Page 54 of Prince of Night and Storm
I nod.
Renaud stares a beat, one dark brow winging up. “. . .good.” He takes a step back. “You will come to the negotiation table.”
He says it in the dubious, forceful tone of a male who feels like he must repeat himself to be understood and obeyed. Or maybe all the nodding did it. Does he think I need another multi hour beat down to cooperate? Another demonstration of his destructive capabilities?
I'm not that stubborn.
But all that nonverbal skepticism raises a point. I'm tired. The negotiation table is the last place I want to be. That's Baba's job. “I don't need to be there. I am not the diplomat of Everenne.”
“You cannot enforce your will when you send others to execute it. That is the second lesson of rule. Some matters require a—” his gaze roves me “—personal touch.”
The Prince turns and walks back to his palace.
Numair jogs toward me. “What happened?”
“I think—I think we negotiated a ceasefire.”
Nausea roils in my stomach, and I collapse.
1 It occurs to Emma this is one of those things that the Mortal Reader may miss—he can’t lie, after all. But shades of meaning isn’t lying. He's not actually threatening her right now. He's triggered, and he's warning her to stay down because he knows he’s in a dangerous state. Aerinne, of course, doesn't hear it like that, and who can blame her.
2 This is Arddie’s redeeming trait. He's a complete asshole, but he's fiercely loyal. He would never disobey Aerinne in public in front of enemies. Their squabbling is strictly behind the scenes and a family matter.
Chapter
Seventeen
THE COURTS CLOSING IN
The Prince's odd not-quite-healing power—is it a Skill?—enables us to once more save those who might have died from blood loss.
As packed with wool as my brain feels, I keep rubbing my chest to make sure my heart’s still pumping in my chest. I've experienced blood loss before, even critical blood loss, but never this lethargic wooziness, this walking-through-mud in a waking dream difficulty in thinking.
So I stop trying to think and help gather our fallen when we realize that though the Prince cut through the battle, he struck to disable, not kill.
I don't know what it means, or if it changes how I think of him, even a little. It seems my doubts deepen daily.
“We’re all too young,” Juliette says, circles under her eyes. “We need Danon back. I’m sorry, Rinne,” she adds, though I didn’t flinch. The words don’t hit the way they normally would. I feel. . .nothing.
Except vague worry that I feel nothing. It’s certainnothingis not what I should be feeling right now.
A cloaked male arrives, demands access to me, and heals my injuries before leaving—though I hadn’t flinched at those, either.
“My orders are to heal Aerinne Kuthliele, no one else,” the healer said, curt but not hostile when I asked.
I’m uncertain whether this is a petty slight by the Prince, but mostly I'm concerned at the level of interest required to send his personal healer. But. . .I’m his former sister’s daughter. I don't know yet how much that's worth.
Being his chosen sister hadn't saved her.
Outside, the pre-battle rain scented sky has morphed into roiling storm clouds, and the whip of an electric breeze.
I step onto my balcony and look up, lungs expanding to draw in air as I still, instincts rising to challenge whatever it is I sense in the storm. With each breath my mind clears a little—but not as much as I need.
My jaw aches where he hit me twice, every part of my body bruised from the methodical beating he’d doled out. I’m on my back, looking up at the sky awash in flames as the Prince looms over me, no longer afraid because what is the point once the monster has you in its jaws. Close my eyes, let the pain ripple through, embrace the peace of deep darkness.
But he’d dragged me screaming back into fractured light. He wouldn’t let me surrender.
My breathing quickens as I retreat from his image, closing my eyes to let the damp night breeze replace heat with coolness.
