Page 111 of A Curse of Breath and Blood

Chewing on the inside of my mouth, I contemplated his words. “I want him to hurt the way I did.”

“He can’t, Aelia. He is a creature who cannot feel the way you and I do. His heart is a shriveled piece of rotten fruit hanging on by a thread.”

I smirked. “I know, but my innate need for justice gets the better of me.”

“I know who he is. Maybe he was born bad, or perhaps the world turned him that way, but either way, there is nothing you can do to hurt him in the same way he hurt you. And besides, only we know he was behind the attack at the Court of Sorrows. I have no doubt he’s concocted some lie justifying his attack on the Woodland Realm.”

My eyes trailed to the floor. My mind flashed back to the time I tried to hurt him—one of my lowest points. I had seduced one of Gideon’s guards into taking me to bed. I wanted Gideon to know my pain. He’d had many lovers since we wed. Each one a slice to my heart, causing me to bleed to death from the inside out. I wanted him to see I, too, could take a lover. That I could hurt him in all the ways he had hurt me, but it ended in my shame.

His words still echoed in my head. “You think you can hurt me?”

I squirmed underneath his iron grip.

“Well, you can’t. You can’t hurt me because you mean nothing to me.”

My chest tightened as he pinned me against the wall.

Gideon’s advisors looked on as he humiliated me.

Tears streaming down my face, I retreated inside myself. He couldn’t hurt me if I felt nothing.

I burned the faces of Gideon’s inner circle into my mind as they looked on and did nothing. Each one would meet a fate worse than death for their complicity.

Leaving my victimhood behind, I honed my new telepathy skills to take from Gideon the one thing he loved more than anything else: his kingdom.

“Fine, I won’t kill him. However, we should look for evidence of what he’s planning while we’re in the castle.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” The little fire gilded his features. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Staring into each other’s eyes, the fire between us building to a roar. My lips yearned to feel the pressure of his on mine, to taste him on my tongue.

He cleared his throat. “I think I’ll go grab us some food.”

My cheeks flushed. “Sounds like a good idea,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed, straightening my ill-fitting clothes.

I let out the breath I had been holding in. At the very least, he provided a welcome distraction from the impending nightmare across the Ryft.

Tharan returned thirty minutes later, carrying two roast chicken and potato platters.

We sat cross-legged on the floor, eating dinner in front of the little stove. The smell of herbs and cooked meats filled the room.

After dinner, Tharan suggested we take a stroll around the lake. Despite the cover of night, I still took precautions, purchasing a thick scarf to hide my face.

Colorful fish swam beneath the surface of the crystal-clearlake. Out of the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn I caught the jeweled tones of a mermaid tale. My thoughts drifted to Ursula. I hoped she made it out of the Alder Palace.

Mer stuck to their own, rarely involving themselves with the dealings of land dwellers. They even worshiped an ancient god, Manannan.

“Beautiful night,” I said, hoping Tharan would take my hand.

“Not as beautiful as you, my dear,” he said with a mischievous grin.

“Your charms won’t work on me.” A lie.

Shrugging, he wrapped his arm around me. “Well, a king can try.”

“He sure can.” I gave him a warm smile. A fuzzy feeling bubbled in my chest.

As we rounded the lake, two humans and a halfling dressed in shabby clothing jumped out from behind a pair of bushes, brandishing knives.

“What do we have here?” a human said, his face pocked from years of picking. Bags hung low beneath his eyes, and his fingers twitched in a familiar manner. Dust addicts. Judging by the marks on their faces and their pale gray skin, they’d been using for a long time. The dust took its toll on them. Desperate for coins to pay for the drug.

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