The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(85)

He slips his hands into his pockets and walks away. His footsteps fade. The floor opens up.

I’m falling through endless darkness once more.

***

I jolt upright in my bed. My skin is clammy, and the sheets stick to me. I can’t control my wild pulse. The night is still dark, but I can’t go back to sleep. I was dreaming of Night’s prison. I was dreaming of Blake.

With shaky fingers, I light the candle beside the bed. I pull the book that has answers about our bond from beneath my pillow. I start to read.

The light of dawn is straining through my window when my eyes snag on a particular page in the book. Realization slams into me with brutal force. An emotion I can’t understand threatens to tear me apart.

I dress hurriedly. I grab the tome and earmark it at the appropriate page. I hurry out of my room—almost tripping over the male who sleeps against the wall. He has a bushy red beard and a blue kilt. I recognize him from when Callum first took me from the Borderlands. Fergus, I think his name is.

He doesn’t stir as I hurry down the stairs. So much for keeping guard.

I need to speak to Blake.





Chapter Forty-Four





The castle is awakening. I battle through the current of people who light the torches, carry food, and make their way outside with weapons.

That wildness in my chest I have felt since James bit me rears its head. My blood roars and my heartbeat howls. Dots dance before my eyes. My body is trying to shut down my emotions.

I pass the kitchens, and barely register Mrs. McDonald shouting at Kayleigh for burning the porridge. Blake strolls toward me from the direction of the infirmary. I grab him and shove him against the wall before he can speak. He makes a low sound in his throat. I grab his shirt and pull it out of his breeches.

He grabs my wrist. “If you’re reaching for my cock, darling, that is off limits.”

His voice is far away. There’s a long scar that curves down his abdomen. My breathing is hard. Fast. My eyes flick to his, and the corridor swims around me. “Who did this to you?”

He nudges me back. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter?!” I shove the book at his chest and he pulls a face. I open it at the page I earmarked. “Do Wolves’ internal organs grow back when removed? Incision was made on the right-hand side of the test subject’s abdomen in order to remove the kidney.”

I hit him with the book again, and he grunts. There is a diagram of a body, where there is a curved line on the abdomen to depict the incision point. It mirrors the worst of Blake’s scars.

I recall that dark feeling that had twisted inside me when I read one of his books full of experiments in the Great Hall—so similar to the feeling I had every time the High Priest beat me. I thought it was shame, that perhaps he felt bad for harming other Wolves.

I had not considered there could be another reason: he might be ashamed that he let these things happen to him.

I shake my head, my hands trembling. “You led me to believe you wrote these books.”

His expression is dark. “You came to that conclusion by yourself, little rabbit.”

“All those experiments. . . all those terrible things. . . they were done to you.”

“No.” His tone is clipped. “I wasn’t his only pet.”

“Who?” I shove the book at him again. “Who did this?”

“Why?”

“I want to know.”

He shrugs, as if it’s inconsequential. “Who do you think? The Maester of Healing at the palace.”

I feel as if I’m underwater. “Did. . . did my father know?”

“Did he know?” The corner of his lip tugs up, but there’s no amusement in his eyes. “It was his program, little rabbit.”

My pulse thunders in my ears, and I hear another one competing with it. I’d place Blake as three or four years older than me. That means he must have been somewhere in the King’s City—perhaps even the palace itself—being torn apart, while I was attending dancing lessons, or preening in front of the mirror. My own naivety rises up in my throat on a wave of nausea. How could I have been so clueless as to what was happening?

Yet amid the shock and the anger that courses through me, something darker pervades. That wildness stills. My skin prickles, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Any empathy is replaced by something cold and wary. I step away, and my back bumps into the wall on the other side of the corridor. All this time, I had thought I was a pawn in his game with Callum. He told me he hated the Wolves, and that he wanted to rule them.

It occurs to me now that he has just as much reason to hate humans. My father may be a far bigger foe to him than Callum, or James, or any of the Wolves. Perhaps taking the Wolf Throne is part of a bigger game, and my role in it won’t be over if he defeats Callum. Perhaps he has something even bigger in store for me. Last night, in my dream, he tried to persuade me to kill Philip.

Perhaps he wants the whole world to burn.

“Are you going to hurt me?” I ask.

A tense silence stretches between us. My skin hums.

He drags his teeth over his bottom lip. “No.”

I try to feel him through the bond, but everything feels dark. “Are you going to hurt my brother?”

“Only if you ask me to.”