Page 30 of Pawn of the Cruel Princess
I drop back to Ruelle’s carriage and run beside it until I tire. Then I pull open the door, hop up the step, and jump inside.
The Princess recoils, wrinkling her nose. “You smell like sweat.”
“Forgive me, my lady.” I’m about to take my seat again when the carriage jolts, sending me into Her Highness’s lap.
She beats at me with her small fists. “Get off, you big sweaty brute!”
“Of course.” I’m about to move, but—her face is so kissably close. I catch one of her flailing fists in my hand, and I look into her eyes. Green eyes, flooding mine with a toxic dose of her soul. Toxic, and addictive.
“Move,” she growls.
I pull back, retreating to my seat opposite her, beside the maid. Ruelle turns quickly to stare out the window.
She doesn’t look at me again until we’re approaching the inn where we are to stay for the night. It’s a fine establishment, very exclusive, or so the maid tells me. She prattles on about the year the inn was first established, how many royals and nobles have stayed here through the decades, how many deaths have occurred in the place, which rooms are haunted by spirits.
“Spirits?” Ruelle frowns, and her fingers drift to her waist, where I suspect at least two tiny knives are concealed in her corset.
“Why, Princess,” I say. “You worship the god of death himself. You aren’t afraid of ghosts, are you?”
“Of course not,” she says haughtily.
“Because why would you be?” I lower my voice to a mysterious tone. “Ghosts are merely the spirits of dead murderers, people so foul that Arawn himself turned them away from the Pit and forbade them entrance to the Otherworld. They only prowl in search of the darkest human souls, seeking to corrupt them further and lead them into an existence of eternal pain and wandering.”
The maid chuckles nervously. “There now—what would a Yurstin captain know of the subject?”
“Ah, dear Meldare.” I shake my head, keeping my face solemn. “Too much. I know far too much on the subject. You see—I’ve encountered ghosts before.”
“You have?” The Princess’s eyes widen, and she casts a swift glance out the window, into the darkening forest.
“I have. When I was twelve, I attended a private school deep in the northern wilds of Yurstin, near the Black Hills. Those hills were once home to a hundred priests of Arawn, who were so devoted they would conduct the most dire and dreadful sacrifices in his honor.Humansacrifices.”
“Meldare,” says the Princess hoarsely. “Come and sit on this side of the carriage.”
The maid obeys, and the two of them sit shoulder to shoulder, staring at me in fascinated horror. The inside of the carriage is dimly lit by the stray beams of a lantern hanging outside. In its somber glow, our faces are strangely shadowed.
I have not been so delighted since I arrived in Thannira. But I restrain my smile, and I speak as dolefully as I can.
“As I lay in the dormitories of the school one night, I began to hear things. Distant wails and screams from far, far away among the hills and barrows. The forests there are dark and dreadful—much like these.” I gesture to the black trees rolling past. “You could wander for days and never find your way out from beneath those matted branches. All the souls of those priests and their victims are trapped in that tangle of boughs, for Arawn is a just god, and would not accept the priests nor their bloody sacrifices. But now and then, one of the priests’ souls wiggles free of the wood and floats up into the night sky.”
I lift my hand, letting my fingers ripple through the air. “And the soul wanders, moaning, until it senses someone on the brink of death—or someone cruel and wicked, someoneworthyof pain. Then, with a shriek, it dives—”
“Princess!” barks a voice at the carriage window, and both Ruelle and the maid scream at the top of their lungs.
Chaos erupts as bodyguards gallop to our aid, carriages grind to a halt, and frantic questions fly. I sit back, stifling my inner merriment, until the guards have been reassured that the Princess is in no real danger, and we may carry on. Apparently the guard who came to the window merely wanted to mention that a bridge ahead is out, and we will have to go downstream to the ford rather than crossing in the usual place.
As the carriage begins to move again, I shake my head, clucking my tongue. “This is how it always begins.”
“What do you mean?” asks the Princess.
“These incidents of horror and haunting. They always begin with some hapless travelers being forced to change their route late at night.”
“But we have guards,” says Ruelle. “And I have knives. We are protected.”
“Sweet Highness,” I say, in my most pitying tone. “Don’t you know that knives are no good against ghosts?”
She has a blade drawn and she’s across the carriage before I can blink. She stands between my knees, bending because of the carriage’s low roof, pressing the knife to my neck. Delight pulses through my heart, and I smile up at her.
“You are toying with me, thrall,” she hisses. Her eyes blaze, and the tip of her pert nose nearly touches mine. I’m inhaling her hot, panicked breath. My gaze drops to her lips, and arousal traces through my blood, stiffening my cock.
