Page 28 of Within the Hollow Heart

“No,” Nickolas gasped.

The prince flicked a hand, and Nickolas’s words stuck in his throat, just as the scene had frozen on Lord Filmore’s balcony. The prince looked evenly at Lady Brigham. “I cannot. An existing betrothal prevents me.”

“An exist—” Lady Brigham’s lips pressed closed.

Jules leaned against Nickolas’s back as she peered past him, and—with a strange sensation—he understood his voice had returned. He demanded, “Leave off with this fool’s game, Mother. It will not end well for anyone involved.” Particularly not whichever sister was sent to live with the fae, no matter that it might bring his mother a return to the fortune she so desperately wanted. “I will not allow you to harm them. I will not allow you to continue this ploy.” He wasn’t certain how he might stop her, as a bargain with a fae prince would supersede any power he held, but he would find a way. Her behavior was beyond reprehensible. He should have stopped her long before so it might never have gone this far.

His mother’s cold eyes seemed to dare him to try then shifted to Jules and went ten shades colder. “Her,” she told the prince. “Remove that chit from this kingdom to never return. Or turn her to ash. I care not which. As long as she’s gone forever.”

Before Nickolas could lunge at his mother, he was frozen again by the strange fae magic.

“I cannot,” the prince repeated.

Lady Brigham’s gaze shot to the prince. “What do you mean you cannot? Do away with the girl. She matters to no one.”

The prince gave her a level stare, his words loaded with meaning. “As I’ve told you, an existing betrothal prevents me.”

Nickolas felt himself fall back a step, and he bumped against Jules.Jules, Jules, Jules, his heart drummed in a panicked staccato. She made not a sound. The ground felt unsteady beneath Nickolas’s feet. He could not seem to reconcile the words he’d heard. They did not seem real.

Outside in the courtyard, there was a rush of murmuring and the muffled beat of marching boots on stone.The marshal, the watching crowd murmured. The kingsmen were coming.

The prince’s expression remained steady. “You have one final offer to make, Lady Brigham. I suggest you consider it well.”

Lady Brigham huffed, the sound reeking of smug victory and delight. “I shall save it,” she told him.

Because Lady Brigham had won her boon after all. Jules would no longer interfere, not when she was married to someone else. And if she was married to… when she was taken to… Nickolas could not even make himself think it. It could not be real.

Etta darkened the doorway only an instant before the prince was gone. He must have heard the murmurs as well and known she was coming, but he’d waited, watching the doorway for her appearance. One might not have noticed the small quirk to his brow on an otherwise unchanged face—a clear acknowledgment of the challenge scored in his favor—but Etta had.

She cursed, lunged… and drove her sword into empty air. She stood in the space he had been for one long moment, surrounded by shadows, then seemed to take a steadying breath. When she turned to face the crowd and her men, she was marshal of Westrende once more. “Take them into custody for questioning. All of them.”

She gave a hard look to Lady Brigham. “She can wait in the cells.”

CHAPTER14

Nickolas and Jules had been ushered by a pack of the marshal’s men into a small room adjacent to Etta’s office. They had been left alone, but guards remained posted just outside.

Nickolas sat on the long bench with a sick, defeated sort of feeling in his gut that he did not like at all, while Jules paced in front of him.

She stopped, finally coming to rest before him. When he did not look up, she slid onto the bench, her fine gown smeared with damp earth.

“You were working in the chancery to learn the laws of the kingdom, so that you might find a way to break the betrothal. It had to be here, because you had to understandourlaws. You never came for asylum. You came to fight.” His words were not a question. He did not know how much she might be able to say since her terms had been revealed by the prince. Because the curse, according to Ian, had not been set by Westrende fae. It didn’t matter. Nickolas needed to say it.

Jules’s reply was so quiet he felt as if he needed to silence his heartbeat to hear. “I had always heard that fae magic did something to a person. That even their speaking could pluck a string so deep inside you that you could feel it vibrate through your bones. That it might eat you up with wanting.”

His heartbeat did freeze. He looked at her. She was so close, face bare and hair starting to escape its updo.

She wet her lips. “It did not feel that way to me.”

“You were to marryone of your station,” he said. “A prince.”

Jules did not reply. Nickolas shifted to face her, taking her hand in his, their knees touching. She was not for him. “And what of your crime?”

“Murders that I did not commit. They found me standing in—” She swallowed against words she could not seem to speak. “It was the middle of the night. I was in a room that was not my own. Around me, signs of a struggle, blood, scattered feathers.”

“Feathers. No bodies?”

She shook her head. “I was accused of bargaining with the fae against the victims, to steal their… so that I might take their… in order to win a privilege which could not be mine unless they were gone.”

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