The King

by Jennifer Armentrout

  “It’s all right,” Caden soothed. “I promise you. You’re safe now.”

  Light footsteps approached, and then I heard a sharp inhale. “God.”

  Caden’s head snapped in the redhead’s direction, and whatever she saw quieted her. She moved out of my line of sight, and I tensed.

  “She’s just going to hold your head. That’s all,” Caden assured me. “And then I’ll get this cuff off you, and we’ll be out of here.”

  “I’m going to touch you,” Ivy said from somewhere behind me. Seconds later, I felt her hands on either side of my head. “I’ve got her.”

  “Thank you,” Caden replied, and I had the distinct impression that wasn’t something he said often. “Just a couple of more seconds, sunshine, and that’s all.”

  He folded his hands around the metal band, and there was a strange flaring of heat as his chin dipped. The muscles under his shirt along his shoulders and arms flexed. Slight pressure encircled my throat, setting off warning bells. I tried to pull away, but Ivy held me in place. My stomach twisted with panic—

  Metal groaned and gave way, and when I swallowed, there was no longer anything pressing against my throat.

  “There,” Caden murmured, placing the snapped cuff aside. He tipped forward. “I got her.”

  “Do you?”

  His gaze lifted from mine to the woman behind me. “I do.”

  “You better,” she said.

  I had no idea what their exchange meant, but she said nothing when he slipped an arm under my shoulders and then under my legs. Only then did she let go. He pulled me against him, and the contact jarred me. I gasped as a wave of sensation rippled through me.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly, rising fluidly. He turned, and my gaze swiveled around, landing on the patch of floor that was dark and stained.

  Caden was speaking, but I wasn’t tracking what he said. I wasn’t even sure if he was talking to me or not. I shifted my gaze to him as he started toward the door. I’d been here before. Or it felt that way, like it had happened in a dream. A knot formed in my throat as we neared the opening. I locked up, waiting for the catch, the obstacle that blocked me from leaving, the tug on my neck. The reveal that none of this was real, just another elaborate ruse produced by my mind.

  Caden crossed the threshold, still speaking in a low, soft voice as we entered heavy darkness. He climbed the stairs, and then…then I saw the silvery glow of moonlight.

  Moonlight.

  I drew in a broken breath, and the air was fresh and clean. Was this…? Tears clouded my eyes, blurring the rays of moonlight that filtered through the trees.

  I swallowed again. “Are you…are you really here?”

  “Yes.” Caden stopped, looking down at me. “I’m here. I’m really here, sunshine.”

  Chapter 14

  Things were hazy from the moment Caden carried me into a vehicle and wrapped a blanket around me. Between the warmth of the throw and the heat his body was throwing off, I couldn’t do what he kept asking of me and keep my eyes open.

  Bits and pieces of the conversation floated around me as he held me in his lap, keeping me steady as the wheels bumped along. He held me gently, keeping an arm around my shoulders and my cheek pressed to his chest. Every so often, I felt the soft-as-air brush of his touch on the side of my head or down the bones of a finger. Like I…like I meant something to him, like I was precious and cared for. But there was something that lingered at the fringes of my consciousness that wanted me to pull away, to put distance between us because it was needed. I couldn’t remember why, and I was too tired to figure it out.

  Ren was speaking from the driver’s seat when I came to. His name was familiar, as was his face. I knew him and the redheaded woman next to him, and I knew they were together. Their names and faces were like the framework of a house, but the walls and the floors and everything in-between hadn’t been installed.

  “How bad?” Ren asked.

  The arm around my shoulder tightened and then relaxed. “Bad.”

  “Did she say she killed him?” Ivy asked. “I heard that, right?”

  “You did,” Caden answered as a weird feeling started in my toes. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, more like a low burning that reminded me of a sunburn.

  “Damn,” muttered Ren. “Well, now we know why Dumb and Dumber hadn’t seen him.”

  Dumb and Dumber? Wasn’t that…wasn’t that an old movie? The burning crept up my calves.

  “They said they hadn’t seen him in four days,” she said. “Could she have been down there alone?”

  “She’s been gone for almost two months,” Ren said, and a flicker of surprise scuttled through me. Had it really been that long? I’d stopped counting after day forty-eight. How many days had I missed in the beginning? “I can’t believe we found her after all of this time.”

  “She had to think…” Ivy trailed off, and then she spoke again. “Did you see her? Her skin?”

  “I saw.” Caden’s voice hardened.

  “That sick bastard—” She cut herself off. “I’m glad she killed him. I hope she made it hurt in the worst ways.”

  “I’m not glad she did,” Caden stated.

  The uncertainty returned. Why wouldn’t he be glad? They were enemies, and I knew that Aric had done things to Caden—horrible things to people the King cared about. He was going to use Caden to return… I lost track of the thoughts, my mind seeming to power down like a shut-off button had been pressed.

  Caden didn’t reply to that, and then I must’ve faded out for a few moments because when I came to, the burning sensation had reached my shoulders, and I didn’t like it. I squirmed as it reached my throat.

  “Hey,” Caden’s voice was soft in the darkness. “It’s okay. We’re almost there.”

  It wasn’t okay. The heat swept over my head and then my skin turned prickly as if a million pins and needles began dancing over my flesh. “It hurts,” I told him, opening my eyes. “My…skin.”

  Caden shifted me slightly, and his face came into fuzzy view. “It’s your temperature rising.”

  I tried to untangle my arms in an attempt to push the blanket off.

  “Don’t.” His arm curled, keeping the throw around me as he placed his palm on my forehead. I flinched. “You need to keep the blanket on.”

  “It’s hot,” I whispered, stretching out my leg. Pain flared all along my skin and sank deep into the muscles. I gasped. “It hurts.”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat. “I know. I’m sorry, baby. I am, but you have to keep the blanket on. You’re still not warm enough.”

  I didn’t care. Fire ants were chewing their way through my flesh. I twisted, moaning as my ribs protested. The numbness had vanished, and I yearned for the return. “Why…why does it hurt now? It…stopped hurting. It had finally stopped.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Your body is warming up, and blood is moving like it should. It’s going to hurt, and then it’ll be better.”

  It wasn’t going to be better. There was no way it could be when every long-forgotten cut began to sting, and every bruise started to throb incessantly. I couldn’t hold still, even as the King tried to keep me immobile. I became a twisting mess of aching, moaning flesh. Everything hurt, inside and out. Each breath was like breathing fire. Tears crowded my eyes.

  “Not much longer,” Caden murmured over the top of my head. He said that more than once. Repeating it over and over. And then it became too much.

  “Can’t you do something?” Ivy demanded, her voice pitched with worry. “Glamour her?”

  “I can’t do that to her. Not now. Not after—”

  “Please,” I begged, each breath coming in short, painful pants. “Please do something.”

  “I know he’s done it to you multiple times. I can tell. I hate this. It’s killing me.”

  “It sounds like it’s actually killing her,” Ren snapped. “So, why don’t you get over yourself and help her out?”

  “You don’t und
erstand,” Caden growled. “She’s on the brink of not coming back. I can see it in her eyes. She didn’t recognize either of you. She didn’t know me at first. Why do you think that’s the case?”

  “Please,” I whispered. “Make it stop. Please.”

  “I can’t.” His voice gentled as his hand curled around the back of my head. “One more feeding. One more glamouring, and that could be it. I will not do that to you.”

  “I’ll drive faster,” Ren muttered.

  “Please.” My voice cracked. “Stop it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caden said as I shuddered. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry.”

  My skin felt like it blistered and then burst. My muscles felt stretched until they snapped. Every bone felt brittle and sharp-edged. There was no escaping this—

  Sudden clarity flowed through me, pushing away the fog, and I remembered all that had been done. All of it. And I couldn’t deal with it.

  I kicked my head back as a hoarse scream tore from my throat. Voices poured from the front of the car. Agony contorted my body, further inflaming the bruises and raw skin. My voice gave out, and finally, it was too much. I slipped into blissful nothingness, and the last thing I heard was Caden shouting my name.

  * * * *

  A stranger stared down at me, a female wearing a pale blue shirt. Others were moving around, tugging at the straps of the dress I wore as the fae’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her over the rushing sound in my ears.

  “Stop,” I rasped, swatting at the hands. “Stop.”

  “I’m a healer. I work for the King.” She caught my hand, carefully lowering it to the table. “We need to get this dress off and assess your injuries.”

  Her words made sense but also didn’t. The material slipped down my shoulders—

  The female jerked back, her eyes going wide. There were several gasps, and then the healer snapped into action, firing off orders at a rapid pace. “Get the IV in and use the morphine. Start her with four milligrams and then get some fluids in her. Get Ringer solution on board. Check to see what kind of antibiotics we have, and get one of the mortals ready to make a possible run.”

  It happened so fast. The dress was removed, replaced by a warm, soft blanket. I felt the needle go into the vein in the top of my hand, but it was nothing compared to everything else.

  “You’re going to feel a rush of warmth in a few moments. Maybe taste something weird in the back of your throat, but don’t worry. It’s just some medicine to take the pain away,” the woman said. “We’re going to look at these injuries, okay?”

  I didn’t know who she was—who these people were. What had happened to Caden? Heart thumping, I started to sit up, and then a buzzing wave swept through me, somehow beating back the fire, cooling it down by degrees with each passing moment. Suddenly, I wasn’t struggling. I wasn’t….

  People moved around me, and the woman was talking again, but I wasn’t following. My head lolled to the side, and my gaze connected with eyes the color of liquid amber.

  Caden stood off to the side, his normally golden skin paler than I’d ever seen. All others gave him a wide berth, and he did not move, but I thought his lips did.

  I thought he mouthed, I’m here.

  * * * *

  There were two things I became aware of.

  The steady sound of beeping was the first thing I heard when I, well, stopped floating around out there in the fuzzy ether. The second thing was that I didn’t hurt all that much, and that was the most important part. I felt…a little sore and achy, but that was such a marked improvement that I wanted to cry.

  I didn’t.

  Instead, I tried to open my eyes. This time, it didn’t take an act of Congress to do so. Still took a while because my lids felt crusty and swollen, but I did it, and the smooth, white ceiling I stared at wasn’t the dark interior of a car or the stone ceiling of the chamber.

  Another massive improvement.

  I was alive, and I wasn’t in the tomb, chained to a stone slab, waiting to die.

  God.

  I swallowed, wincing at what felt like razor blades in my throat. I’m alive. I kept repeating that in my head because it didn’t seem real or even possible, but I was lying on a comfortable mattress, and the room was filled with soft, filtered sunlight. Memories of how I had gotten here were like sifting through a photo album of faded, distorted pictures. But I remembered Caden and Ivy and Ren, and the pain as my skin had warmed up…. Yeah, I wasn’t going to forget that pain anytime soon.

  I also remembered the fae healer. Before I started floating away on a cloud of nothing matters, I had heard her talking to others—to him. Concern about infection and scarring, the latter almost making me laugh because I was already scarred. What was a handful—or a couple of hundred—more in the grand scheme of things? Blood had been taken. Words like dehydration and malnutrition were thrown around, as was concern about other things—things I didn’t really want to think about.

  Looking back, I thought that it was quite inappropriate that they had allowed him in the room. Then again, he was their King, and they probably allowed him to do just about anything.

  My arms felt heavy, glossy with some kind of ointment, and there was a bandage covering the bite mark on my left arm. Oddly, I felt clean as if someone had bathed me, but based on the itchiness of my scalp, I knew my hair hadn’t been washed.

  God, I would kill for a shower, one where my skin wasn’t being scrubbed raw, and someone—

  Closing my eyes, I cut off that train of thought as I sucked in a sharp breath. No good could come from thinking about that right now, not when there were so many things that would surely haunt me.

  The shuffling sound of someone shifting in a chair drew me from my thoughts. I turned my head to the left, my breath catching as the left side of my cheek throbbed.

  Ouch.

  All right, pain meds only worked to a point. Good to know.

  Opening my eyes, a shock rippled through me. Caden was stretched out in a chair next to the bed, his bare feet resting on the footboard, crossed at the ankles. His eyes were closed, his cheek pressed against his fist, his hair hiding half of his face. He was dressed as I recalled. Black shirt and dark denim jeans. He appeared to be sleeping.

  How long had he been in here?

  How long had I been out?

  Better yet, why was he even here at all?

  I didn’t know the answers to those questions, and I didn’t want to wake him. Instead, I lay there and I… I stared at him, soaking in the sight.

  Caden was…he was as beautiful as I remembered, a visage of otherworldly perfection that bordered on being unreal. I wished for the hundredth time that he wasn’t so nice to look at. Good thing his royal jerkiness attitude dampened some of that attraction.

  Yeah, right. Who was I kidding?

  I still loved him. I was still in love with him, and even though he was promised to someone else—could already be with someone else—and had failed to mention that on top of all of the other stuff, my feelings for him were still there.

  I loved him.

  I just didn’t like him.

  Strange how one could feel those two conflicting emotions, but love was odd like that.

  The moment those thoughts finished, awe flickered through me. I was surprised that after everything I’d gone through, I could still…I could still think about normal things—stuff that was important but also wasn’t compared to being tortured and starved. That I could think about the night we’d spent together, the things he’d done to me, and what I’d done to him, and feel my insides warm. That felt beautifully normal because I…

  I honestly never expected to see him again. I hadn’t expected to see sunlight either or breathe in fresh air. In the end, I hadn’t thought I’d survive.

  That was a lot to process.

  As I lay there, watching the steady rise and fall of Caden’s chest, I realized that it was also a lot to process the fact that there were huge gaps in time where I co
uldn’t remember what had happened while Aric held me, even though I could still feel the…the fear and the hours of nothing but pain. I remembered what he did to me with the dagger I’d killed him with, and I recalled his fists, but a lot was missing that still carried feelings of panic and humiliation.

  I sighed, glancing around the room. I wasn’t in the infirmary but one of the spacious hotel rooms. I had no idea how I had gotten up here.

  Caden stirred, his thick lashes lifting. His gaze found mine. Slowly, he lowered his hand and straightened. He didn’t speak, not for several long moments, and then he said, “How long have you been awake?”

  “Not—” I cleared my throat, working on getting the painful hoarseness out. “Not very…long.”

  “So, in other words, you haven’t been watching me sleep for that long?”

  “I wasn’t watching.” My cheeks heated at the blatant lie.

  “Uh-huh.” A small grin played at his lips as he pulled his feet off the foot of the bed and placed them on the floor, leaning forward. “How do you feel?”

  I thought about the way he’d held me in the car, trying to calm me as I screamed. “A lot better.”

  “You look better.”

  “I bet I look a mess.”

  “No,” he said softly. “You look beautiful.”

  I rolled my eyes—well, one eye. “I don’t need…a mirror to know that’s not remotely true.”

  “You don’t need a mirror at all.”

  Having no idea how to respond to that, though liking the tiny flutter in my chest, I decided it was time to change the subject. “How long have I been out of it?”

  “Today is Thursday. We brought you in Monday night. So, about two days,” he said. “You’ve woken up a couple of times.”

  Two days? God. “I don’t remember that—the waking up.”

  “The healer has kept you on some pretty good pain medication. You were a little…out of it, but able to walk to the bathroom.”

  Well, that explained why it didn’t feel like my bladder was about to burst. Wait. “Did you help me to the…bathroom?”

  Seriously, if he confirmed it, God hating me would be official.