Masked Prince - Nikolai Andrew Page 0,51

rolled his wrist over to show the tattoo that I had already noticed. It was old, fuzzy around the edges, hidden among salt and pepper hairs. He traced the back fin with his fingertip. “Never much cared who was paying me or what they were paying me for, to tell you the truth. Smuggling, sure, piracy if needs be. Theft, robbery…” He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “Murder, once or twice, but only those whose hearts were as black as my own, mind you. When a messenger from the castle sought out people like me for a job that was going to pay handsomely, I was interested and made it known.” He gritted his teeth, growling under his breath. “But when I found out what the task was? I’d never hurt a child, lass, of that I can promise you, but clearly someone had fewer scruples. I have no doubt that the messenger I spoke to was sent from her majesty, and I have no doubt that I was lucky to find passage on a ship heading to the south seas that very night, or I would have been found in my quarters with my throat slit.”

A wave of powerful sadness rolled through me and I pressed my palm to my mouth. Randal was a wonderful man. My heart hurt at the thought of him in such pain. I loved him so much. But with each passing minute, my hope at ever seeing him again began to fade away. I fought the tears as hard as I could. But I couldn’t stop them.

That first day and night, we shared what little sustenance the guards gave us—handfuls of rancid rice and a leaky bucket of tepid, dirty water. But as the hours slid past, the life drained out of the room. We were like tadpoles in a shrinking puddle, huddling closer and closer for less and less, moving slower and more desperately as the life disappeared from among us. Tempers flared. Despair overtook us all.

Everything will be okay, I told myself, again and again. I repeated it so often, I heard it in my dreams.

I hung onto that—my belief. I clutched at it like it was the only thing in the world. In my heart, I believed that Randal loved me. I believed he would come for me. I believed he would save me. Somehow, someway, I believed that he would find his way to me and pluck me out of this terrifying wretchedness.

I clung onto my belief in him as the hours dragged on. And on. Into miserable, endless days of starvation and thirst.

The morning of the fourth day. Or the fifth. I didn’t know which. Curled in a ball in the corner of the prison, I watched two women fight almost to the death over a maggot-infested potato.

This must be a nightmare. Wake up. Just wake up.

But the harder I willed myself into consciousness, the more awful reality became. I was so weak and exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open. I surrendered to that exhaustion, drifting in and out of sleep.

In the afternoon, the guards said there would be no more water. Nobody was strong enough to protest. The old smuggler next to me groaned with hunger pains, until finally going quiet. He was alive still. But only barely. All of us were only barely alive. The queen had left us to rot there, I knew it. And when I closed my eyes the next time, I imagined a cave full of bones.

What I believed about Randal wouldn’t sustain me anymore. I let go of my hopes and beliefs like a shipwrecked woman letting go of her life raft. Letting go was easy. So much easier to let go than hold on.

If Randal knew I was alive, he had forsaken me.

And if he thought I was dead?

God help me.

I would be soon enough.

Chapter 17

Randal

In the days after Iris was murdered, vengeance alone fueled me. At night, alone in my quarters, I drank until I passed out. I punched the walls until my knuckles bled. I raged against the loss of the one good thing I’d ever known. And I fucking raged against myself for loving her.

It was my fault that she was dead. That guilt, that burden, would always be mine, as if I had slaughtered her with my own hands.

At first, I refused to believe it. Nobody could produce a body, nobody could tell me in any certain terms what had happened. I had seen