Yellow and green and black.
Idris.
“No,” I sighed. I didn’t want him here. The door was locked. Or was it? I thought I’d turned the key… I tried to see past the bulk of him hovering in front of me, but I slumped sideways, sliding further down the wall. I never hit the floor.
“It’s alright. Stay with me.”
I wouldn’t.
I didn’t want to.
“Hold on.”
I couldn’t.
33Well, Well, If It Isn’t The Consequences Of My Own Actions
Stab. Stab. Stab.
I screwed up my face, tossing my head in an attempt to rid myself of the piercing pain in my neck. My efforts earned the sharpest throb yet, and my eyes snapped open as I cried out.
“Be still, Your Majesty. You’re safe now.”
A blurred figure hovered over me, and the stabbing pain resumed. The pain sharpened my focus, and a witch drifted into relief, dabbing my neck with a warm cloth.
Jacques.
The bite.
I bolted upright, knocking the witch’s cloth aside. The room immediately swirled, like colours mixing in a pot. Hands seized my shoulders, easing me back onto the soft pillow.
“You still have venom in your system, Your Majesty, and you suffered terrible blood loss. I’ve replenished you to a safe level, but you need to lie still until the bleeding stops.”
I was flat on my back in a strange bed, bare from the waist up but for my lacy, blood-stained bra.
“Where am I?” The brief glimpse of the room had revealed little, other than it being somewhere I didn’t recognise. I could barely bring myself to wonder what magical concoction of herbs was capable of replacing a blood transfusion.
“The sick ward. His Royal Highness is here too. He got to you in the nick of time.”
“Hello, Aliza.” Idris’ voice drifted from beside me. I blinked, turning my head. Pain speared down my neck and into my shoulder.
Sure enough, the prince occupied the bed beside me, his expression forlorn as he offered me the smallest of smiles. He too was shirtless, and as my eyes strayed to his god-like form, I found numerous nasty cuts and slices, still bleeding freely, peppering his body. Two more witches caught the rivers of blood with their cloths, pressing them to the wounds. Idris didn’t flinch as he stared at me.
I lifted my gaze to the ceiling.
“What happened?” I asked nobody in particular. I remembered some of it. I’d invited Jacques into the castle, all but forcing him to bite me in a moment of rage-induced madness. The witches couldn’t know that though. Nobody could.
“You were attacked by a vampire. His Royal Highness fought it off and brought you here. Unfortunately, the vampire got away, but we are conducting a thorough search.”
Did it count as an attack if I’d pushed for it? Not that I’d wanted him to take me to the point of collapse, but still. I couldn’t find it in myself to be angry at him. Not now that my mind had cleared, and I remembered all the reasons I had to be angry with the male whose eyes I could feel burning into the side of my face.
Biting back the pain, I rolled onto my side, away from Idris. I had nothing to say to the male who’d listened as I made a fool of myself. Who’d said, and continued to say, nothing. How long would he have gone along with his brother’s deception? Until the prophecy was fulfilled? Until Anwir fooled me into loving him? Married me? Fathered a child at my expense? Or would he have carried it to my graveside, holding his tongue even as dirt was thrown down on top of me? The precious Human Queen. Human sacrifice, more like.
Not that it mattered. I had never intended to stay that long, and after everything I’d heard, I wasn’t going to spend another night in this castle, surrounded by liars and users.
“Aliza!”
I jumped at the shrill voice calling my name, but my nurse pressed her hand to my shoulder again, keeping me still. Pansy hurtled around the end of my bed. Despite everything, my face softened into a smile.
“Hi.”
“Mother above, are you alright? I just heard. I can’t believe it.” She all but threw herself onto the bed beside me, her dark eyes widening as they took in the blood seeping from my neck. “Is that where…”
I nodded and was rewarded by a stab of pain shooting down my shoulder all the way to my fingertips.
“I heard Sage telling Granny that you’d been bled almost dry. I was expecting…”
She was expecting to find me as her mother had been. My heart squeezed tight, and I reached for her hand, biting back the pain of that small movement. “I’m fine. Sore, but fine.”
“You’ll feel much better after this,” the nurse said, brandishing a spoon at me.
I sat up awkwardly, accepting whatever magic potion they’d concocted this time. A magic potion that hadn’t been available to save Hyacinth, not that it would have prevented the renewed blood from pouring straight out her severed artery. It was enough to help me though, apparently. Despite Sage’s melodrama, Jacques couldn’t have done that much damage.
Pansy dropped her voice to the faintest whisper. “And Prince Idris saved you?”
My teeth clenched. I didn’t want to admit that I was yet again in his debt, not even to Pansy. I gave a terse nod.
“The vampire. Was it…”
