She was scared she’d ruined the moment, but he laughed, too. “Needless to say,” he whispered in her ear, “I read the same book.”
His fingers were tangled up in the slick coils of her hair as he pulled her closer, his greedy lips exploring hers. She wrapped her legs around him, his body lean and taut, stronger than she expected. The cloth between them was dissolving in the river. Everything was dissolving. She felt like sugar sprinkled in the sea.
Quin’s kisses were molten, incinerating her thoughts, her reason. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought the prince didn’t have a red beating heart. She felt it now, crashing against her ribs.
Her body vibrated in a long, low hum. She lost track of time, seconds entwining into minutes, minutes to hours. There were no theorems to explain this. Why would she want to? What Quin was doing to her defied logic.
Mia ran her fingers over his wet skin, memorizing the map of his body. She was exploring the outer limits of his pleasure and her own, the boundary waters of desire. No science could describe the warmth extending outward from her center, sizzling spokes of fire and friction, like a sun-kissed star.
When they finally drew their bodies apart, they climbed out of the river and collapsed onto its banks, spent. Mia shivered warm, if such a thing were possible. All things seemed possible at the moment. She was wrapped in a dreamy, otherworldly haze.
Somewhere in the haze, she heard a distant whisper: The people you love are the ones who hurt you most. She shoved it away. She didn’t want to hear it. Not now, not when the sorrows of the last week had finally given way to bliss.
“Lovely,” Quin said, kissing her wrist. “Lovely.” He kissed her collarbone. “Lovely.” He got sidetracked by her lips.
She let out a low moan of pleasure, and the river moaned back.
Then a woman screamed.
Chapter 53
Moonlight
THEY HEARD THE SCREAM again, pierced with fear.
Mia and Quin scrambled up from the riverbank and ran toward the sound.
There was no time to discuss a plan of action. They were flying through the forest, tripping over rocks and tree stumps. Seconds later they stumbled into a clearing where a stunning white mare was tethered to a tree. The horse nickered and stamped her hooves, clearly agitated.
A girl was pinned to the ground by two men. One had her by the thighs, the other by the wrists. Her hair stuck up in wild tufts, and her shirt was torn and gaping, one breast exposed.
“Karri!” Quin shouted.
Karri looked up at him, her eyes white with terror. She was fighting with all her might, writhing and kicking, but even the magnificent princess was no match for two men.
As Mia stared at the men, vitriol scalded her throat. Cousin Tristan and his lone surviving guardsman stared back.
The duke’s hand hung limply at his side, his fingers shattered from where he had grabbed her ankle. He and his ginger-haired guard had been trekking back to Kaer Killian for days, thirsty, starving, their pale faces rough and unshaven and their bodies gaunt. They hadn’t yet made it back to Mia’s sister.
They had chanced upon Quin’s sister instead.
The men should have been weakened by four days of snow and hunger, but lust had replenished their strength. They gulped down their power until they were glutted, drunk. They knew they could take what they wanted—and what Tristan wanted was his own cousin. For all she knew, the king had sanctioned it.
Mia felt sick. Not even Karri, Daughter of Clan Killian, Rightful Heir to the River Throne, was safe.
With a roar, the prince hurled himself at Tristan, hooking an arm around his cousin’s throat. They fell to the ground, the duke yelling and clawing at Quin wildly.
Instead of retreat, the wiry guardsman thrust his whole weight onto Karri. He ran his dirty hand up the inside of her thigh.
“Fine with me, Princess,” he growled. “I like ’em better when they fight.”
Karri froze, and Mia felt fear, cold and deadly sharp. A lesson Zaga taught her in the boat ignited in her fingers; she knew exactly what to do. She wrapped her arms around the man from behind, digging the heels of her hands into his groin.
Her blood screeched through her hands. She felt the heat drain out of the man’s groin as she channeled it down, down, down. She was unblooding him. Where his body had been rigid moments before, she could feel it deflating. She ground her palms in deeper, siphoning the blood to his feet where it couldn’t hurt anyone. He let out a yelp and let go of Karri, grabbing at his toes, now engorged with excess blood.
The princess’s face was wet with moonlight. Mia had never seen her cry.
“Mia,” she whispered. “Thank the gods.”
The rapist clambered out of the clearing, bellowing for his lord to follow. Tristan seized the moment of confusion, using his good hand to land a punch on Quin’s shoulder that sent the prince spinning into the dirt. The duke and his guardsman crashed into the woods and vanished behind a copse of maples.
Karri was shaking. “I never thought . . . I didn’t think he’d . . .”
The shock in her face twisted, turned into something else.
Mia heard a crunch behind her as a red arrow soared past her head and lodged deep in Karri’s stomach.
She watched in horror as the princess sank to the forest floor.
Chapter 54
Weeping Blood
“NO!” QUIN YELLED.
Instantly he was kneeling by his sister’s side. She sputtered for breath, a halo of blood reaching outward, soaking her shirt, anointing Quin as he pressed his hands over the wound.
Mia couldn’t move. She didn’t have to; Pilar stepped out of the trees, the bowstring hot in her hands. She was trembling.
“My mother,” she whispered. “My mother said . . .”
Zaga stepped out of the woods, white cane in hand.
“I said to wound her, Pilar. Not to kill.”
The blood thickened in Mia’s throat as the blood rose in Karri’s. They were both choking. Karri’s mouth moved around silent words. Help. Please help me.
Zaga bent over the fallen princess. She pressed her lips into a wan line.
“Heal her,” she said to Mia.
“I don’t know how.”
“You do know how. You have done it before, with a similar fojuen arrow.”
“You should do it, Zaga. I don’t know if—”
“Every second you waste is precious. I will guide you so you do not fail.”
She sensed Pilar backing away, shrinking into the forest, and she was dimly aware of Dom on the riverbank, a large but quiet presence. Mia was still dizzy from the unblooding, but she knelt and gently moved Quin’s hands aside. He’d touched her with the same hands only minutes before, soft and warm; now they were blocks of ice, hardly human.
“Take this,” Zaga said, and dropped a red stone into Mia’s hands. Her mother’s ruby wren, she realized with a jolt. Zaga must have retrieved it from the pallet in the forest.
“Keep it close to your heart,” Zaga said, “so it will amplify your magic.”
Mia nodded and tucked it into her blouse, then pressed her palms to Karri’s stomach, her fingers stiff with fear.
“No,” Zaga said sharply. “The heart.”
She did as she was told. Every second mattered, and she couldn’t risk any mistakes.
“Tell the blood to calm itself.” Zaga’s voice was low in Mia’s ear. “You must quiet her raging heart.”
Mia remembered healing Quin, the numbness in her fingers; the sensation of being a piece of wet cloth, wrung from both ends.
“You must slow her heartbeat. Send the blood away.”
But wasn’t that unblooding? To shunt the blood away from the heart? When she’d healed Quin, she’d put her hands directly over his wound, but then his wound had also been at his heart . . .
“You are distracted. You must wipe your mind clean.”
Mia tried again. She closed her eyes and thought of quiet, steady things. The blue lake in Refúj. A pitcher of cream on a level table. A smooth white stone.
“Empty your mind of everything,” Zaga rasped, and so Mia erased those images, too. She saw nothing. Only blankness.
Something was wrong.