by Mandy Rosko
“We questioned them—” Aaron said.
“You tortured them!” Dawn corrected.
Aaron shook his head. “I promise ye, we’ve done no such thing. It would not be good for the treaty if the prince had been found to be torturing his new brother, would it?”
Dawn’s chest rose and fell heavily. Her heart beat erratically, but as she listened to Aaron, her body and heart calmed. It...made sense.
That one part did anyway.
“There’s no way they came here to kill anyone. How could you’ve made them confess?”
“We had no need to torture them,” Kehn said, casually picking at his nails and barely looking at her. “But we did threaten to throw ye into the sun if they didn’t.”
“Kehn,” Aaron warned.
She fucking knew it. Dawn flew across the room. Her knees crashed into Kehn’s chest, knocking him backward. Her fingers locked around his throat, and she opened her mouth to make the bite.
The thin slit of a dagger’s cold blade touched the delicate skin protecting her jugular. She froze. Kehn stared at her, fear bleeding from his pores while Aaron radiated calm from behind. It was only because he held the blade while his other gloved hand gripped her shoulder. The bastard.
A warm breeze fluttered in her ear. “Lady Dawn, release him.”
Not a breeze. His breath. Knowing what it really was caused goose pimples to tingle under the long sleeves of her leather jacket.
She didn’t release Kehn, yet Aaron didn’t sink the blade into her throat, one of the weak spots on a vampire’s body, right where the carotids were. If cut, she’d be an active spray bottle.
But Blake’s life depended on her. How could he expect her to release the arrogant creature beneath her?
“Please,” he asked, his whispered words sending another warm breeze across her cheek.
“Aaron, touch her, cut her, I care not, but get her off!” Kehn snapped, regaining some of his courage now that his prince had his back.
Just to be scary and petty, Dawn gave him a visual of her tongue sliding across her teeth and briefly resting on one fang before she loosened her hands.
“Dawn.” There was a warning in Aaron’s voice now, and more of his pleading.
This was not the way to get what she wanted. She had to steel herself, take a calming breath, and force her fingers to relax their grip on the elf’s neck.
“You’re free, little birdie,” she said, ignoring the knife still at her neck as she lifted herself off him.
Aaron all but flew away from her as she rose to stand. Weird.
Maybe it was custom. Maybe royalty didn’t normally touch the people beneath them, and when they did it obviously made those on the receiving end uncomfortable.
She didn’t have time for their bowing and scraping formalities, not when her entire being itched to just act, to do something. “I want to see my brother and Nox. I want to make sure you didn’t do anything to them or lock them in a room where sunlight can touch them.”
“Ye are in no position to make demands.” Kehn snorted, righting his robes and shivering, as though it disgusted him that she’d had her hands on him.
She stared at Aaron. “I want to see my brother,” she said again, then, softly, “please.”
It was indeed a magic word. His lips lifted at her use of it. “Kehn—”
Kehn looked stricken. “Nay, Highness, ye canna be serious!”
Aaron stepped out of the way of the door and gestured to it. “Your princess would like to visit her brother. Kindly lead us to him.”
Princess. The word threw her for a loop. Huh, damn. Guess she really was.
Kehn’s head snapped between his master and the woman he despised until finally his shoulders slumped. “This way, Highness.” He growled.
His unhappiness with the situation made her grin. Being married against her will to a handsome elf prince was going to have advantages after all.
Chapter Two
Kehn led her and Aaron away from the living quarters of the palace and down three spiral staircases that led deeper and deeper into the earth. The air became thicker with cold and moisture the farther they went. The stones of the walls were damp and growing foliage, definitely not the average basement. Her guides hardly seemed to notice.
Despite popular mythology, vampires, her kind of vampires, didn’t thrive underground. Professor Helsing chased down a couple of vampires who liked their crypts and coffins a little too much, and it got to be common incorrect knowledge. Only in recent times had people begun to associate vampires with the things those creatures really preferred: wealth and luxury.
But now Dawn would be comforted with the knowledge that Blake wasn’t in a place where the sun could easily reach him.
At the bottom of the gray stone slabs that acted as stairs, there was no floor, just more damp earth that had been walked on so often it was stamped down into a hard, uneven surface. They passed by two sets of guards who watched these horrible halls in the torchlight, all of whom stared openly at Dawn, until they came to a thick wooden door with black iron hinges. It even had a tiny rectangular window with more black bars at the bottom. The wood was slightly warped by the wet air, but otherwise it looked as sturdy as steel.
Aaron ordered the door opened by the elf guard with the keys. With his eyes on Dawn the whole time, the nameless elf leaned his leaf-shaped spear against the wall, pulled a set of keys from a hook on the wall, and did as he was ordered.
It was dark in the room. There were no torches inside the little cave-like cell, but that didn’t matter. Dawn could see as easily as though it were daylight.
“Blake.” She rushed to him, fell to her knees in the dirt, and put her arms around his bare neck. He was naked but for a pair of black boxers. Nox was in the same condition, and while both men leaned against the wet wall, their eyes brightened at the sight of her.
“Are either of you hurt? What happened?”
Her hands searched them for injuries and made a different sort of discovery instead. She now understood why neither fought to break down the door, regardless of how thick it was. Along with being stripped, Blake and Nox were chained to the stone wall with manacles so thick she doubted they could ever break. They weren’t rusted from being down here either. They were either taken care of with an obsessive attention or had been put down here especially for them.
Blake returned her embrace weakly. What the hell had they done to him? Apart from a bruised cheek, there weren’t any signs—that she could see—that he’d been tortured. “Dawn,” he said, his voice not as tired as his body. That was a good sign. “I’m so sorry. We failed you.”
She pulled away enough to cup his cheeks in her hands. His eyes radiated the pain he felt from his admitted failure.
“Blake, what happened? They said you came to kill their king.”
“We did,” Nox answered.
Dawn…had absolutely nothing to say to that. She shook her head. “No.”
“It is as we said,” Kehn said.
“Keep quiet,” Aaron snapped.
“Blake?” she asked, hoping to have him prove the lot of them wrong. With a sigh, he nodded, agreeing with Nox.
The admission stung. Dawn winced from it. She’d been sure she would walk into whatever prison her brother and Nox had been thrown into, see them beaten to within inches of their lives, and know they had confessed to something they had no intention of ever doing.
But when she came into this dungeon, where the only torture could be the mildewy smell and the only hardship was having their outer clothing stripped away, well, it certainly wasn’t enough to prompt such a proclamation.
And yet they willingly confessed to her...They did it. They tried to kill a king. It blew her away.
“You mind-blasting idiots,” she said. “How the hell did you even get on the island?” For them to have been caught and be down here, enough time had to have passed for them to have been on the island.
They both sent her guilty looks.
Unbelievable. “You were following my yacht?”
“It was the only way to get on the island without the elves knowing,” Nox said.
“Enough of this. They killed our king but refuse to say what they’ve done with him or if they’ve come with others,” Kehn said haughtily.
Blake rattled his chains, strength renewed. “We told you we didn’t kill him! We couldn’t find him!”
“Shut up, Blake,” Dawn snapped. The confession of “we came to kill him but couldn’t find him” wasn’t any better.
“Conspiracy to murder is not an improvement,” Aaron said, mirroring her thoughts.
Dawn winced. The man behind her was her husband. A prince and first heir to the elvish throne. There had to be some way she could convince him to release her brother.
Dawn rose to her feet and walked toward her husband. Then she sank back to her knees, touching her forehead to the cold earth in front of his feet.
“Dawn!” Nox and Blake cried out in unison, their chains rattling.
Dawn chanced to look up when Aaron’s feet stepped back. His eyes were wide and mouth gaping. “What are ye—”
“I beg you to release my brother and my friend. It’s my fault they’re here. As for your father…” She swallowed hard. She’d already promised herself, and him, that she would never kneel before him again. She had to make this count. “I believe my brother has been misinformed.”
Aaron raised a single brow. “Misinformed?”
She nodded, returning her eyes to the submissive pose. A long centipede scurried inches from her hand. She remained stock-still. “I know that, for the sake of peace, we were meant to live under the same roof, but my mother made plans for my brother and Nox to retrieve me so I could go back to the States. That was all. It had nothing to do with your father.”
Aaron sighed. She could picture him and Kehn glancing at each other.
“Yes, it did,” Nox said.
Nox’s voice damned her entire argument. She clenched her teeth hard enough to put indents in a steel bar. Fucking. Idiot. She whipped her head to him, willing him to shut up. “No, it didn’t,” she insisted.
“But it did.” Blake was the one to speak this time. “She specifically told us that the only way you would ever be free from your marriage would be to kill the elf king.”
“That makes no sense!” she yelled, rising up but still on her knees. “How would killing one man destroy my marriage with another?”
Nox shrugged. “Perhaps she meant for us to kill the king, then take you home so that you could be queen safely. Far away from the threat of assassins who wouldn’t want a vampire for royalty.” Nox scratched his chin while he pondered. “She even gave us dragon-style daggers so we could blame it on them.”
“What?” Dawn whipped her head to Aaron, who pulled two daggers from beneath his cloak to show her.
He held them gingerly by their handles so that the blades pointed at a downward angle, totally nonthreatening. Rubies glistened on the blades. The golden hilts were styled to look like rising fire engulfing a naked woman, who was stretched along the handle, writhing in ecstasy. They were matching blades.
Dawn had never seen dragon blades before, but if these two were fakes, they must be of similar style and quality for her husband to keep them as evidence.
She didn’t know a lot about dragon art, but it was common knowledge that dragons adored blades as much as the elves adored using them, but the dragons loved their daggers mostly for their decorative purpose. They didn’t need them in combat. Georgiana, a lady of fortune but little worldly knowledge, would not have known that.
The weapons were useless to anyone in dragon form. The ability to harden into rocks, breath fire, and claw through trees made the daggers a fashion accessory at best, forged to make their piles and piles of gold and jewels look prettier.
If a dragon wanted King Aelmon dead, he wouldn’t kill the elf while in his human form. Certainly not after a thousand years of peace.
This was waaaay too fishy.
“If they had succeeded in their plan to plant these daggers, elves and dragons would have entered a war unlike any we have ever known. As it is, I only see hardships for the peace between vampires and elves,” Aaron said.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Dawn opened her mouth to defend Nox and Blake, then stopped. There was no sarcasm or cruelty in those yellow-green eyes of his. Only sympathy and...pleading?
What was with his constant need to silently beg her for her cooperation? He was the fucking prince. He should be threatening to behead her or something. His willingness to discuss such monumental problems threw her for a loop. She had no idea how to react except to just listen to what he had to say.
Maybe that was why he acted the way he did. So far she was being pretty obedient as far as his requests went.
“All I want is my father safely returned to me, Dawn. Nothing more,” he said.
Her name on his lips sounded strange. Aaron was of the kind that still said milady and all that. And yet it wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and it still brought a teeny, tiny shiver to her spine. She shook it off. She had more important things to think about.
Why would her mother give her only son false information like that? Why send him on what was essentially a suicide mission?
No answers came to her. Nox’s musings about her mother’s true intentions was the only thing that made sense. It made her sick. “I don’t know where your father is.”
Aaron nodded. “Bell is still outside, speaking with the trees, trying to discern where they saw him last. If he is alive, I will release your brother and his friend. But if not...”
There was no need for him to finish. “Blake and Nox will be executed for high treason.”
Aaron nodded. “Aye, but if the council believes ye were an accomplice in this plot, ye could be as well.”
Chapter Three
Aaron stepped into her room without knocking. Though the windows in her room and down most of the hall outside were boarded up, it was morning, and some light still reflected off the pearly white marble of the castle walls and the many golden statues and mirrors that decorated the wing and entered her room behind her husband.
Dawn hissed as her skin heated, not enough to burn or catch fire, but she jumped from her seat and sank further into the shadows of her chamber to escape the rising heat and protect her skin.
Aaron quickly shut the door. “My apologies. I had forgotten.”
“Do you always barge into a woman’s room uninvited?” she snapped. Her nerves twitched and tingled nonstop since her visit with Blake and Nox, who were still locked in a dungeon beneath the beautiful, seemingly innocent elven castle.
It might not look like the elf palaces from the Lord of the Rings movies, but the elves who lived here had still managed to make a stone castle as entrancing as any picture out of a Scottish tourist book.
She considered joining Blake and Nox just to be away from all the brightness. This place really was something different in the morning sun, and there was gold everywhere, all the way down to the handle of her hairbrush, the frame of her bed, and then all those statues that lined the halls. Elves were loaded.
Aaron’s brow furrowed. It didn’t sit well on his perfect skin. “Ye are my wife,” he said, as though that was all the explanation required.
Of course. A wife was a husband’s property in this place, and he was a prince, so there was that mindset to deal with, too. She was going to have to put down some ground rules after she got her brother and Nox out from under his nose.
“Well, how very pleasant for you.” She mocked his polite speech while sitting back down at the vanity provided for her. It was carved of some richly colored wood she couldn’t name and painted along the side with green trees, long-tailed yellow and red birds, and more fairies. Of course, the metal that held the mirror in place was made of gold.
She dabbed her fingers in a jar of the sunscreen she’d brought with her and rubbed it into her chee
ks. Her face cooled instantly, and she sighed. It felt like putting ice on a burn, but it would never be enough to allow her directly into the sun.
“Any word on your father?” she asked, trying not to look at him through the mirror. She would have to try really hard to be able to do just that, however. The mirror wasn’t a very good one. Her reflection was warped and murky.
Medieval times, she reminded herself.
She could make out her basic shape well enough to comb her hair and put on her makeup. She could even see the figure behind her when her eyes began to wander.
Aaron’s robes were bright red today with a golden trim. The cloth left everything to the imagination, with barely a hint to the form beneath.
He’d all but been on top of her when he put that blade to her throat. She knew the muscles he had under there.
His shoulder-length, sun-blond hair was slicked and tied back, bringing more focus on his cheekbones. His hands were still in the golden gloves. He looked like he was getting ready to greet a room filled with important people.
Did the elf king make all the decisions, or was there a council? Did the people here vote? She consoled herself that she wouldn’t be staying long enough to find out.
“As a matter of fact, there has been.”
Her fingers halted before they could scoop up any more lotion. She put the jar back on the vanity and wiped the cream still on her fingers into her hands and wrists. “And?”
Would he tell her the man was dead? That he was preparing to execute Blake and Nox at that very moment? If that were the case, she’d declare war on him right then and there.
“It seems he went for a walk. He came across a forest serpent and injured himself in the battle. He survived, with the help of a dragon.”
“Wait, what?” She whirled on him. “He was injured by a snake and needed to be saved by a dragon? I thought you were enemies. And how would he need to fight a snake? Did it bite him?” She pictured a grown man demanding a duel from a garden snake. It was too ridiculous.