by Gaelen Foley
My Ruthless Prince
Gaelen Foley
Epigraph
I did not die, and I was not alive;
think for yourself, if you have any wit,
what I became, deprived of life and death.
—Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXXIV, ll. 25-27
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
About the Author
By Gaelen Foley
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
The Bavarian Alps, 1816
When another bullet whizzed past her shoulder, she whirled behind the nearest towering tree.
You’re as mad as he is, coming here! she thought. But what choice had she had? She was the last friend he had left in the world, and if she didn’t help him, nobody would.
All around her, the Alpine forest rang with shots and the angry, shouted orders of the black-clad guards who had come pouring out of Waldfort Castle the moment she had been spotted. Her back to the tree trunk, chest heaving, Emily Harper waited for her next chance to run.
She had been tracking her quarry for weeks from a wary distance, but when he had arrived, disappearing into the ominous mountaintop fortress, there was nothing she had been able to do but sneak through the woods and try to glimpse him, try to figure out how to lure him away.
But then one of the sentries had noticed her, and her efforts to rescue Drake had been cut short.
Now! Lunging into motion, she darted down the deer path once again, her brown woolen cloak flowing out behind her, her bow and quiver of arrows bumping at her back with every stride.
Golden shafts of sunlight pierced the forest’s verdant gloom ahead like angels’ lances, showing her the way. Her practiced gaze scanned for each next step over the rough, angled ground. The slope was sharp—she nearly slid—but turned slightly, dropping in an agile skid, then she leaped off the thick, gnarled root of a tree that gripped a boulder like a bony hand, and raced on.
They were gaining on her.
The wild drumming of her pulse throbbed in her ears, but her footsteps fell silently over the thick bed of pine needles that softened the forest floor.
She had not stopped to count how many of the foreign mercenaries were chasing her, some on foot, some on horseback.
Some with dogs.
But if there was any doubt that the elite Promethean cabal was real, the presence of their security detail was awfully convincing.
As soon as her presence had been detected, their security forces had come pouring out from behind the walls of the remote Bavarian castle where a secret gathering of some the richest and most powerful men in Europe was under way.
If they were not up to something nefarious, then why did they need all the armed guards keeping people away?
Emily did not personally care what twisted new schemes of tyranny the highborn occult conspirators were dreaming up in their endless hunt for power. She had come for just one reason: to bring Drake home.
He did not belong here, no matter what he said, and even if these hired thugs drove her all the way back down the mountain, she vowed to herself she would merely climb it again. She refused to quit, refused to give up on him. Her beloved lunatic needed her—whether he knew it or not. Whatever it took, she was not leaving without him. He had not abandoned her in her darkest hour, and the time had come to return the favor.
Drake was in more trouble than he knew. Never mind his enemies—now even his friends wanted to kill him.
“Dort! Dort ist er!”
“Là-bas!”
Hang it. A scowl flicked over her face as another bullet flew above her head, biting into the bark of the tree ahead.
They had seen her.
With an angry glance over her shoulder, she dodged behind an ancient elm to the side of the path ahead, shrugging her bow off her shoulder. Her hands smoothly nocked an arrow, as if with a will of their own.
As she waited for her moment, her memory was filled with images of the hours-long games of hide-and-seek she and Drake used to play as children on his family’s estate.
They had run like wild savages through the forested park of Westwood Manor back at home: the earl’s rambunctious heir and the woodsman’s untamed daughter.
Such grand rivalries had driven them to compete, trying brashly to outbrave each other in their little shared adventures, their feats of derring-do, swinging from trees, using fallen logs as bridges over the fairly deep ravine where the stream ran through the earl’s sprawling acreage. Who could skip a stone better, who could throw a stick farther, like a spear. They set traps for rabbits, but then were too tenderhearted to hand their prizes over to Cook. They had let the coneys go and had whiled away many a summer afternoon catching frogs.
But then, the Seeker had come, that towering, taciturn Scot called Virgil, and Drake had been chosen for the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. His parents had agreed to this secret duty laid upon his bloodlines centuries ago by the Crusader knights in his ancestry. With their blessing, he soon had gone away to that mysterious military-style school in Scotland, bragging to her that one day, he would become the Order’s greatest warrior.
She had kicked him in the shins for his boasting at the time, then had wept her heart out when the next day came, and there had been no one to play with except for the odd collection of hurt wild animals she had nursed back to health and gradually turned into pets.
In time she got used to being alone, while Drake grew steadily toward his goal. Soon, the rowdy, black-haired boy had become a breathtakingly handsome young man, who was no longer allowed to tell her where he went each time the Order sent him out on one of those long, dangerous missions.
And then, last year, on one of the darkest days of her life, they got word from the Order that he had disappeared.
Emily pressed her back against the wide trunk of the tree, listening to her pursuers advancing.
Maybe I should let them catch me.
They would take her into the castle, closer to Drake. But she dismissed the thought in the next heartbeat.
Too risky. She was not a lady, and angry enemy males like these were known to make rough use of lowborn women.
She would gladly give her life for Drake, but no Promethean dog would ever take her honor.
As her pursuers advanced, coming closer through the trees, Emily shot her arrow well beyond them into the woods: misdirection.
Immediately, they raced off in reaction to the sound. She nocked another arrow and fired a second for good measure. The guards rushed off to track down the source of the noise. As soon as they left, she slung her bow over her shoulder again and sped off in the other direction.
Ahead, the sunlight glittered on the rushing mountain stream where she had filled her canteen earlier. She bounded from rock to rock to get across it, but when she suddenly heard more men coming, she knew the time had come to hide.
Her gaze homed in on a low miniature cave, a mere hollow between the layers of rock, likely a fox’s den. Sizing it up, she saw she was slight enough of build to fit in the narrow opening—and she was desperate enough to try it.
Quick as a cat,
she ran to the narrow bank of the crystal stream. It was only a strip of muddy earth and a few piled boulders before it angled up into the steep rock face that bracketed the noisy little waterfall on both sides.
Emily climbed. Her heart was pounding, but she was somehow keeping fear at bay. Still, dying in these woods so far from home was a greater possibility than she cared to admit, and the prospect of being caught and used for cruel sport by foreign mercenaries was not much better.
Pulling herself up to the edge of the little cave, she peered into it. No one was home, thankfully, but the rounded indentation in the dirt confirmed that it had once been some animal’s dwelling place.
Emily vaulted up the rock face and rolled into the den, concealed by darkness. She pulled her cloak around her; its brownish gray hue blended into the stone.
“He came this way, Capitaine!”
She smirked to herself in her hiding place. Of course, they would assume they were following a man, whether or not they had glimpsed her boyish garb. But it was just as well, for it meant they had not got a clear look at her face.
“Keep moving!” a strong, English voice replied.
Emily’s eyes widened and she caught her breath; she knew that deep, slightly scratchy voice like the sound of her own heartbeat.
“Go that way,” Drake added, repeating the command in French and German to the others. “I’ll check over here.”
He had to know. He had to know it was she. Surely, he had sensed her in his soul through the almost mystical bond they had shared since childhood.
Heart pounding, she bit her lip against a crazed smile at his nearness. At last! This was what she had been praying for, one chance to talk to him.
To bring him back to his senses. To coax him home like one of her wounded wild animals. He did not know what he was doing, coming here.
She waited for the other men to leave, joy and relief welling up in her even though the last time she had seen Drake, the blackguard had put a knife to her throat and used her as a hostage so he could escape.
Of course, he’d never hurt her, she assured herself.
No matter how much the Prometheans might have scarred his body and damaged his mind, even blacking out much of his memory with their abuses during the months they had kept him in that dungeon—no matter how much their evil might have changed him—he was still Drake.
And in her heart, he was still her best friend, even though it was foolish to think so since he was an earl, and she was nobody in particular.
She could hear the others retreating into the woods to continue the hunt for the intruder. Nearby, there was no sound above the rapid babbling of the mountain brook. Not even the birds called, frightened away by the gunfire.
She stayed motionless for a long moment . . . until she heard his voice, quiet and grim. “Tell me, please, dear God, tell me it isn’t you in there.”
Emily slowly pulled the edge of her cloak down from her face. At first, from her vantage point, she could only see the lower half of his muscular body.
The long, loose black coat. Well-worn black leather breeches. Black knee boots.
Hoping he would not be angry, she whisked her cloak back and rolled out of her hiding place, peeking out to make extra sure the others were gone, and then dropping lightly from the fox’s den to the narrow bank below.
She grinned at him and tossed her long hair over her shoulders. “Surprise.”
From the other side of the stream, Drake pinned her in a cold, unsmiling stare.
Her saucy grin faded as she watched his angular face pale with dread, possibly fury at the sight of her.
Shaking his head in disbelief, not uttering a word, the tall, black-haired demigod of a man scanned her from head to toe, making sure she was not hurt.
She did the same to him as she warily approached, relieved to find no new injuries on his tall, formidable body. In his eyes, however, she saw the same fractured intensity blazing in their coal black depths.
It was then that she knew that as mad as it was of her to come here, she had done the right thing.
He was not even close to being all right.
God, it pained her, that lost look in his soulful eyes after all he had been through. Clearly, he did not understand the consequences of his actions. What did he think he was doing? The Prometheans could not possibly trust him. They would kill him, and if they did not, now the Order would.
His brother warriors now viewed him as a traitor.
She took another step toward him, holding his gaze.
“How are you? Are you all right?” she murmured.
With a cold smile, he did not answer the question.
But Emily did not take offense any more than she had the time that falcon with the broken wing had bitten her finger. Drake needed help, and that was why she was here.
Holding his gaze, she approached, though it made her heart hurt whenever she looked into his eyes and read the pain left behind by what these Promethean bastards had done to him. His time in their captivity had turned him into a remote, brooding stranger whose very presence seethed with silent hatred and rage—a man who had once been a practical joker.
As a lad, he’d been fond of pulling pranks. In his twenties, he’d been a fun-loving rogue with the unfortunate habit of singing rude tavern songs at the top of his lungs when he was drunk, laughing off the attentions of all those horrid painted women, high and low, who fawned on him and called him “Westie,” short for his title, Earl of Westwood. In his thirties, he was still just as beautiful on the outside. He had always been so beautiful . . . but inside, she knew the torturers had wrecked him. Destroyed his once-contagious charm, his fiery lust for life. Now she seemed to be the only one who could reach him because of their history together.
He trusted her.
After months of beatings and interrogations, the Order had pulled whatever necessary strings they could to get their agent back. Drake had been returned to them in such a damaged state that it had unsettled them all. He’d attacked his former teammates like a wild man, not recognizing them, thinking everyone wanted to kill him. Begging them not to put him in a cage, ranting that he had to get back to James. The old man was in danger, he had said over and over again. Instead of paying attention to any of this, his saddened friends had brought him home so he could mend.
It still filled Emily with rage to think of how thin he’d been when she had first seen him, how he had jumped at the slightest noise.
Whatever his captors had done to scramble his wits, he’d had no recognition of his own mother or the country estate where he’d grown up.
The only thing he had remembered . . . was her.
While Lord Rotherstone, one of his closest friends in the Order, had guarded him at Westwood Manor, Emily had thrown herself into the task of healing her beloved childhood companion.
They had been making fine progress after a few weeks. She had slowly, gently, quietly, begun to lead him out of the dark storm he lived in. She had even claimed the victory of seeing him wake up one morning having slept the whole night through.
He seemed to be doing so well after a time that the last thing she had expected was for Drake to take matters into his own hands, escaping by taking her hostage, all so that he could return to his precious James and those who had abused him.
In the face of all evidence to the contrary, Emily still could not bring herself to believe that Drake had turned traitor. It was impossible.
No, she had an awful feeling that his real motive for coming back was to try to get revenge.
Which just went to show how unstable he still was.
The Order had been battling the vile Prometheans for centuries. One man was not about to take down the whole organization alone. Mad or sane, though, she thought, leave it to Drake to try.
Whatever he had up his sleeve, clearly, he had not figured her into his plans.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded in a low, taut voice as she ventured another step toward him.
He looked at her in exasperation. “Not in the least.”
“You know why I’m here, Drake,” she chided softly, willing patience. “I’ve come to take you home.”
He closed his eyes. Lowered his head. And scratched his eyebrow. Which did not bode well.
Then he flicked his jet-black eyes open again and glared at her. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”
“No.”
“I appreciate the gesture, Em, but you made the trip in vain. I’m staying here, and you are going home. Go on. Climb back into that cave and hide until we’ve pulled back to the castle. I’ll cover for you.”
“No! I’m not going anywhere without you! Do you think I came six hundred miles for nothing?” She glanced into the woods to make sure the others were not returning.
But she warned herself not to lose sight of the fact that she was dealing with a dangerous man who was no longer quite the master of his faculties. If she pushed him too hard, there was no telling what he might do.
She reached out her hand to him. “Come with me, Drake. Escape with me now, before they come back. I’ll take care of you.”
“Oh, Emily,” he whispered with a fleeting, anguished wince.
“I already lost you once. I can’t go through that again.”
“They will kill you,” he whispered. “They will kill us both.”
“Not if we move right now. We can still get away. You know we can, you and I, together. These woods. It’ll be just like old times. Let me take care of you, sweeting. You are confused. I know you don’t want to be here.”
He shook his head, turning away from her in agitation. “Why don’t you ever listen? I can’t believe you’re here. I told you I have to do this!”
“But you don’t. Whatever you think you’re trying to do here, you’re only going to get yourself killed. I can’t allow that, Drake. You’ve bitten off more than you can chew this time, and you need to come home. Whatever James might have told you, this is not where you belong.”