Page 58 of Promise of Darkness
“Don’t tell my mother,” I say, flashing him a weak smile.
“I promise.”
And I realize that in the last few days he’s gone from enemy to… wary ally in my mind. He was right. I’m no longer afraid of him, despite the threat of the Darkness that lurks inside him.
He saved my life. I saved his.
There’s an uncertain feeling inside me.
I may be a princess in my mother’s court, but I’ve always been expected to hold my own. The guards are there for our protection, but if someone attacked me and I failed to defeat them, then my mother would have shed few tears for my loss. Weakness, she would have called it. I’d have been better off dead.
But the prince didn’t hesitate to push me out of the way of that trap, though he had to know he’d not make it himself.
“Now,” I say, clearing my throat and trying to shrug away the feeling, because I can sense weakness within me when I feel it. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“We’re not,” he says, slumping back onto the bed, his arms spread. “We’re going to wait. I’m in no condition to walk, let alone fight. Eris will find us.”
“I can hardly wait.”
The faintest of smiles touches his lips, but then it’s gone as he surrenders to sleep.
15
“Tell me about your wife,” I whisper as he reclines in the bed the next day, dark shadows beneath his eyes.
Instantly, he tenses. “Why?”
“You started a war for her,” I tell him. “She had to mean a great deal to you.”
And yet he kissesme. Every time he looks at me, I can see the heat in his eyes. The want.
It’s confusing.
“I loved her. I still do. And I always will.” He captures my hand. “I would burn the world to ashes to have another moment with her. To see her look at me one more time with eyes full of love. But that doesn’t mean I will have that moment.”
And with a glimpse of the power he’d wielded at Mistmere, he could no doubt do it. “What sort of woman would want to see the world burn?”
His voice grows hard. “That’s the only reason I haven’t. She wouldn’t have wanted to see people suffer. Even if they deserve it.”
I tug my hand away. It’s a little too disconcerting to see the pain in his eyes. This is love, something I’ve only seen from afar. I don’t want to picture the Prince of Evernight softening for a woman. I don’t want to imagine my enemy suffering, but I can’t help asking, “How did you lose her?”
There’s the coldness again. The mask. “Your mother took her from me.”
Suddenly, the enmity between the pair of them is starting to make more sense. This bitter war is a tangled affair, covered in thorns vicious enough to draw blood. It’s been building for decades, and at this stage I doubt there’s anything that can stop either of them from striking again.
I’d hoped there would be a solution to the war, perhaps a means to make amends, but it’s quite clear there’s only one way to end it.
One of them has to die.
Silence lingers, broken only by the sound of my fingers on the linen.
“What’s wrong, Princess?”
“I don’t think your wife would have approved of me. Of this.”
“This?” His eyes are suddenly as piercing as a hawk.
“You know what I’m talking about.” My fingers fumble the bandage as I weave it around his waist, trying to ignore the hard slabs of muscle that brush against my fingers. Heat lingers beneath his skin like a banked furnace. A part of me wants to drown myself in that heat. See if it will ignite just as I think it will. “Trading kisses for a day’s peace.”
