Page 24 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
“Need it?” I whispered. “Need what?”
“Pleasure, connection. Human touch that doesn’t hurt, that has no agenda—you don’t have an agenda right now, do you, Princess?” He kept fondling me, sliding one palm down my stomach, and I thought I might melt or explode from the colliding sensations of pain and pleasure. “This isn’t some plan to elicit secrets from me?”
“No, no,” I panted, while his fingers trailed along my hipbone. The space between my legs was hot, so hot—quivering, throbbing, wanting—
Touch me—
Panic blared through my body, panic at being so vulnerable here, in the Fiend Prince’s bedroom, in the Cursed Palace of Terelaus. “You’re—you’re not looking, are you?” I gasped, and without thinking, I lifted my hand to where his eyes should be, to check if they were closed.
My fingers touched something gooey—a sucking gelatinous surface where there should be skin, a nose, a forehead—
The Fiend Prince cried out in pain, and I screamed too, staggering backward and shrieking again as my back twisted with the movement.
My eyes flew open.
21
The Fiend Prince’s handsome face was gone. In its place was a slick mess of exposed viscera and raw flesh. And where his forehead should have been gaped a black, gelatinous wound, with ragged edges of broken bone as if something had blasted through his skull. In the center of the wound I could see wriggling pink brain tissue, moist and pulsing. His eyes bulged in hollow sockets, concealed by rotting lids, and his once-beautiful lips were ragged and bleeding. His whole face, the wounds and the remnants of his skin—all of it was spiderwebbed with glowing red lines, thin as strands of hair.
I screamed, short and sharp, and I gripped the washstand, dragging a towel from a shelf to cover my front.
The Prince’s rotting lids rolled up, showing his dark eyes. “I knew it,” he snapped. “This was a stupid idea.”
He spun away and strode into the bedroom, shielding his wrecked face from me. “It grows back, you know.” He kept talking, his harsh tones reaching me as I stood paralyzed in the bathroom, struggling to make sense of everything. “My face will be back to normal tomorrow morning. My body, however, will lose its strength and beauty within the hour. I’ll be my weak, unappealing self again—probably even more feeble and scrawny this time. Too bad for you, Princess. You can have either the beautiful body or the lovely lips, but not both.” His laugh was drenched in hideous bitterness.
I staggered back into the bedroom, fighting my pain and my horror, gripping furniture with one hand for support while I held the towel in front of me with the other.
The Fiend Prince’s mask was back in place, a cold sneer that matched his tone this time. “So now you know the nightmare you’ve married. I’m either a brawny golem with a magic-rotted head, or I’m a desiccated skeleton with a pretty face. If you’d met me a year ago, I would have had both the physique and the magic to charm you. But now—well. It’s useless, because you appreciate a good body, and I can’t fault you for that.”
“I’m not as shallow as you think,” I managed.
“Of course you’re not,” he said dryly. “You didn’t touch my body until it looked like this. That tells me all I need to know.”
Pain seared my back, even as guilt seared my soul. The haze of the wine and the exhaustion was growing worse, and I wavered, clinging to a chair, on the edge of collapsing.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please help me.”
As I pitched forward he caught me in his arms.
He settled me face-down on the bed again, and drew the sheet up to my waist. As I sank into unconsciousness, I heard his broken whisper. “Why did you have to touch me?”
>>>
I woke to a strange prickling sensation across my back, and the feeling of weight pressing me down. My fighting instincts kicked in, and I bucked, snarling at whoever was on me.
“You were right, Your Highness—she’s a fighter,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Good idea to have the guard hold her down. Peace, Princess—I am trying to heal you.”
I stilled at once, submitting to what I now realized was a guard’s hands on my shoulders, and the prickling of magic across my torn flesh. I turned my head to see the other side of the bed, where the Fiend Prince reclined against pillows. He had shrunk back to his lean, underfed aspect—bony protruding collarbones, sharp jaw, pretty mouth, and dark eyes that looked sad, so sad. He wore a loose white shirt with a ruffled collar, its drawstring neck unlaced, exposing the bones of his chest.
Looking at him, knowing what I knew, I felt a pang of impending loss. He was dying. His father was killing him slowly. And when he died, what would become of me? Nothing good, I’d wager, especially if there was no baby in my belly to ensure the Dreadlord’s favor.
Beyond that, I would miss him, this ruined Prince. My existence had become inextricably wound with his, and I—I liked him. I liked his laugh, and his mind, and his tenderness. I didn’t like his subservience to his father, or his resignation to this cycle that brought him closer and closer to inevitable death. I didn’t like his lack of ambition or drive for his people and his nation’s future. But those things could change, with time and with help.
Maybe my father could help us, if I could only get word to him. Maybe other nations who feared Terelaus and its Dreadlord could band together and defeat him if they knew what truly lay inside the Terelonian borders. The Terelonian shell, as the Prince had said, was a thin one, and the right application of pressure could crack it, eliminate the Dreadlord’s dominance, and free us all.
The key would be killing the Dreadlord, or uncovering the secret magical substance his soldiers used. Or both.
And this Prince could help me with that, if I could persuade him.
