Married by Treachery Read online

  17

  “Edom,” Jake said. There was nothing kind in Jake’s voice. He slid Raquel from the desk, set her back upon the floor, and took three steps toward Prince Edom, only to find himself blocked by the points of half a dozen swords.

  And Jake smiled viciously. “Good evening, gentlemen. Still defending my dear brother’s insecurities, I see.”

  Edom took a step, then another, each footfall landing like a brick upon the mosaic tiles. “And you are still slinking in the shadows like the traitorous little worm you are. Did you really think you would get away with this?”

  “Where is she, Edom?” Jake’s voice was dark, his expression murderous.

  “Somewhere she can no longer interfere.” Edom reached up and plucked a blood-red rose from the vine. “I’ll be honest. I could not believe that my own mother would favor one son so much that she would act against the other. Not until I saw the rose upon that stag. Then I knew.” Those last words ground out between his teeth, and he crushed the little bloom in his fist and watched those petals fall as they disintegrated into ash.

  “If you so much as laid a finger on her, so help me—” Jake pitched forward, but those sword points remained resolute.

  Edom moved between his men and their swords and stopped before Jake. “You’ll what? There is nothing you can do. I have three elite and fifty men standing outside. I expected you would hear our approach, but it makes sense now. You were”—his gaze slid to Raquel—“otherwise engaged. Tell me, when, exactly, were you planning to kill her? While making love to her, or after?” Edom must have seen something in Raquel’s face, because his eyes suddenly glittered with cruel delight, and he added, “He didn’t tell you?”

  Raquel looked at Jake, and her heart pounded. “Is this true?”

  Jake did not answer, and he did not meet her gaze.

  Edom, however, looked positively ecstatic. “Why, yes. He needs your blood. From your heart.”

  But Jake still wasn’t looking at her—would not look at her. His attention fixed only on Edom, and her legs began to tremble in fear. In deep disappointment. “Answer me, Jake… is this true?” Raquel demanded.

  It was then that Jake’s gaze slid to hers, but it was not her Jake that looked at her now. Not the man from her dreams or the one she’d come to know. This Jake’s smile was mirthless, and his eyes shone with cruelty as his lips curled in mockery of her misplaced hope. “As true as your mortality.”

  His words were a boulder to her chest. “You said you had to claim my heart…that was your riddle. So you lied—”

  “You told her the riddle?” Edom looked to Jake, surprised.

  “I did,” Jake drawled. “Just not all of it.”

  A beat.

  “‘Through blood, by blood, may your sins be paid, spent from a mortal heart, the heir must claim,’” Jake said.

  His words were a knife through Raquel’s chest. He was right; he hadn’t lied—not exactly. He’d simply left out the first line, but it was the most important line of all, for by it, the rest hinged.

  Starting with blood from her mortal heart.

  “So this was all just a game to you.” Raquel’s voice trembled. Her entire body trembled. “You really are a heartless, selfish…” There were so many names she wanted to call him, but her breaking heart bled all over her words. “It was all a lie.”

  “I never lied, my bride,” Jake answered simply. “You just refused to believe me.”

  “Oh, no…let it be known that Jakobián is a liar. He speaks in lies. He is such a master of twisting truth that not even our curse can prevent his lies completely. He always…finds an edge.” Edom tilted his head, and his gaze razed over Raquel in a way that Raquel found extremely impolite. “I see why you fought so hard for this one. She is an unusually pretty little mortal, isn’t she?”

  “And her heart is claimed, so what now, brother?” Jake taunted.

  Edom took a small step closer to Jake. “Claimed? I think not. It is broken. And besides. The dead cannot claim anything.” And Edom slung his fist at Jake’s face.

  Raquel gasped, and her hands flew to her mouth as the force of Edom’s strike sent Jake reeling. Blood trickled from Jake’s nose, and the skin around his eye bloomed an angry red, but he was…smiling.

  “Seems I struck a nerve.” Jake wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Kill him,” Edom said darkly.

  An uncertain second passed as Edom’s guards deliberated between the command of one prince and the abject treachery toward another. But in that split second, Jake looked at Raquel, smiled brilliantly, and vanished.

  Completely and utterly vanished. He winked out of existence, just like his sword.

  Edom stuttered and spat, and his expression bloated with rage. “Come out and fight, you coward!”

  But Edom’s words were met with silence, and while Edom and his guard searched the room for signs of Jake, Raquel found herself searching too. For certainly he would not have abandoned her now to this actual bear of a man.

  And yet…why shouldn’t he?

  He’d been planning to kill her all along. He was not the man from her dreams. The real Jake could not feel affection. The real Jake knew only self-preservation. If Jake felt love at all, it was only for self.

  And he was right; he’d lied about none of it. It had been all a game to him, and she was nothing more than a prize.

  Edom’s attention settled back upon her. “Bind the girl, and put her on my horse. We leave now.”

  18

  Raquel’s jaw ached from the gag. They’d been traveling for hours. How many hours, Raquel had no idea. There was no sun to gauge time because the mist hid all.

  Prince Edom kept them riding at a steady pace, stopping occasionally to observe the way forward while sometimes consulting one of his guards. But then the branches would come alive, reaching for them as they’d reached for Jake’s party, though they were much bolder than they’d ever been with Jake. Edom spoke a word, as Jake had done, and the branches did retreat, but hesitantly. When Edom spoke, his command felt more like an inconvenience, and the trees never retreated completely. Raquel had the distinct impression that Edom could not navigate the mist as easily as Jake, but whatever his particular inhibition, the time labored on.

  Especially because she could not get Jake’s words out of her head: I never lied, my bride. You simply refused to believe me.

  But then she would remember their kiss. Their real, actual kiss, and she could not believe it was all for show—that he truly felt nothing. That his only intention was to kill her in her distraction. Except he’d also vanished and left her with this brute.

  Still, she kept searching for Jake. She also couldn’t believe he’d risk his position for the throne by capturing her only to vanish the moment Edom appeared. A liar and a traitor—yes, he was both of those things. But a coward? Raquel did not think so. He’d planned this coup for saints knew how long; he would not give up without a fight.

  Life is a game, he had said. He would wait. He would wait until the game favored his odds.

  Eventually, it became too dark to see, and Edom—with the aid of his kith—set up camp amidst a cluster of enormous and bloated roots. They forged a perimeter the way Jake and his men had done, but there was no blanket for Raquel this time. Edom dumped her right upon the earth and said, “How’s that for a marriage bed, my bride?”

  A few of his kith chuckled.

  Raquel, who had managed to work off her gag, spat at his feet.

  Edom crouched, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and jerked her close, nearly nose to nose. “Do not think that because I need your heart that I will not harm your body.”

  Raquel could not look at him without seeing all the horrors he’d committed in her dreams. “You are no better than the Depraved you fear,” she growled.

  Edom’s eyes narrowed. “And you are a fool. You actually believed my brother felt anything for you.”

  “I know he does.” She said it to get u
nder Edom’s skin. She said it in case Jake was somewhere near, listening. She said it because she still wanted so badly to believe it.

  Edom gripped her hair so hard she winced. “Foolish girl. You felt what he wanted you to feel. You believed what he wanted you to believe. Jakobián is a liar and a cheat.”

  “And you are a monster.”

  He released her hair and struck her across the face hard enough that she fell to the ground. She didn’t have hands to stop her fall; they were bound. And then her view was of Edom’s heavy black boots. He bent over her and spit upon her face. Raquel flinched as the spittle trailed down her cheek.

  “Mortal filth,” he snarled. “Gag her,” he ordered and stomped off.

  Two of his kith came forward immediately and refastened the gag. Raquel winced as they caught some of her hair in it, but she did not cry out. She lay there, glaring as they walked away laughing. As that bear of a man talked and drank with his kith. At one point, Prince Edom caught her gaze and smiled viciously.

  “Do you have eyes for your betrothed, my bride?” he taunted. “Eager to consummate our marriage? I can make arrangements for that now if you like.”

  Raquel turned her glare to the trees instead, and a few of his kith chuckled. He murmured something to his men that Raquel did not hear, but he did not get up from his seat.

  Where was Jake?

  The more time that passed and he did not reappear, the more Raquel began to wonder if she was mistaken about him, after all.

  She didn’t expect to fall asleep, but then her eyes snapped open and her back ached where a rock dug into it, and when she glanced over, she noticed the fire was gone and the mist had lightened.

  She’d also dreamed of Jake again.

  Holding her, kissing her. Such love in his eyes as he whispered upon her lips, “I love you.”

  That whisper echoed even now like a torment as her body rose to consciousness, and Almighty in heaven, if it hadn’t felt so real. It made her chest ache, experiencing something so beautiful—this love that could move mountains.

  To know that it was not real.

  She heard movement and glanced back to see Edom urinating on glowing embers, and she promptly glanced away.

  Edom snickered.

  And then he was hoisting her up to her feet, holding her before him firmly by the shoulders.

  “Don’t worry,” Edom said. “You’ll get used to it soon enough.”

  The idea made Raquel want to vomit, and she would have said as much except for the gag still tied resolutely around her mouth. So instead, she glared.

  Edom leaned closer. “If we weren’t in such a hurry, I’d make you get used to it right now.”

  A hungry breeze pushed at her, and branches snapped and creaked. Edom’s attention shot to the trees. “Time to go, boys,” he said, then tossed her onto the horse, and within two minutes, they were all mounted and riding again through the mist and trees.

  Into the unknown.

  Jake followed, never too close but never too far. Always with Raquel just in his sight.

  Last night had been…difficult.

  He’d fallen asleep to the memories of that kiss—their real, actual kiss—further compounded by the ones from his dreams, and when his eyes snapped open, his chest ached worse than before. As if something were being ripped out of it.

  No…

  As if something were growing inside of it, tearing through muscle and cartilage and bone to make way for itself.

  However, this time he found himself less concerned with the why of it and more concerned for her.

  Raquel.

  He’d nearly revealed himself the moment Edom had grabbed her hair. Never in all his life had he felt so fiercely protective over anyone—aside from himself. It was the same feeling he’d had in his dreams, and it took everything inside of him to hold back. To wait. To be patient as the game unfolded so that he might strike when the odds favored him most. It was the only way to deal with Edom, and Jake had perfected it after over so many years.

  And yet he’d nearly winked back into existence the second Edom had touched her.

  You actually believed my brother felt anything for you. Edom had said.

  I know he does.

  Jake could not get those words out of his mind. The conviction in her voice. The look in her eyes when she had gazed directly at him, which was impossible because there was no way she could have seen him upon that high tree branch. But those eyes had locked on his and skewered him to the core, and Jake had found himself wondering if this mortal possessed magik after all.

  But then Edom had stormed off, sparing Jake from acting rashly, and Raquel had fallen asleep against the tree root, though he’d watched her stubbornly fight fatigue. She’d lasted impressively late into the night, but her mortal body had finally succumbed, and her consciousness had drifted.

  She turned in her sleep and muttered something he could not make out, not with that blasted gag, but he wondered if she’d been dreaming about him.

  He’d seen her reach subconsciously for a rib at her corset, where she—undoubtedly—kept another one of her little claws. Edom hadn’t noticed. None of them had. All too inflated with their own superiority to ever be concerned over a mortal. She hadn’t reached for that little weapon once today, but of course she wasn’t fool enough to try to take on Edom and all his kith alone.

  She did not realize that she wouldn’t be alone.

  It wasn’t until Edom had fallen asleep that Jake finally relaxed, and so he’d settled back against a tree branch, legs extended and ankles crossed, with Raquel directly in his sight. He eventually fell asleep only for her to be the subject of his dreams—again—and they were much more vivid this time. He blamed their actual kiss for that.

  Fates, that kiss.

  It had simultaneously ripped him apart and sewn him back together.

  When dawn arrived, he’d watched the girl rise to consciousness, watched his brother grab her arms and pull her to her feet and hold on to her. It took every ounce of Jake’s willpower not to manifest. The wind was the best he could do, but thankfully it had worked and set Edom firmly upon his goal.

  So they continued, keeping this irritatingly slow pace through the wood while Jake followed behind. The occasional cry of a Depraved echoed through the mist, but they never drew nearer, and Jake wondered what Edom had done to keep them so preoccupied.

  No, Jake feared what Edom had done.

  Again, Edom stopped at nightfall. Again, they situated Raquel. Again, Jake watched from a high branch until she fell asleep upon her side; however, her features did not relax in sleep, and her body shuddered with cold.

  Jake looked to Edom, who had passed out with drink. Two of his guards sat watch, gazing in opposite directions.

  Worthless.

  Jake slid down from his perch and crept into their camp, his footfalls silent upon the soft earth. He walked right past one of the guards on watch, invisible due to his glamour. The guard, however, sat upright, and one hand went to his sword on reflex as he scanned their surroundings. But he did not see Jake—could not. He merely sensed what his eyes could not see.

  And Jake waited.

  He waited until the guard’s posture relaxed, and then Jake crept on.

  To Raquel.

  He knelt behind her, close but not touching. Hesitant to touch, but also feeling this overwhelming urge to be nearer to her. Jake crouched there, deliberating. Somehow he knew that if he crossed this boundary, he would never come back.

  Except.

  He had the distinct impression he had already crossed. Because it had nearly killed him to see the look on her face when she had realized it had all been a lie.

  You have lied so well and for so long that you can’t even recognize truth anymore.

  Another shudder rolled through Raquel’s body, and that decided him. Quietly, carefully, he lay down behind her, slid his arm around her waist and drew her back against him. Her body relaxed against him, into his warmth.

&nbs
p; He remembered his dream, and he glanced down to where her belly had been full and rounded with child.

  Raquel sighed, rolled into him, and buried her face in his chest.

  Something cracked inside Jake’s own.

  His hand slid up her back and into her hair—such soft and luxurious hair—where the cloth was tied. He worked quickly and slipped the tie free, then tucked the gag into his pocket, untied her wrists, and tossed that rope aside.

  “Please don’t leave, Jake,” she murmured against his chest.

  Jake’s chest tightened, and he drew her closer. “You do not know what you ask of me,” he whispered so softly, and then he wondered if, perhaps, she did.

  19

  Raquel first noticed the kiss of cold. She’d been unusually warm and comfortable, and then suddenly she was not. The warmth had pulled away and left a seeping chill behind, and Raquel opened her eyes.

  Her first thought was of Jake.

  She’d dreamed of him again, and yet she could have sworn it was real. That he’d untied her gag, that his arms had slid around her waist, that he’d breathed into her hair and whispered words she could not recall. She could still smell the sweet scent of spring that seemed to cling to his clothes, and she could still feel the weight of his embrace, heavy and comforting, just as she could acutely feel the absence of it.

  She didn’t know why her heart persisted in this—in its feelings for him—or why it had latched so desperately and defiantly onto a dream.

  Except.

  He had kissed her. That part, at least, had not been a dream. It had been real and sweet and as brilliant as the dawn, and it had set a sun inside of her that would not dim.

  I never lied, my bride. You simply refused to believe me.

  Raquel sighed and…

  Froze.

  She could sigh.

  Her hands flew to her mouth where the gag…

  Her hands were free.