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And he’d attributed the theft to Perla.

She’d gone pale beside me, not understanding the accusation yet not denying it either.

I opened my mouth, about to say anything that would get him to reveal the key, when Holden chuckled and said, “But I suppose every mouse is prone to rummaging.”

He unlatched a hidden compartment in the drawer, withdrew his necklace, and undid the clasp.

My vision pulsed with violent anticipation as he held the key to the light. The golden shreds of the tent buffeted around him, the pit twinkling at his back.

“So here you are, pet.” He smiled at Perla, and my limbs went loose with relief. Then he cocked his head like a predator and said, “Fetch.”

Too late, I registered the glint in his eyes, the sharp flick of his wrist, the silver flashing over his shoulder, as Holden tossed the key into the depths of the pit behind him.

34

“No!” I lurched forward, my heart in my throat.

“Restrain her,” Holden commanded, and his soldiers seized my arms, yanking them behind me so forcefully that I gasped.

“Perla, go!” I shouted. But she was frozen with indecision. “Now!” I shoved her with a solid tendril of my specter.

She staggered back, and it seemed a natural enough movement that nobody questioned it. With a nod, she dashed for the shredded side of the tent. Holden barely spared her a glance as she rushed past him and skidded down into the pit in search of the key.

Finbar laughed wetly, and I realized he must have tried coming to our aid at some point because he was curled on the rug now, his knife discarded beside him. “I know it goes against your inclination,” he said, scornful, “but think for a moment, Holden. Don’t be a fool.”

Holden prowled toward him, his bicep rippling as he raised his sword to Finbar’s throat. I panted through gritted teeth, my mind racing to form a strategy.

It was me against seven men if I discounted Finbar: Holden, plus the two soldiers restraining me, and the four looming over the prince. I didn’t yet possess the brutal ability to take them all down in one swoop. Which meant that by the time I incapacitated a handful, the leftover soldiers would know how to subdue me: with dullroot.

So I needed to target them without letting on that the attack was coming from me.

I looked around, desperate to find an advantage—then paused, feeling an uncanny sense of familiarity. Suddenly, I was back in the medical tent my first night on the mainland. I remembered how my power had erupted. How the beams had caved inward, sending Zeke and me down with the entire structure. It had been an accident then, an outburst beyond my control.

But I was no longer out of control.

My eyes landed on the chandelier hanging from the beam a foot ahead of me, holding on by its last bolt. Reasonably precarious.

“I would rather be a fool for my land,” Holden said, his sword catching the end of Finbar’s golden necklace, “than a fool for my heart. Be glad I don’t carve yours out to spare you the misery of feeling it beat.” His blade slashed through the chain, and the empty-pronged setting tumbled to the floor. Finbar flinched, the words seeming to cut him deep.

Then Holden sheathed his sword, steel scraping. “Bind her,” he ordered, nodding toward me. “Strike her if she fights. Perhaps the king will be more willing to answer my questions when he sees his bride’s blood.”

My specter teemed under my skin now, but rather than let it gorge on my emotion as Goren had warned me against doing, I consciously channeled my white-hot hatred for the general into its waves. Then I raised my chin. I may not have been a fighter, but weapons could take different forms.

And my sharpest weapons had always been my words.

“You mistake me, General,” I said as one of the soldiers produced a set of shackles. “I am the future queen of Daradon. I will not be treated as a prisoner. Especially by you.”

Holden lifted his hand toward the soldier with the shackles, halting him. His eyes narrowed. And slowly, he approached. “Oh?” he asked, his voice deep and gruff. “Does the distinguished lady of Vereen find me unworthy of being her captor?”

“A man like you,” I bit out, panting, “who treats people as playthings? Who exerts his ill-gotten authority over the vulnerable and thinks it equates to true power?” I looked him over and sneered. “I find you unworthy of sharing my breathing space.”

Holden’s hands flexed as he sauntered closer, closer . . . but still not close enough. So I began twisting in my jailors’ hands, knowing it would leave me bruised, but also knowing that my desperate squirming would tempt Holden to tower over me—a bully impressing his sheer size upon his prey.

“Tell me, Lady Alissa.” He stopped directly before me, the light from the overhead chandelier now slashing down his long cheekbones. “Do you think your king would condemn me or reward me for cutting out his bride’s wicked tongue?”

“Holden, stop this,” Finbar hissed, blood trickling from his ear again. “You will make an enemy of her kingdom.”

“Then perhaps, as her kingdom’s spokesperson, she should have accepted a place within my court when she had the chance.”