Page 69 of Royally Arranged

My head was spinning. I heard something crackle; I was squeezing the photo so hard it had started to crease in two. “You took this photo, then hung on to it for weeks?” I asked in disbelief.

“Well. What good is ruining someone before you have everything you need from them?” He took a single step, bringing him chest to chest. “The real task was finding that woman you spoke to. When I told her that all she had to do was confirm what she’d done with the king, and we’d pay her handsomely and press no charges, she sang loud and pretty. Ten years is a long time to spend locked up. Can’t blame her for helping us out.”

That woman I spoke to by the club...she lied for some money? Fear, too. She probably thought it didn’t matter if it wasn’t her in the picture, who’d believe her?

With my eyes straining, I stared him in the face. Nova’s words entered my brain hard enough to make my skull ache.She warned me that what we were doing was illegal.I’d sworn I didn’t care. And at the time I hadn’t. I’d felt invincible.

Now I was paying for it.

But they don’t know that the woman who was with me was Nova.“Ten years,” I said, watching him closely. He was still wearing his sick-ass grin. “You’re saying I’ll have to serve a sentence that long? Inhere?”

“Not in here.” He waved around at the room. “This is just where you’ll stay until you’re formally charged.Then,when you’re stripped of your crown, you’ll rot for ten years in the Maurine prison. Of course, it’ll take around a year of back-and-forth to make your fall from grace official. By then ... we won’t need you around.” He winked. “We’ll have someone else who can sit on the throne. Someone easier to control.”

Something whiplike bloomed up in me. It was too big, too hot, ready to burst out of my body. I knew,knewwhat he was implying, but I had to hear it from his smirking lips. Distantly I heard myself ask, “Who?”

Larchmont’s mouth opened wide as he laughed. I saw down to the back of his throat. “Didn’t you hear? Nova’spregnant.”

His confirmation was like a tornado to my guts.

“All we needed from you was your genetics, Funny Man. I didn’t think this would happen so fast. I thought I’d have to hang on to these photos for months, if I’d known my little sister was such a slut, I could’ve—”

Thrusting forward, with just inches to prepare, I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Then I spun, throwing him into the bed chained to the other side. Richard shouted—I ignored him, my thumbs pressing into Larch’s windpipe. “Don’t you ever call her that!” I roared. “You piece of garbage! Fuck you, how can you, her own brother, be so cruel?”

I whipped my elbow back. Larch flinched, knowing I was about to hit him with all the rage that had coiled in my tendons. Before I could sock him in the mouth, a steel grip closed on my forearm. Richard yanked me back, hooking his arms around mine, restraining me with my spine against his massive chest. Fuck, he was big enough that my toes barely brushed the floor.

Straightening up slowly, Larch rubbed at his neck. It was red where I’d been choking him. His eyes were the same shade as Nova’s, but they were nothing like his kind sister’s. He trailed a glance at the door. I followed, noting what he was confirming: that no one had come to check out the noise. The guards outside really wouldn’t step in to stop them.

No one was going to help me.

“This,” Larch said, stretching his arms, swinging them lazily as he warmed himself up, “is something I’ve been itching to do for way too long.” He looked past my ear to his brother. “Hold him steady.”

Richard dug in harder—I expected my shoulders to pop from their sockets. “Ready,” he grunted.

The first punch skated off my cheekbone. Crimson splotches swam in my vision, my head twisting to the side. It was a solid hit. So was the second, then the third. My world became a mushy ball of pain, everything in my skull weighted down by a sensation of saturated cotton stuffed inside the creases of my brain.

After every punch, I lifted my eyes so I could watch him.

Larchmont shook his hand, flexing his fingers. “What,” he asked, breathing hard, “not going to beg me to stop?”

A tiny laugh bubbled from my bloody lips. I grinned, even though it sent jagged pain through my face. “Nah. You look like you could use the workout.”

His scowl contorted his angular features, made him more animal than human. “How the hell are you so cocky?”

It took all the effort I had to swing my head up higher. My hair stuck to my forehead, my neck struggling to keep me stable enough to smile serenely at the man who’d done all he could to break me down. “I guess ... I was just born this way. Something in my blood.”

That did it. His eyes flew wide, his knuckles connecting with my jaw. “Fuck you!” he growled, spittle flying on me and his brother both. Richard struggled to hold me still, not because I was fighting, but because Larch was hitting me so violently.

A solid knee to my guts made me cough. Blood spattered on the floor, some of it onto Larch’s shirt. He scowled, stepping back, eyeing the red stains with disgust. “I’ll need to clean up before anyone sees me. Great.”

Richard adjusted his grip under my armpits. “I think we should stop.”

“Don’t you want a turn?” his brother asked coolly.

I was broken on the outside. I still managed to skip my glare upward, through my sweat-stained hair, to survey Larchmont. All I tasted was my own blood as I gave a shaky smile. “Yeah, let him go for it. You look tired. Catch your breath, Larch.”

He grabbed me by my hair, wrenching my head back. “I wish I could fucking kill you. It would feel sogoodto be the one to end your waste of a life.”

“Larch,” Richard said, and I sensed hesitation from the man holding me. “That’s enough. Think about Nova.”

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