Page 33 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
Neither the Fiend Prince nor I spoke until the servants stopped bustling around us and finally heeded his hints for them to leave.
“They’re worried,” I told him, when the bedroom door had closed. “They could be punished for letting us slip away, couldn’t they?”
“It’s possible. The guards would be more likely to get in trouble.” The Prince leaned back, taking a large bite from a bun. A bit of the icing smeared on his lower lip, and when his tongue swept out to clean it, I watched, transfixed, remember how that tongue felt in my mouth.
He chewed slowly, watching me.
“The guards who caught us in the passage—will they tell the Dreadlord?” I asked.
“They might. And he won’t be so quick to believe that we were simply carried away with passion.” The Prince took another bite.
“Which means he may decide to check up on us,” I said. “Onme.”
“I won’t let him hurt you again.” The Prince leaned forward, his dark eyes burning. He looked so intense and earnest, yet so pathetically thin and fragile. I could hardly bear it, and I repeated the words back to him internally, a silent vow.
I won’t let him hurt you again.
“We were interrupted before,” I said. “I’d like to pick up where we left off.”
A sensuous awareness brightened his eyes. “Would you now? I might be tempted to go along with that.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean—” I flustered. “You were going to explain to me why your father dug up a prehistoric beast and sacrificed his own people to bring it to life.”
“Oh, that.” He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat.
“Unless you’ve decided not to tell me after all,” I said. “You don’t trust me completely, and I understand. It’s difficult to trust anyone when your own blood has betrayed you.” I thought of my father’s betrayal, when he gave me up to Terelaus. Objectively I understood that my life wasn’t worth the lives of thousands of people—yet I still wished my father had made a different choice, or found some other way. My father had been far kinder to me that the Dreadlord had been to his son, but still, I could understand a little of the Prince’s caution and apprehension.
“You threatened to kill me again, very recently,” the Fiend Prince pointed out. “That isn’t traditionally conducive to trust-building.”
“I only threatened you because you wouldn’t tell me the things I want to know, things that could help us both escape all this,” I said in a low, sharp tone. “I didn’t actually kill you, did I? So there. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I consider you an ally.”
“An ally?” He regarded me with a dark, analytical expression.
“A—a friend.”
“A friend?” His voice dropped lower still.
“Yes, a friend,” I murmured, my face warming again. “What more do you want to be?”
“No more than I already am.” He crossed his long thin legs and cocked his head aside. “I will tell you about the monster and its purpose. But you must promise to answer three questions honestly when I am done. Any three questions I choose, and you reply with perfect honesty. Agreed?”
“How do you know I won’t lie to you?”
“Because you, Amarylla, are an honorable soul. Yet another quality a king might prize in his queen.”
I buttoned up my lips and pondered the ways in which he might twist this bargain to his advantage. “I won’t share state secrets about Brintzia.”
“Your people surrendered already. Neither my father nor I have any need of Brintzia’s secrets. We own them all.”
My eyes flashed up to meet his. “And do you own me?”
“No.”
“Good answer.” I pulled my legs up into the chair and crossed them, setting my elbows on my knees. “Very well, Galanrae—we have a deal.”
He winced at the use of his real name.
“You really do hate it, don’t you, Galanrae?” I let my voice slither over the syllables.
