remove the kidney.”

I hit him with the book again, and he grunts.There is a diagram of a body, where there is a curved line on the abdomen to depict the incision point. It mirrors the worst of Blake’s scars.

I recall that dark feeling that had twisted inside me when I read one of his books full of experiments in the Great Hall—so similar to the feeling I had every time the High Priest beat me. I thought it was shame, that perhaps he felt bad for harming other Wolves.

I had not considered there could be another reason: he might be ashamed that he let these things happen to him.

I shake my head, my hands trembling. “You led me to believe you wrote these books.”

His expression is dark. “You came to that conclusion by yourself, little rabbit.”

“All those experiments... all those terrible things... they were done to you.”

---