Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (85)

Hair rose upon my nape and arms.

I didn’t need another. I tugged the drapes aside just enough to glimpse the sharp turn up ahead. As I’d begun to suspect, we were not venturing to the city at all.

We were traveling across the mountain into deeper woodland.

I breathed, slow and quiet, through my nose in an effort to keep the guards from noticing the faster cadence of my heartbeat.

“Close the drapes, Princess,” Zayla ordered, her tone gentle no longer.

I did, then forced an apologetic smile. “It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?” I said, wistful. “The foliage beneath all the melting frost.” I needed to act as though I had no idea what these guards were up to until I could figure out a way to escape them and this carriage.

Fellan snorted. “If you say so.”

I scowled at him, and he grinned. The grin of a warrior who was about to win a battle I couldn’t see coming.

But I could.

Fear thundered through my heart now, wild and untamable. Although I tried, there was no calming it. For I didn’t need to wonder what this male intended to do with me. It was written all over his smug face.

I looked back to the window and feigned a sigh.

I had to get out of this carriage before they scented my fear and decided to act while I was stuck like a caged animal. “I need to relieve myself.”

Zayla tensed beside me. “We’ll arrive in a few minutes, Princess.”

“I’m afraid I cannot wait.” I knocked on the carriage ceiling three times.

The horses complained as the driver tugged on the reins and the carriage lurched and slowed.

Fellan growled, “Sit down.” Then he turned to the window behind him. He pulled the drapes and knocked on the glass, motioning for the driver to keep going.

But we’d slowed down enough that although it would still hurt, I could escape.

Now, instinct screamed.

I threw myself at the door.

It burst open, and the world spun in winter color as I hit the rocky road with a yelp and rolled down the embankment.

Shouts sounded from somewhere above, and I scrambled for purchase among the rocks and ferns. My nails split. My hands sliced on stone and stick. There was no stopping it, and knowing it was best to get as far away from the carriage as possible, I gritted my teeth and let go.

Pain careened through my arms, sides, and head.

The air knocked from me with the fall failed to return as I slammed into a tree and bounced faster downhill.

More branches and rocks scratched and gouged. My coat and gown ripped and tangled around my legs as I rolled over thorny plants and came to a stop by an unused road beneath the one I’d fled.

I moaned, splayed across overgrown weeds, and turned over with a hissed wince. Moss covered the dirt road beneath my palms as I pushed to my hands and knees, trying to catch my lost breath.

A quick inspection told me I wasn’t seriously injured. Even if I was, it wouldn’t matter. I had to keep moving. I climbed to my feet, dizziness swamping me, and made the fatal mistake of looking behind me down the mountainside road.

Fellan, atop one of the horses he’d untethered from the carriage, rode toward me. The sun, filtering through the treetops, made something glint in his hand.

A dagger.

Before I could turn to run, a hand clapped over my mouth from behind.

I screamed, the sound muffled. Zayla hushed me before saying in my ear, “I really do feel terrible about this, Tullia. Please don’t take it personally.”

“He’ll kill you,” I mumbled to her skin, and tugged and clawed desperately at her arm.

She laughed. “The king only cares about who plays with his toy, not who kills it. Want to know why?” she asked, and I kicked behind me to no avail, my dress hindering movement. “You were never supposed to live this long.”

At that, my heart stopped.

All of me froze.

“Seduce, marry, fuck, mock, and kill,” the driver said, climbing free from the embankment he’d slowly traversed. “The order might be a touch incorrect, but you get the gist.”

Zayla had the ability to materialize.

Mercifully, Fellan did not. I was certain I’d already be dead if he could.

But he was closing in now. He dug his heels into the giant horse’s flanks, the creature huffing and rearing when its dark eyes met mine.

Fellan cursed and growled at the majestic beast, “Easy, asshole.”

I didn’t want to believe it, but with Florian and Fume’s conversation still so fresh in my mind from the night before, it was irrefutable. Every word I’d ever heard them exchange now made perfect sense.

Florian had sought to humiliate me, to humiliate my father, and then he would take me from him the way my father had taken his sister.

There was no time for tears, but my heart didn’t care.

My eyes filled as Fellan neared.

I closed them, knowing to surrender would haunt me in any last life to come but unable to do anything else. A tear escaped, and I opened my eyes as the cold steel of Fellan’s blade skimmed my cheek.

He scooped the tear with the dagger, digging the blade into my skin.

I flinched, but though I’d lost the will to fight, I refused to beg.

I looked beyond his shoulder as he laughed and dragged the dagger down my other cheek. He reeked of sweat and tobacco and misdeeds. The lewd words and laughter he exchanged with his comrades became a buzzing I ignored when the forest gained volume.