Page 66 of The Demon Prince

But she couldn’t stop now. So she lifted her hand, holding her palm up for silence. “They couldn’t heal the bone right away because of the burns. Apparently, every time they touched me, more skin came off. So I have a permanent limp. And I have scars. It hurts every time it rains and even worse if there’s a storm or a long day of walking. But I walk.”

Fierce now, she looked up and met Envy’s wide-eyed gaze. “I walk from here to the village. It took me two years to learn how to do that again, and I am proud of it. I stand for hours at the almshouse on my own, without sitting down. I manage the pain as best I can. I am not broken.”

He pressed a hand to his chest and opened his mouth, but she wasn’t ready to hear his apologies. He didn’t get to apologize for something like that.

So she interrupted a king. “I am not broken,” she repeated. “I was cracked and now I have been remade. Shame on you for revealing that without my permission, and for using such nasty terms.”

“I didn’t—”

“I don’t want to hear your apologies. I don’t have to forgive you.” Katherine dropped into a low curtsey before she started crying. Before the panic and anxiety of what Gluttony would think could swell and drown her. “Goodbye, gentlemen.”

And with that, Katherine left the room.

ChapterTwenty-Four

“You idiot,” Gluttony hissed.

“Me?” his brother growled in response. “You’re the one who’s had her living here this entire time and didn’t know she was injured?”

“She’s not injured!” Don’t kill your brother, Gluttony told himself. Repeating the words in his head until he got his breathing under control. “She was injured. Just like the rest of us. We’ve all been injured at some point in our lives. It doesn’t mean you get to point out her history!”

“I didn’t! I merely noticed that she has a limp, and that she is rather covered in scars. Both details that you obviously ignored!” Envy slammed his hand down on the table and it cracked right down the middle. “I understand that I was out of line. But you cannot keep someone so fragile, Gluttony. She’s already been through enough. Is this not proof that you need to let her go?”

Gluttony lunged forward. He grabbed his brother by the shirt and jerked him close. “Listen to me right now, Envy. That woman is braver and stronger than any of us. She has been through a lot. Yes, I understand that. But I will do everything in my power to ensure she is never harmed again. And right now? You’re the closest thing that might harm her. So I suggest you leave.”

“Or what?”

“Or I will find out just how powerful of a spirit I can consume.” He snapped the words through ground teeth. “You are no brother of mine. Get out.”

He tossed Envy back a few steps and then whirled to leave. He had no idea where Katherine had run off to, but there was so much for him to fix. So much that made his heart ache.

He hated she even had memories like that. Burning alive when she was so young? The pain of a twisted and broken hip that had lingered with her for the rest of her life? None of it should have been part of her memories. And wouldn’t have been, if he had been with her since the beginning.

Mad thoughts danced through his mind. He wanted to break something. He wanted to hit someone for daring to hurt her, but there was nothing for him to hit. The only person he could yell at was her, for daring to put herself in danger long before he met her. Even then, he knew the thoughts were a lingering madness. He couldn’t yell at her for taking risks in her life. He couldn’t scold her for what she didn’t know as a child.

But what he could do was be here for her. And she needed him. Because the look in her eyes when she realized she had to tell him all that? He knew what that emotion was.

Shame.

He’d seen it in his own eyes more times than he could count, and it struck him like a knife between the ribs to see it in hers. She didn’t deserve to ever feel like that.

Not in front of him. He didn’t care what she had been through or where she came from.

Katherine was his. And those memories were his because they were hers.

Setting his jaw, he followed her scent through his home and all the individual rooms she’d tried to hide in. He paused in one she’d only explored a few moments. She’d wandered into this abandoned study, seen all the sheets over every single piece of furniture, and then turned around.

Where was she?

It took him a little while to follow the trail outside, and then he found her. Limping down the boardwalk. She kept dashing the palms of her hands over her cheeks, and he hated to see that she was crying. For him. He’d never wanted her to cry for him.

“Katherine,” he called out, making his way down the wooden planks.

“Go away, Gluttony! I don’t want to talk.”

“Well, I want to talk.”

“And we do everything you want, is that it?”

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