Page 17 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
Guilt seeped into my soul along with a rush of gratitude—because even though I loved this space, and I was awed by the obvious care and thought of the one who planned it, I recognized that my wishes had taken valuable time and resources away from the people of Terelaus.
What were they like, the actual people? Not the dull noble drones I witnessed at the royal dinner, or the guards who tramped the halls of the Cursed Palace—but thepeople, the ones forced to fight and die for the Dreadlord, the ones working themselves to the bone to keep the country running while their loved ones were at war. What werethosepeople like?
Did they have an advocate? It didn’t seem so. The Fiend Prince seemed to weave between desperation and a sort of feigned indifference. He kept up with his duties, but barely, and he seemed to lack the energy to push for any real change.
More than that, he seemed frightened of his father. Who wouldn’t be, with a father called “the Dreadlord,” one who waged incessant war and viewed his own son as either a prizefighter or royal breeding stock?
I mulled over those questions while I beat against the training dummies, and dashed across the beams, and leaped and somersaulted along the mats. After a while I grew tired of training alone and pulled one of the guards into the room with me. He seemed uncertain about battling the Crown Princess, but I spurred him on, encouraging him and battering him by turns until he began to fight in earnest. Once I had beaten him soundly, I took on the other guard.
How it happened, I wasn’t sure, but a third guard replaced the second, and before long an entire group of the Cursed Palace guard had assembled along the fringes of the room. I was in my element, slicked with sweat, my braid whipping with every feint and parry, my feet solidly planted, and the good staff in my hands trouncing every guard who came up against me. Meanwhile the guards cheered me and their companions by turns, calling out bets and making jokes.
I was on my seventh guard, a stout woman with arms the size of my thighs, when the jovial shouts and barbed teasing of the guards faded to silence. With a clank and a rumble, they all sank to one knee, and the masked figure of the Dreadlord himself entered the room.
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The woman I was fighting stumbled back and knelt clumsily, collecting her helmet and jamming it back onto her head.
I wiped my forehead with my wrist and stayed erect, facing the Dreadlord for a few seconds longer than the rest before I finally knelt. A small defiance, all I dared risk at the moment.
The Dreadlord paced in a half circle around me. Because of the mask and hood he wore, I couldn’t tell if he was actually looking at me.
“Crown Princess,” he said in his sonorous voice. “You have a warrior’s skill.”
“Yes, Dreadlord,” I answered.
“Tell me, have you taken any blows to the stomach?”
I frowned, confused. “No, Dreadlord.”
“Good. I would hate for the womb that will carry my son’s heir to be damaged.” His hand closed on the staff I held, and he jerked it away. “From this day forth, no one is to spar with the Crown Princess,” he said. “She is not here to fight.”
My fingers and lips trembled, but I gritted my teeth and pushed words between them. “WhyamI here, Your Majesty?”
“What?”
“Surely you have otherwombsequally worthy of carrying your son’s heir—more worthy, in fact. Women of your own people who would count it a privilege. Why me?”
“You question my reasons?”
“Yes, Dreadlord. I do.”
He wrapped a metal-gloved hand under my chin, clutching my jaw so tightly I nearly whimpered with pain. “You are here because I want your kingdom to bear unflinching loyalty to my throne. Because I want your father to know that his grandchildren live in the Cursed Palace under my dominance, and at my mercy. Because I want all nations to fear me, to know that I will take their sons and daughters whenever I please. Because, my dear, I have the power. I own your body, and the bodies of everyone else in my empire. You may have softened my son’s mind with your wiles, you may have tricked him into some puppyish affection, but you will never outwit me. You will fear me, and submit to my will, as they all do.”
The Dreadlord stepped back. “Take the Crown Princess to the whipping room. Use the Squid, ten lashes.”
No one moved for a moment, until he said, in a deathly tone, “Now. And sop up some of her blood with a cloth, so I can send it to her father. He should know what happens to insolent princesses within my walls.”
Two guards approached me tentatively, clearly expecting resistance—but I was weary from fighting, weak with the shock of the Dreadlord’s pronouncement. I did not struggle. I was afraid any further defiance might worsen the punishment.
But I couldn’t help murmuring, “I thought you were worried about my health.”
The Dreadlord paused on his way out of the room. “We only need certain parts of you, my dear,” he said. “You would do well to remember that.”
When he was gone, the guards drew me along the corridors of the palace and down three flights of steps, to a long room whose stone floor bore patches of dark brown—the stains of old blood. A heavy-set woman was working over a screaming man, drawing out his fingernails one by one with a pair of beak-nosed tongs.
The guard on my left cleared her throat and spoke. “We bring you the Crown Princess, Haneia. By the order of the Dreadlord. Ten lashes with the Squid.”
The big woman stumped over and leaned close to me. She was chewing a wad of something herbal and strong-smelling, and her teeth were spotted brown from the juice of it. “The Crown Princess, eh? I expected to see you here sooner, love. Thought I’d be having to chastise you for resisting the joys of the marital bed.” She snorted a laugh. “But it seems you like your marital bed well enough, eh? Got a good one, has he? Knows how to get you juiced up and slip it in easy?”
