“Where have the two of you been?”
The men glare daggers at one another.
“Safe,” Killian declares. “You ordered me to protect your bride, and so I did.” He glances at the dead gryphon. “Congratulations on your kill.”
He’s right—I’ve never felt safer than I did with Killian’s head between my thighs—and yet his answer cuts all the way to the bone. I’m a dalliance for him. An obligation.
I forgot that in the heady success of seducing him.
But he still means to turn me over to Alistair at my wedding the morning after tomorrow. I have one full day to convince Killian to take me away from here. The ceremony will be held at midmorning on the day after.
How can I prove to Killian that I’m worth more than any castle when it would mean spending the rest of our lives on the run?
No safety. No children.
An ache blossoms next to my heart at the thought.
I have nothing to offer him but my face and body. I’m a liability. A burden. If monsters will trail us wherever we go…then there is no future for us. The one I hazily envisioned is impossible.
Seducing him isn’t a game anymore. This is deadly serious. I cannot let him leave me. The prince will never let him stay.
Alistair glowers fearsomely at me. Killian moves between us.
“Why assign me to guard her if you don’t trust me?” He jerks his head to indicate me, hovering behind him. My heart breaks a little for their fractured friendship. He will feel the loss keenly, even if he can’t bring himself to admit it.
“It’s. A. Test,” Alistair grinds out. “One you are both failing.”
“Of what?” I push Killian’s arm aside and insert myself between the two feuding men, heedless of onlookers. Despair makes me reckless. “Killian’s loyalty? You shove us together for a few days and then decide we’ve betrayed you, whether or not it’s the truth, thus proving that no one really cares about you?”
He recoils. I keep pushing.
“Isn’t confirming your worldview just an excuse to cut off the only man who’s ever truly called you friend?”
“Briar,” Killian says in warning.
“We’ll discuss this later, Rose.” He points at the dead monster, then at his knight. “Get that beast out of my ballroom while I have a word with my bride.”
Killian turns his head as if to spit, but he restrains himself and stalks away to do as he was ordered. My heart sinks. As long as he is bound to the prince by a sworn oath, he cannot be mine.
Alistair grabs my chin.
“You are not the obedient, empty-headed little princess I was expecting.”
I jerk away, but he quickly backs me against a column only a few feet from the fallen guard. An observer might think he’s comforting me after a terrifying experience, but Alistairistheterrifying experience. I glimpse the storeroom where I spent a quarter hour with Killian and am swamped by a wave of longing.
“I don’t know where you got that notion, Your Highness. I’ve been fending off entitled royals for my entire adult life.”
An ashen undertone shades his reddened face. “I earned you.”
“We both know you didn’t.”Killian did.I don’t say it out loud, but I think it at full volume.
He grips my arm. This time, no fantasies of being bent over flicker through my imagination. “I want your word that you will remain faithful to me.”
“As soon as our vows are spoken, I will be yours in every way, Alistair.” Outwardly, at any rate. My heart is my own. “I expect the same courtesy from you. No mistresses.”
“Agreed.”
The glint in his eyes tells me he’s lying. I’ve seen him do it so many times that I recognize the way he lights up when he thinks he’s getting away with something, like a naughty schoolboy.
