Page 56 of The Royal Curse

Most of the time I didn’t particularly care if this Tavius meant to kill me. But when I thought of Mama, of Philippa and Amara and Franco, I cared. My gut twisted into a knot and I couldn’t breathe, because their grief…if my death caused them a tenth of the horror and despair that overwhelmed me when I imagined Andreas lying cold and gray on the road, flies buzzing on his eyes and mouth…at those moments, I knew I had to fight to live and to spare them that. And I would fight, probably. When the time came, I’d give it my best.

But bound and helpless and frozen and weak and hungry, there wasn’t much I could do. And while my life might be important to my family, which Calatrian asshole had decided to try to end it really wasn’t particularly relevant.

A violent gust of wind shrieked through the cave, bringing with it a snatch of the argument: “…to scout the path ahead,” Dario was saying. “They have two hours, no more, and then we move regardless. You’re not in command here.”

I opened my eyes a slit and watched as Dario stomped away from his officer back toward the fire. The curled-lip glare the officer leveled at Dario’s back suggested that he might not be in command for much longer if he turned his back on the fellow somewhere a bit more private.

Good. Let them kill each other. Bastards.

I tried again to touch my magic. It glimmered faintly and winked at me, shadowed and distant and unreachable.

The officer called out to some of his men, and they rose slowly from beside the fire and joined him at the cave mouth, near the horses. I couldn’t hear what they said, but their sour expressions and unenergetic preparations to mount up and ride out told me enough.

Scout the path ahead. So those three had been chosen for that unenviable task. Maybe they’d all be caught in an avalanche and die screaming. The thought almost made me smile.

They led their horses out of the cave a few moments later and disappeared into the storm, leaving Dario, his officer, and the two other men sitting by the fire in tense silence.

I shifted on the rough ground, trying to dislodge a pointy rock that’d embedded itself in my hip. Gods, my legs hurt. Shooting pains in both calves, and intermittent stabbing sensations in my knees and my feet. They’d hobbled me with a rope between my ankles, the loops loose enough that it shouldn’t be causing me any discomfort other than the knowledge that I’d been treated like livestock. Squirming only bought me a scrape on my lower back from that same damned rock and another twist of the knife in my left knee.

Fuck’s sake, I shouldn’t be that stiff, in that much pain, with sweat beading my forehead and my body growing hotter just from—I stared out at the snow, horrified into stillness.

The pain and the perspiration and the irregular rhythm of my heart weren’t the result of being treated roughly by Dario’s men, or of hunger, or of my damp clothes.

My magic had started to turn on me again. How had I not even thought of that? I curled in on myself again, forcing my breath to even out, holding it in and letting it out slowly. Fucking hell. When had I…it’d been late in the evening when I took the potion. Possibly around eleven. And then it’d been a night and a day and another night. The weather made it impossible for me to estimate how long the sun had been up, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty-four hours since I’d taken the dose.

Of course, I’d known it would be unpredictable. A different formulation. A different strength. And I hadn’t been particularly precise when I took it, either, too angry and upset and reckless.

If I had my watch I could—

Oh, gods. No.

My watch.

Which I’d packed away in the same saddlebag that held the potion, which had been on Fluffy.

Who’d been left behind.

I didn’t have my potion.

My helpless little moan echoed in the quiet cave, in harmony with the lower-voiced groan of the wind.

“The fuck is it now?” Dario said harshly. “Shut up. Prince Nikola. None of us want to listen to your fucking whining.”

My teeth nearly pierced my lip, but I kept in the next sound that was rising up from my twisting gut. Gods. Did I tell him or not? I lay there, panting as silently as I could, starting to twitch in every limb. It was coming on fast. If I didn’t tell him I might die from the curse, or he might beat me when I couldn’t control my screams anymore.

That might kill me faster.

Now that it’d come down to it, I found that I didn’t want to die. Not like that, anyway. Not in agonizing, humiliating misery writhing on the floor of a cave, filthy and disgusting and pathetic.

I didn’t want to die at all. Even without Andreas, I wanted to live.

Apparently the human body and the human soul shied away from the void even when there was nothing to live for.

Horrid laughter wrenched out of my chest, shaking me, mingled with the cries I couldn’t suppress anymore. Pebbles skittered out from under my kicking feet, grit in my hands and my cheek where I’d rolled away from the wall and fallen to the ground.

If I told him, what would he do? Cut my throat to save himself the inconvenience of watching my magic rip me apart from the inside?

Except that he’d said he needed me alive.

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