The Kingdom's Crown (Inheritance of Hunger #3) - Kathryn Moon Page 0,39

and a challenge in his steady gaze on me. I took a deep breath and walked forward, Aric meeting me halfway.

Over his shoulder, I saw the woman who'd charged at me, sagged sideways in a chair. She was sweat-stained, face red with crying, but I didn't see any visible injury.

"It's magic," Aric whispered in my ear, his hands covering my shoulders with a gentle touch. "It isn't kind, but it's not causing permanent harm. They wanted to use rocks to crush her. I know," he said as I shuddered. "We're almost done, but there's something I'd like to try with you now."

"To hurt her?" I asked, closing my eyes as if it could block out the moaning sobs of the woman.

I had been so eager to destroy Emory when he'd come for me, had nearly sent Owen to his death in that fire. Perhaps Cresswell was right and the memory of Emory made me more reluctant to do that same harm again, or perhaps the knowledge that Amelia was in some way entangled in the scheme made the question of who was to blame less clear. Emory had been largely his own agent, and his attack on me at the Winter Palace had been self-motivated. He'd earned his punishment. I wasn't sure this woman had.

"I don't think it will hurt her. Not the way I've been," he said darkly.

I reached up between us, my fingertips finding Aric's throat as he swallowed. I leaned back and rose to my toes, pressing my face to his without a kiss. He took a deep breath of me and released it slowly, tension bleeding away.

"Show me," I said.

"You have magic?" he asked, and I nodded. "I want you to use something like what you would if you wanted us to perform for you."

"What?!" I asked, choking slightly, my eyes going wide.

Aric huffed. "Make her pliable, wanting to please you."

My lips formed an O, and I glanced over Aric's shoulder again. Whatever he'd done to plague her was subsiding, and she was taking great gulps of air. Her features were soft and smudged, and she looked a little younger than me, heavier set, and yet she had deeper lines and darker circles under her eyes. Her eyes were bloodshot now, but they found me and she whimpered, her whole body trembling.

Could my magic do as Aric asked? I didn't see how the Hunger's lust would help now, but I remembered the empty look I'd given Owen the first time I used it on him accidentally.

"All right," I said.

Aric nodded and stepped back, his voice rising out of the whisper we'd used. "We know she came here with the young Lady Ophelia. That she was charged to attack if you didn't take Ophelia on as one of your ladies."

"What more do you need to know?" I asked.

"Nothing to charge her with the crime, Your Highness," one of the guards said. He was tall and broad, not handsome but certainly impressive. "Head Guard Amos."

He bowed to me and so did the other guards. I glanced at Aric, who was grinding his jaw.

"We ought to know why she agreed," Aric said firmly.

"Please, Your Highness. Please, pardon me. I was only following orders. I wasn't even trying, was I?" the woman sobbed. Her wrists were pinned to the arms of the seat she was trapped in, but her hands flexed as if she were trying to reach for me.

"Not trying? You stabbed my Chosen twice," I said frowning, and she gasped and then began to cry again.

With a little less sympathy at the reminder of Cresswell's bloody back, my hands filled with magic. Aric nodded to me, and I reached out, pressing my hands over her rigid strapped arms. The woman stiffened, eyes going wide with shock, chest filling with one great gasp, and then she sagged and moaned.

One of the guards behind me snorted, and there was a resulting punch of flesh on flesh and a stifled grunt.

"Focus," Aric said to me softly.

Meaning make the woman agreeable, not aroused. Friendly thoughts. Sleepy thoughts. Honesty and sweetness.

The woman hummed, the tight rigid strain in her arms melting as she sighed. Her eyelids grew heavy, blinks slow, the pale blue of her gaze stark against the red of all her crying.

"What's your name?"

"Lily, love," she said, and then repeated the words in a sing-song until they blurred together.

"Lily," I began, stepping a little closer, hearing the echo of men shifting closer behind me. "Lily, why would you agree to kill