Married by Treachery Read online

  “So that my brother would realize I betrayed him?” he drawled, eyeing her over his goblet. “Come, I thought you were smarter than that.”

  An important detail clicked in Raquel’s mind, which seemed to be working unusually slow at the moment. “Your brother is Prince Edom.”

  “There. I knew your little claws weren’t the only thing sharp about you.” He tipped his head and drained the rest of his goblet. “But yes; we’re twins. According to the nursemaid, I came out holding fast to his heel, and I’m pleased to say I’ve been a proper thorn in it ever since.”

  Prince Edom—the real Prince Edom—was this Forest kith’s twin brother. Twins.

  Raquel was still trying to understand. “So you…glamoured yourself to look like your brother and came to Harran in his stead?” Jake gave her a very patronizing look, to which Raquel glowered. “Sorry, all you’ve explained to me is who you’re not, so you are…?”

  “Getting very tired of holding this goblet.” He held the second goblet before her again. Seeing her unmoved, he sighed and raised his gaze to the ceiling. “My name is Jakobián Alistair Issacharvyzin Risorro Molto, second son of Issachar the third, and prince of the Court of Light.” He looked directly at her again, and a grin shadowed his lips. “Or you may call me Jake.”

  Jake.

  Prince Edom’s twin (and slightly younger) brother. Raquel had never known Prince Edom even had a brother.

  “You look nothing alike,” Raquel said at last.

  Jake snorted. “Thank gods.”

  And also… “Court of Light…?” Raquel gazed around and beyond him. “Your land is a nightmare.”

  “Manners, my bride,” Jake reminded her, a glint in his eyes. “In case you didn’t know, it’s considered rude to insult someone’s home.”

  “It’s also considered rude to abduct someone.”

  Jake sighed. “See? This would have all gone over so much better with wine.”

  “My dagger is still pointed at my chest, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Jake glanced down at the dagger almost as though he’d completely forgotten it was there, but then his gaze unfocused and slid from the dagger to her bosom, which heaved in a corset that suddenly felt very tight.

  “Seeing as you’re so concerned with manners, Jake, I thought you might like to know that where I come from, it’s also considered rude to stare,” Raquel said.

  He blinked, the dagger dropped to the floor, and he met her gaze. “I was just wondering how in the Fates you managed to maneuver so deftly in that.” He gestured at her corset.

  Raquel leaned closer in an attempt to be fearsome. “Just imagine how deftly I can maneuver without it.”

  He raised both brows at that.

  Raquel suddenly realized what she’d said. “That’s not…” Her cheeks burned, and his lips curled like ribbon. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Here.” He held the goblet before her once more and kicked the dagger across the room, far out of her reach.

  This time, she relented, almost without thinking. As if her subconscious was trying to give her some other point of focus—some anchor to help her regain control of herself and the situation—but just as her fingertips grazed his, he pulled the goblet away.

  “But you—!” she started.

  “I need you to remove your wrist-strap first, my bride.”

  Raquel fumed and grumbled as she unclasped the strap and the little blade tucked within. She chucked the strap across the room, glaring at him as she did.

  “And the one in your corset.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake… how do you know!?”

  But Jake only waited, golden eyes gleaming. She begrudgingly reached around and slipped a slender dagger from beneath the ties of her corset. This, she threw with so much vigor that it sank into the wall above his bed.

  Jake eyed the still-vibrating hilt, then her. “I would so love to see you throw that without your corset.”

  Raquel made a face, but he slipped the goblet into her hand and wrapped her fingers firmly around it. As he pulled away, Raquel asked, “How do I know this, too, isn’t a disguise?” She gestured at his figure.

  The corner of his lips quirked upward. “Would you be disappointed if it was?”

  Raquel felt suddenly flushed. “My only disappointment is that I didn’t skewer you to that bed…” Her words trailed as he took a small step in her space. His warmth and summery scent assaulted her again, and his lips twisted, as if he’d just counted yet another victory for some game he was playing.

  “What are you doing?” Raquel demanded, but there was no gusto to her voice. Only breath and heat and unwieldy nerves, and those nerves hummed louder as Jake reached for her—no, past her—and plucked a brown coat from a coat rack, then held it between them.

  It was a single piece of fabric that had been neatly cut and sewn, with wide sleeves, its hem and neck trimmed with embroidery. Those stitches had been made with golden thread—a gold that matched Jake’s eyes, Raquel noted.

  However.

  “Why are you showing me this—blazing stars in heaven!” Raquel gasped.

  Jake had opened the coat and pulled it around his shoulders. The effect had been both instantaneous and transformative, changing the man before her into the Bear Prince. He now towered over her, all boorishness and wild hair—he even smelled of sour earth again!—and those dark and feral eyes burned into her.

  Raquel touched her fingers to her mouth and took an involuntary step back, marveling at the complete transformation. “How… how is this possible?”

  “With rare and very powerful magik.” He pulled it free, and in a blink, he was his (painfully charming) self again. “Though I’ve recently been told this kind of magik is nothing compared to your supreme mortal powers of love.”

  Raquel ignored the slight, instead wondering at the kind of magik that could make a man appear exactly like another, even down to the sensory details. “Are you the one who’s been stealing our brides all these years?” Because if it had been Jake, it drastically altered her present objective.

  “No, no,” Jake answered, and he must have seen the skepticism written all over Raquel’s face, because he added, “Upon my word, it has always been my brother, Edom, until now.”

  Raquel searched his (handsome) face. Did she believe him? Did she even have a choice? He was kith and physically incapable of lying, after all. So if it had truly been Edom all the previous years— “Then why now?”

  That kith wildness reflected in his eyes, and he leaned a fraction closer. “Why, indeed?”

  She glared at him, waiting for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached past her and returned the coat to its hook.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked, trying again to get to the bottom of this.

  But Jake only smiled wide, showing off a set of perfect white teeth. “I am going to marry you properly.” And then he winked as he flicked her ear—she flinched—and strode for the hearth.

  And Raquel wondered…

  Would the coat transform her? Could she steal it and use it to escape? There was the issue of her voice. While the coat had made Jake appear like a totally different man, it had not changed his voice, and her soft tone—coming from that Bear Prince—would be alarming to anyone who heard it.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Jake sat in the high-backed chair. “The glamour won’t work for you. It’s fashioned specifically for me.”

  Raquel pursed her lips and folded her arms. “So you can read minds too?”

  “Just yours.” He winked again and refilled his goblet. “Come. Sit.” He nodded toward the chair opposite.

  Well, this wasn’t at all how she’d planned for the evening to go.

  However.

  Jake appeared to be willing to talk, and perhaps if she indulged him in this, he would answer some of her questions. Namely: who in the heavens deserved her vengeance now? If Adina still lived, what had happened to the other five brides? Why had Jake come th
is time, and what did he plan to do with her?

  Besides, she couldn’t run blindly into the mist, and while she was determined, she wasn’t an idiot. If she was to escape and find a way to put an end to Harran’s suffering, she needed an accurate picture of her circumstances.

  In her deliberation, Jake added, “I won’t bite.” He flashed his teeth in jest, but something wild danced in his eyes.

  Raquel was swiftly reminded that he was not human. He was kith. As dangerous as he was beautiful—and he was beautiful.

  Jake arched a brow and leaned forward in his chair. “Unless you want me to, my bride.”

  “My name is Raquel,” Raquel snapped. “And the only thing I want is for you to answer my questions.”

  Jake sat back in his chair and let his goblet dangle from his long fingers. “Careful what you wish for…Raquel.” His gaze flickered to her, full of derision. “Answers don’t always speak in a language we understand, and even when they do, they oftentimes reveal things we do not wish to know.”

  “I am willing to take my chances.”

  Jake sighed and dragged his goblet to his lips. “They always are,” he murmured, and he took another sip.

  Raquel wondered at that comment, but only briefly, and took a step forward, then another, until she found herself standing opposite Jake. His gaze lifted to hers, where it locked, following her every motion until she sat primly down in the chair opposite him.

  “Relax,” he said.

  “I am relaxed.”

  “You’re sitting like you’ve got a sword at your back.” And then he pulled his goblet away and eyed her. “Do you have a sword at your back?”

  “If I do, you’re losing your touch.”

  His eyes gleamed all over her. “Unlikely.”

  “And anyway,” she continued, ignoring the sudden warmth that filled her belly, “you abducted me from my home—”

  “You offered yourself…”

  “—and then you dragged me through a forest—”

  “That was my horse, actually.”

  “You took all of my daggers—”

  “Save the one you tried to murder me with a moment ago…”

  “—and locked me in a room… How can you possibly expect me to relax?”

  He frowned. “Do you find your bedchamber inadequate?”

  “Prison,” she amended.

  “You call that a prison? Clearly, I have underestimated your upbringing—”

  Raquel growled in frustration. “Would you just…” She’d raised a hand as if to throttle him or grasp hold of all the words that had been there a second ago, but then Jake gave her that infuriating smile again. “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?”

  “Life is a game, my bride. One long, exhausting game. We win. We lose.” He raised his goblet. “And we drink to endure it all.”

  Raquel regarded him flatly. “How inspiring.”

  “That is wisdom you mortals can never quite comprehend, given your meager little lifespans. You’re welcome.” He tipped his goblet toward her.

  “Yes, well, not all of us are blessed with so many years to waste away, and we must make the most of the time afforded us.”

  “By dying.”

  His mockery and incessant disregard of Harran’s suffering made something snap inside of her. “We all die. All the magik in the world won’t save you or your kith from fate. Your years may be longer than ours, but they are numbered just the same. Life isn’t a game, Jake. It isn’t something to play at or endure. It is a gift, coveted by those who would give anything to still have breath in their lungs—breath you and your kith take for granted. I don’t have time to take it for granted. Every second counts for me. And you… you have so much time and all the resources in the world, yet you whittle them away on drink and games that cause the rest of us pain and suffering.”

  Her words were met with a silence so profound that she could hear her own heart beating a strong and unsteady rhythm in her chest.

  Jake’s gaze sharpened and fixed immutably on hers, and the goblet stilled in his hands. “If I recall, your people have long benefited from mine.” His tone was low and edged with something wild and dangerous.

  Despite her better judgement, Raquel did not back down. “And we pay for that benefit in blood. What I want to know, Your Grace, is how you intend to use mine?”

  Before Jake could answer, or murder her outright, a piercing shriek echoed through the night. It was the same sound she’d heard earlier when Jake and his company had escorted her through the mist and dead trees.

  Jake shoved himself from the chair and reached the window in two strides.

  Raquel stood. “What is that sound?”

  There was a knock on the door, but it proved only a perfunctory warning. The door swung open, and a large Forest kith man stormed through. Raquel recognized him from her escort, though she didn’t know his name.

  He stopped just inside the door, where he bowed and cast Raquel a sideways glance. “Your Grace. Apologies for the interruption, but you are needed at the gate.”

  If Raquel had thought Jake dangerous before, he looked predatory now.

  The man’s expression faltered beneath Jake’s lethal stare, and he added, quietly, “You know I wouldn’t have interrupted if it weren’t absolutely necessary, Your Grace.”

  “That is why I ordered five of you here,” Jake said through his teeth. “So that I wouldn’t be necessary.”

  The man lifted his gaze. “Five are not enough.”

  Jake stilled, and something passed between the men. That horrible shrieking sounded again, closer this time, then Jake cursed and strode for the door.

  Raquel strode for the door too.

  Jake spun on her. “No.” He was all fire and authority, and Raquel shrank back on pure instinct. “You will wait here until I say otherwise.”

  He continued after the other Forest kith man, who waited at the door.

  “I am not a dog that you can order to sit and stay,” Raquel said after him.

  Jake stopped at the door and looked back at her, but there was nothing friendly in his gaze. “Correct. You are my bride, and I am your prince, and you will do exactly as I have commanded.”

  He ducked through the door.

  “But you can’t just—” Raquel ran after him, but the door slammed in her face. She reached for the handle, which suddenly glowed and burned fire-hot. She jerked her hand back on reflex, hissing in pain as that handle melted into the door and frame, trapping her behind it.

  Raquel slammed her fists upon the door. “You conceited—heartless—Ah!”

  But Jake was already gone.

  5

  Jake watched the metal leak into the door’s joints, sealing Raquel behind it. He heard her fists slam against wood as she screamed, “You conceited—heartless—Ah!”

  “Determined little thing,” Rian murmured.

  He had no idea.

  “I’ll admit,” Rian continued. Jake could now hear Raquel pacing on the other side of the door. “I didn’t believe Marix when he said the mortal was in your chambers. I thought you were waiting.” Rian’s last word baited.

  “I am.” Jake smiled. “She tried to slit my throat just now.”

  Rian blinked, clearly not expecting that response. “She…what?”

  A vision of her face suddenly appeared in Jake’s mind, cheeks blotched with indignation, blue eyes bright with fury, wisps of sun-gold hair floating defiantly about her face, and he grinned despite himself. But then that vision morphed, drifting to the picture of her full and heaving bosom bursting within that skin-tight corset.

  In the distance, another shriek echoed, but Jake was so consumed by that vision of her that he hardly heard it.

  “Uh… Jake?” Rian studied him.

  Jake promptly turned from the door and his indignant bride and strode for the stair while Rian hurried to keep pace beside him. “So why, exactly, am I needed at the gate?”

  Rian glanced behind them. “Should I send some
one to guard her door?”

  “I thought we were short on resources.” Jake looked sideways at his man, who flinched at the reprimand. “Forget the girl,” Jake continued, waving a dismissive hand in Raquel’s general direction, and then they jogged down the stairs as another shriek echoed through the night. “There had better be a hundred of those bastards, or else you—”

  “Closer to two hundred.”

  Jake stopped so abruptly at the bottom of the stairs that Rian nearly bumped into him. “What?”

  Rian gave him an emphatic look. “Sienne’s arrived—”

  “Yes, I figured that much!”

  Jake’s cousin, Sienne, had professed loyalty to him, and she’d further proven it by her generous donation of twenty warriors, including two elite. She’d never cared for her uncle—Jake’s father and Canna’s king—and she liked Edom even less. So when Jake had divulged his intentions seven years ago, shortly after he failed to abduct the last bride, Sienne had not hesitated to join his cause. She had, however, hesitated with Jake’s logistics. So many kith moving through the forest would certainly draw them.

  Which was why Jake had ordered not one, not two—not even three—but five of his elite to stand over that gate. Well, four. Rian was currently beside him, and, as if the Fates themselves intervened to confirm Rian’s claim, the night suddenly erupted in monstrous shrieking.

  Jake punched through the door and into the night. Little Mignon was wide awake, everyone bolting down the streets, in and out of doors, rushing for the gate where—

  Jake’s jaw dropped and a curse fell out of it. Above the gate, winged black shadows swarmed like hornets, trying to penetrate the invisible magik barrier that protected them within this little outpost. It was a barrier Jake had constructed himself, and he’d been quite proud of it too; however, as he watched those enormous swarming demons, he began to wonder if he’d overestimated his abilities. It was a rare occurrence, but it did happen.

  “Where in hell did they all come from?” Jake said, aghast. Both he and Rian were now sprinting for the gate.

  “No idea! But it’s all we can do to keep them off Sienne, never mind open the gate…”

  Jake’s kith fought at the watchtower and along the wall’s inner walkway, trying to hold back those Depraved that managed to reach through the barrier. Light flickered in the mist beyond the wall—undoubtedly Sienne and her warriors trying to clear a path so that they could open the gate without letting the Depraved flood Little Mignon.