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Before I was ready, before I had remembered how to breathe, he pulled back, his hand still curved around my back. My heart was thundering in my chest, even as everything knotted as I waited, watching him desperately for an answer.
He didn’t shift, didn’t move, didn’t click, even as the steps outside the carriage moved closer.
We were out of time.
“Meet me in the Forest of Ok after the ceremony,” I gasped, barely able to catch my breath enough to form the words, to allow my stomach to stop tangling in need and desire. “I’ll leave when they move to consummate. No one dares go in there because of the stories. No one will see us. We can slip away. We will be free.”
That time I leaned into him, pressing my lips against his, his answering kiss deep and furious before he pulled back as the door to the carriage was thrown open. The Boy was back on the other bench before I could so much as inhale and turn toward the vile hooked nose and leering eyes of Silas as he stood snarling in the door.
Chapter 45
Elara
“Princess,” Silas growled from the doorway, but I didn’t turn, I continued to stare at the inlaid wood carving on the side of the carriage, at the exact spot where the Boy had been only seconds before.
“Princess,” Silas barked again, sounding far more perturbed that time. I jumped, turning to Silas’s sour face, his disdain for me clear and fuming. “You have been requested.”
“By who?” I still didn’t turn, using the foolish question in an attempt to catch my breath.
“The Queen.” Was that a line of enjoyment I heard in his voice, an eagerness at some vile torture that was awaiting me? I didn’t want to think too much into it, not with the way a fearful heaviness had spread and took the last of the glittering beauty of the last few minutes away.
When I turned, however, Silas only stood there smiling, the look adding to my panic as the Boy leaned forward.
“Princess,” he sneered and I shifted, the dried blood on my dress cracking in places as I rose from the chair, glancing at the Boy whose hand was wrapped tightly around the snake head on his sword pommel.
There should have been more time, more time to convince him, more time to make a plan. I had no clue as to what was coming, but I could only hope for one more moment alone, when he didn’t have to be my shadow, not that he hadn’t been much more than that lately anymore. Not until just now.
I pressed my fingers to my lips, the skin swollen from the fabric of his kiss, from the need that was there. The Boy didn’t even seem to notice, he didn’t move another inch as I left the carriage, his focus only on Silas as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened.
It was only after the door to the carriage slammed shut behind me that I realized the Boy had not followed after. Silas’s hand was a claw around my elbow as he pulled me from the coach, two snakes rushing and holding the door to my carriage as the handle jiggled furiously, the sound of a boot against wood echoing from within.
“Wait,” I gasped, trying to turn as I watched the handle, the carriage rocking furiously.
Dread coiled around my gut and tried to pull, tried to stop, but Silas moved as though he didn’t even notice. No, as though he didn’t care.
“Stop. My Boy…” I tried again to pull from Silas’s taloned grip, but his fingers dug in deeper, and I winced, which only caused the vile snake to smile.
“He was not requested. Only you. Guards do not attend weddings.” His lips stretched with every word, with every step we took away from the carriage and toward the large billowing cloud near the back of the temple. The large dome of white stone rose from the poppies and moss, away from the main building and the winding stairs that led to the main Temple entrance.
The Boy’s exclusion from the wedding ceremony would make sense if they weren’t having to hold the door shut, if more and more guards weren’t swarming the door to my carriage, hands pressed against the door where the bright red of my blood had dried in long drips.
“He never leaves–”
“I have my orders,” Silas barked, still smiling with a smirk like a blade twisting through me.
I couldn’t breathe, I could barely think. The world had fallen away, leaving me stumbling over the dusty path and toward the side doors alone. I barely felt Silas’ tight grip against my arm as he dragged me.
The Boy so rarely left my side that with each step it almost felt as though something was being pulled away from me. That something bright and wanted was being ripped from my core.
Trying to swallow away a quickly forming knot as a wall of people stepped behind me, all of the others who had traveled in our caravan dressed in their finery as they walked and waved and smiled, looking for all the world as though they were simply going to a wedding, and not as though something was terribly wrong.
“Be proper,” Silas snapped, his grip making me wince as he pulled me forward again, the world coming back into focus, even as that pain continued to splinter and break over me. That cold that lingered in my blood was everywhere, it ran over my skin, tangling in my gut.
The snake forced me to stand taller, even as I continued to trip over my torn skirts. Not that anyone would notice with the amount of finery I was surrounded by, all of the perfectly prepped and polished royals and gentry nodding and waving and smiling at the peasants that lined the path to the temple and to the lower doors we were being led to.
This close to those smiling worshiping people, everything I had noticed before was even more apparent. Their clothing was torn and covered in dirt, the edges frayed, their feet bared. It was what I hadn’t noticed before that had caused my eyes to widen, the sharp tempo of my heart picking up so that it was all I could hear in my ears.
They were covered with gold tattoos. Swirling lines and designs covered all of them, even the children, the intricate work shimmering in the evening sun. It was beautiful, haunting and somehow familiar. They stood, their eyes as wide as mine as I faced them. Just as I noticed their tattoos in awe, they noticed the streaks of my blood that still covered my dress and cloak in horror.
