Married by Treachery Page 6

  Jake forced his gaze upon her torso, where deep red blood stained the fabric that matched her brilliant summer sky eyes.

  “Sit her up,” Jake said, and Rian did as commanded while Jake withdrew a dagger and cut the corset’s ties. He tossed the corset aside, Rian laid her back down, and—very carefully—Jake cut her slip from neckline to waist and peeled the fabric back from the wound.

  Rian sucked in a breath through his teeth.

  Raquel’s cut wasn’t deep, though it was long and bled freely—the red so bright, like everything else about her. But it wasn’t the depth that concerned him. It was the oily black substance mixed with her blood. The poison of the Depraved. One drop was enough to turn a mortal, and this was much more than that.

  “Find Sienne,” Jake said.

  Rian didn’t hesitate. He stood and left immediately, while Jake stayed with Raquel. He plucked a clean tunic from his drawer, knelt beside the bed, and held it against her wound to staunch the flow.

  “What were you thinking, you insolent, foolish, beautiful girl.”

  He had not meant to speak that one word aloud, but he was so struck by the sheer vibrance of her. The warm hue of her skin, the natural blush in her cheeks.

  The life.

  Life isn’t a game, Jake, she had said. 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.

  “Then why are you so reckless with yours?” he said, studying her. He could truly observe her now, this mortal bride so unlike his kith even before their kingdom had been cursed. That color—that life—was what had ensorcelled him before when she’d snuck into his bedchamber.

  No, before even that. When she’d stood before her people and offered herself up to him. Even for a mortal, she stood out.

  Especially for a mortal.

  Yes, the women of the Forest were known for their perfect beauty, yet as Jake gazed upon the mortal girl, he couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty in imperfection. In color that blotched and shifted, in the splattering of freckles that dusted her nose and spoke of time spent in the sun. The differences marked her and set her apart and made her so deeply intriguing.

  His gaze followed lines that weren’t soft with privilege but were cut with training and discipline. His attention moved to hands that weren’t smoothed but were callused and strong from hard work. Raquel’s nose turned up at the end, as though set in a natural state of defiance, and her upper lip jutted out more than the bottom, giving a pucker to her mouth that Jake felt the sudden urge to taste.

  Which was precisely the moment Rian returned with Sienne, who was still covered from head to toe in Depraved blood.

  Sienne’s eyes narrowed on Raquel, and then she turned the heat of her wrath upon Jake. “You idiot. You should have known better.”

  “There are countless things I probably should have done, but before we begin listing off all of my deficiencies, perhaps you might consider helping the girl before she dies in the next two minutes…?”

  Sienne pursed her lips but joined him at the bed. “She’s a pretty little mortal, isn’t she?” Sienne eyed him.

  “She’ll be a dead little mortal if you don’t hurry.”

  “That’s hardly my fault. Well, let me see it.”

  Jake pulled back the tunic he’d been holding against Raquel’s wound, and Sienne fell still. She looked long at Jake, who looked steadily back, and a strange and heavy pressure settled upon his chest. “Can you help her or not?” Jake asked tightly.

  “It seems I must,” Sienne snapped. “Unless you’ve got another eligible mortal bride hiding somewhere in your bedchamber. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Jake glowered at her, but she shooed at him. “Well, get back. I can’t possibly purge the poison from her body with all this anxious energy simmering around you.”

  “I’m not anxious.”

  “Mm.”

  Jake regarded her flatly but stepped back to give Sienne room while Rian—now joined by Banon and Marix—watched from the doorway. Sienne knelt beside the bed, then flipped her dark hair over her shoulders.

  Jake flexed his fingers.

  Sienne smoothed the blankets upon the bed.

  Jake tapped his foot.

  Sienne glanced back at him. “Not anxious, are we?”

  “One minute.”

  Sienne rolled her eyes, took Raquel’s hand in hers, and closed her eyes.

  A breath.

  Sienne’s forehead wrinkled.

  “How bad is it?” Jake asked.

  “Very.”

  That pressure pushed harder upon his chest, making it oddly difficult to breathe. He told himself that it was because of their mission. That she was their only chance. If he failed now, he would never be admitted to the palace again, and he would spend the rest of his life running from Edom’s vengeance.

  Though considering the state of their kingdom, the rest of his life might not be very long.

  Sienne murmured, and Jake felt that familiar pull upon the ether—the force that linked all Forest kith. A force they drew upon in various forms, depending upon the Fates’ discretion, and the Fates had gifted Sienne with healing. In fact, she was the most talented healer Jake had ever known, and that was saying a lot. One acquired many acquaintances the longer one lived, and Jake had lived to see almost one hundred years of sunsets.

  Never sunrises. He was usually still sleeping off drink from the night before.

  And you… you have so much time and all the resources in the world, yet you whittle it away on drink and games that cause the rest of us pain and suffering.

  He looked back at Raquel unconscious and bleeding in his bed. Sienne’s expression wrenched with pain, the fire in the hearth flickered and dimmed, and Sienne gasped.

  Something was wrong.

  Jake was already walking forward as Sienne’s eyes snapped open and found his.

  “How can I help?” Jake asked.

  “I need to borrow some of your strength,” Sienne said. Her voice rattled, and she held out a trembling hand.

  “Do you plan on giving it back?” Jake said with a smile, but there was no mirth in it. He was attempting to make light of a situation that was not light at all. Sienne knew it too, and she looked as though she were about to rebuke him for it, but then he held out his hand in offering.

  Sienne closed her lips and took his hand.

  And she pulled.

  Jake dropped to his knees with a gasp. “Maybe ease into it…next time…” he managed, feeling his own life force draining from his body. Fates, how many years was she taking? Five? Ten?

  Does it matter? You waste it all away anyway… He heard a small voice in his mind that sounded irritatingly like Raquel’s.

  Jake’s head began to pound, his chest constricted, and just when he was about to yank his hand from Sienne’s, she let go.

  Jake sagged forward and caught himself on the edge of the bed. Sienne was similarly slumped over, skin pale and eyes closed, but Jake’s attention slid to Raquel, her wound.

  The oily black poison was gone, and the bleeding had stopped.

  Jake breathed in fully for perhaps the first time since he’d first laid eyes on her holding Lightbringer outside the gates. He watched Raquel’s soft and rounded bosom rise and fall, slow but steady. And then he wondered if staring was still considered bad manners when the subject wasn’t entirely conscious.

  Raquel would say yes.

  The thought made him smile.

  “How many years did you take?” Jake asked.

  Sienne lifted her head and wiped her brow. “Near fifty.”

  Jake turned his head and looked at his cousin.

  Sienne returned his gaze.

  Jake’s eyes narrowed.

  “I gave her fifty of mine, too,” Sienne said to his surprise, and then she returned her attention to Raquel. “Do not fail us, Jake. We’ve all invested our future
in you.”

  Jake was still reeling from the fact that Raquel had needed one hundred kith years to pull out of that with her life. “I know. I still intend to leave at dawn.”

  “That could be a problem. It might take her a few days to wake.”

  Jake frowned. “How many days?”

  “Two days. One week. It all depends on her.”

  They didn’t have a week. “I’ll have a cart prepared.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sienne replied. “Any disruption to her present stasis could plunge her deeper into sleep, and neither of us have the years to spare for that. I’m sorry, Jake. I’ve done all I can, but she is still mortal, and her body needs time to heal.”

  Jake dragged his teeth across his bottom lip as he looked to a sky he couldn’t see. Could never see. “This won’t go unnoticed.”

  “Then let us both hope she wakes tomorrow,” Sienne said, then added, “You might bind her, as I first advised. Next time, I will not be able to save her.”

  “There will not be a next time.”

  Sienne raised a brow. “Are you going to follow her around like a little pup?”

  Jake smiled.

  Sienne was not amused. She stood and looked pointedly down at him. “Don’t lose sight of the mission, Jake.”

  Jake also stood, forcing her to look up. He felt unusually annoyed. “Goodnight, Sienne.”

  Sienne’s lips pursed. She glanced askance at the three men by the door and started to go.

  “How is little Avi?” Jake asked.

  Sienne paused. “She’s all right. A little shaken, but unharmed.”

  Then, “Why did you bring her?”

  Sienne gazed back at him. Her expression had turned somber, and Jake already dreaded her answer. “I had no choice.”

  Jake exhaled slowly. “So Amdell has fallen.”

  “Yes.” Sienne’s gaze fell. “This is all that’s left of us.”

  The weight of that statement filled the room with silence, for this news was heavy indeed, further compounded by the losses they’d endured this night. Amdell had been a mighty fortress, a towering defiance against the curse, and everyone expected it to fall only second to the palace. The fact that it had succumbed…

  They had even less time than Jake had suspected.

  “Thank the Fates your pretty little mortal doesn’t do what she’s told,” Sienne said, pulling him from his dark and spiraling thoughts. “Reminds me of someone else I know.” She gave him an emphatic look then closed the door before he could respond, leaving him alone with Raquel and his three comrades, who were studying him.

  Jake made a decision. “One of you watch over her for me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Banon offered.

  Jake shoved himself to his feet, then strode past his men and into the hall.

  “Where are you going?” Banon called after him.

  “To take a damn bath.”

  Raquel did not wake the next morning, or the next, much to Jake’s chagrin. It seemed to him that she defied him even in her state of unconsciousness. As if she knew he didn’t have time for this, and therefore persisted in a state of deep vegetation just to get under his skin.

  For two days.

  How in the hell was he supposed to lay claim to her heart and affections while she was unconscious? Then again, at least she wasn’t trying to kill him. That was an improvement.

  Meanwhile, Jake’s mother still had not arrived.

  He could go in search of her, but he didn’t dare chance missing her in the event that she appeared in his absence, and he also did not feel comfortable leaving the girl. Instead, he’d asked Astair to try again, to scry the mist and all of Canna for his mother, but to no avail. Astair could not find the queen, and this fact unsettled Jake more than any other. Of course, Jake’s mother had the unparalleled talent of making herself unfindable, but she wasn’t supposed to be using that talent on Jake, and certainly not now.

  So where had she gone?

  Hopefully his father hadn’t caught wind of their plan, but each moment that passed brought Edom closer. This normally wouldn’t be an issue; their plan depended upon Edom being absent from the palace, because Jake couldn’t very well go traipsing into the palace as Edom with Edom still inside of it.

  But that was just it: Jake needed to go traipsing into the palace as Edom to steal Edom’s blessing and birthright. It was no secret that King Issachar’s health had drastically declined, especially in the last year. At nearly half a millennium, King Issachar had pushed the edge of life even for their kind, and his heart had finally grown weary. It was what had prompted Jake’s mother to fashion the coat in the first place, for surely King Issachar would be ready to pass on his blessing to Canna’s heir this year, and with the timing of the veil—well, it was a rare moment to seize, like a gift from the Fates.

  If only Jake could steal it.

  But Jake needed the coat for that, and his coat was broken.

  The monster that’d wounded Raquel had torn right through the fabric to get to her flesh, thus severing the intricate enchantments his mother had carefully woven. He needed that coat to enter the palace, and he needed his mother to mend the coat, or everything they’d so carefully fought for would be lost.

  So Jake spent two days pacing between the watchtower, Raquel, and the forest, constantly looking out for Edom’s inevitable scouts. With Banon and Rian’s help, he’d burned the carnage from the night prior, glamouring the flames as best they could to hide them, and when night descended the second time and there was still no sign of his mother, he’d returned to the girl’s bedside. To see if he could do anything to speed the waking process.

  Havarr had left food and water for her—both untouched. Jake snatched a cracker off of the tray and shoved it into his mouth, but like everything else in this Fates-forsaken place, it tasted like dust. As flavorless as their kingdom was colorless. The only substance with any marginal flavor was wine, and so Jake washed down his bite with a large gulp from the ampoule Havarr had also left, then returned to the bedside, where he absently regarded Raquel.

  Which, honestly, he found himself doing a lot. Too much, probably. But he couldn’t seem to help himself. She was like a ripe fruit in this withered kingdom of rot and decay. A bolt of color in a grayscale world. A blazing fire in the bitter cold, and try as he might, he could not look away from her.

  Raquel sighed and turned her face toward him, though her eyes remained closed.

  She’s a pretty little mortal, isn’t she? Sienne had said.

  No, Jake thought as his eyes slid over her face. She is exquisite.

  Do not lose sight of the mission, Sienne had reminded him.

  Jake sighed, slumped back, and raked a hand through his hair. As if he’d needed reminding. This mission was the only thing that had occupied his thoughts these last seven years, since they’d lost the last bride to the forest. Still, it was a pity that Raquel had to die.

  9

  Raquel’s eyes opened with a start. She’d been dreaming again, as she was often wont to do. Normally, this wouldn’t have been an issue, except all of her dreams had been about Jake.

  Jake as a boy, doted upon by an adoring (and very beautiful) mother. To a little Jake finding comfort in his mother’s arms when his twin brother had been particularly cruel and Jake’s father would not hear his accusations. To a slightly older Jake being mocked and abused by a large and hairy adolescent boy who looked exactly like a precursor to the glamoured Bear Prince. To Jake spending more and more time alone in a lush and vivid forest where he could exist as he was, without courtly expectation and a barbaric twin to make his life a living hell.

  Jake had memorized every plant by name and their properties. Which ones he could eat, which ones poisoned, and which could heal, and Raquel’s dreams showed her many accounts of him tending to animals that his brother had tortured for sport.

  And then, in her dreams, the forest began to shift and change. A thick mist settled and anchored deep, obsc
uring Jake’s magnificent kingdom. The light faded, and all the glorious foliage began to wither and die.

  She saw Jake, his dark hair falling forward as he knelt over a stag with the largest spread of antlers she’d ever seen. The focus of her dream shifted, reeling her forward like a lure until she was standing directly behind him and gazing down upon the stag.

  At the black rot covering its body and eating away at its flesh.

  The stag’s legs twitched as it whined in agony, and Jake’s sword of light winked into existence—a single bolt of light in this strangely faded world. She watched Jake raise his sword, grinding his teeth as he yelled, and plunge his light through the stag’s heart.

  The stag slumped, dead.

  Jake’s sword winked out, his head bowed, his eyes closed, and a single tear slid down his face. In that moment, in that display of emotion he’d never given glimpse of before, Raquel’s heart ached, and she was overwhelmed with the desire to wrap her arms around him. To draw him to her breast and hold him close as his mother had done.

  Which was precisely what she did, in her dream.

  Her arms slid around his shoulders, and she drew him in, his face to her chest. Thus supported, he sagged into her and wrapped his arms around her waist, holding so tight, and suddenly, Raquel did not want to let him go for as long as she lived.

  “I can’t stop it,” Jake whispered against her skin, his voice shattered by grief.

  In her dream, she grabbed his face between her hands and tilted it up. Stars in heaven, he was so beautiful, even more so in his grief with vulnerability spilling down his cheeks. It softened those sharp angles, melted the steel. It made this immortal kith human.

  And his humanity was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  “If you truly cannot stop it, then let it go,” she whispered, and bent down to kiss his full mouth. In her dream, he tasted familiar. Like comfort and warmth and safety.

  Like home.

  Jake kissed her back like a man clinging desperately to his life. As if she were the only thing keeping him from rotting away like the world all around them.

  That was the moment she woke. Flushed and sweating and…utterly confused as she gazed up at a ceiling that…wasn’t hers.