They held me in front of Prince Chasan, arms stretched wide at my sides like some sacrifice. And that’s how I felt. Exposed and open for whatever awful thing he wanted to do.
Fingers slid down the skin of my throat, warm to the touch, but that didn’t stop my shudder. I yanked my head to the side, trying to escape the brush of the prince’s fingers. The hard hands holding me only tightened their grip, bruising me through my garments. The pads of his fingers were surprisingly callused, rasping my dirty skin as they roamed, stopping to rest at my hammering pulse. An egg-sized lump lodged itself in my throat.
Shivering, I tried to wiggle away from the contact, but I was pinned to the spot, held up for inspection—for anything and everything the prince wanted to do to me. It was a hard bite of reality. I could do nothing save wait for him to make his next move. My utter sense of helplessness was perhaps the worst thing I had endured so far.
His liquid voice was close, sliding on the air and sinking through me like falling rocks. “It’s hard to tell beneath all the mud and filth, but I would hazard to say she’s a fetching thing.”
I forced my chin up, not cowering, swallowing back a whimper as his fingers dipped lower, stopping at the center of my throat, in that tiny hollow between my collarbones. “The softest skin,” he mused. “How could you think her a boy, Breslen?”
There was a violent surge of movement to my left. “Take your hands off—” Fowler’s voice stopped abruptly, almost saying it. Almost confirming I was the girl.
My heart hiccuped painfully as I turned my face in Fowler’s direction. I felt his gaze and tried to communicate with him, tried to convey that maybe we should just confess the truth and be done with it. Anything to get Chasan’s hands and attention off me.
“Her?” Prince Chasan finished for him, sounding so smug and satisfied that I wanted to claw his face. “You’d like me to get my hands off her?”
Fowler didn’t answer. He sucked in an angry breath, but said nothing.
“Fowler,” I croaked.
“Still won’t admit it, then?” The prince tsked and paused, giving me and Fowler time to volunteer the truth that was fast becoming unavoidable.
I waited, dread pooling in my stomach, my voice lost deep inside me as I listened to the rasp of Fowler’s breath, wondering at his next move. Prince Chasan sighed as though greatly aggrieved. “Very well.”
His fingers curled into the throat of my shirt and yanked down hard. The sound of fabric ripping was violent and obscene on the loam-soaked air.
Crying out, I surged and writhed, unable to break free. I just hung there between the soldiers, my tunic ripped down the center, my torso bare except for the binding covering my chest. My naked stomach quivered as cool air washed over me.
For a moment, there was only silence in the hum of darkness.
Everyone’s attention focused solely on me. Their gazes felt like hot coals raking over me, blistering my flesh. Bile surged in the back of my throat.
The air shifted, crackling with a dangerous energy that hadn’t been there before. My nostrils flared, smelling it, the foul intent of their thoughts coiling around me.
Fowler broke the stillness, lunging forward. He swung an arm, smashing his fist into one soldier’s face with a crack of knuckles on bone. He’d been violent before, when desperate, but not like this. Before he was always controlled and precise, but this was wild and savage and brutal. Fowler launched at the other soldier holding me, and he went down like a heavy slab of stone, unmoving. I was suddenly free. “Run!” he shouted.
I lunged only one step before the prince caught me up in his arms. I struggled against the lock of his embrace, assailed with his scent—mint and leather and wind and that hot pulse of adrenaline that coated the back of my throat. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he breathed near my ear.
There was a flurry of movement. Boots shuffled over gasps and cries. Bones crunched. Fowler grunted and I knew they were striking him.
“Stop! Let him go. He’s sick and your men are hurting him!” I struggled, the flaps of my torn tunic flapping open, but I didn’t care in that moment. I could have been stark naked and I would only care about Fowler—helping him, reaching him. Saving him.
“Now that all depends. Are we going to be honest with each other from now on? Are we going to admit who we are? These are dangerous times, and I can’t surround myself with deceivers. I can’t bring anyone into the palace who isn’t who they claim to be.” His hand drifted back over me, his fingers brushing my bare belly and making my skin revolt with goose bumps.
“Rot in hell,” Fowler snarled.