Aveen was human, though. Iron shouldn’t have left those marks on her arms.
I shifted a pair of gardening gloves I’d bought the week before but never got around to giving to her. “Take these.”
She whimpered as she shoved the manacles higher, tears trailing down her smudged cheeks as the iron hissed and burned anew. “Thank you for the gloves.”
“Anything else?”
“Thank you for telling them to chop off my head.” The fire flashing in her eyes quickly died out.
“Hanging is a dreadful way to die,” I explained. “Beheading is by far the quickest and most painless.”
“Just get out.”
Feckin’ hell. . . She honestly thought I planned on leaving her here to die.
I stood, working and reworking the plan I’d forged during my morning murder-spree. Since I couldn’t do it, I’d need someone to get Aveen out of the cell unnoticed. Where could she go? Tadhg had a few friends around here. Perhaps one of them could hide Aveen until we could get her out of the city and to the cottage—
Notwe.
I’d be dead.
A bucket of water next to the unconscious guard caught my eye. When I stuck my finger inside, it burned like hell.
“It’s witch hazel,” Aveen muttered.
“How do you know?” Her human senses would’ve been too weak to smell the herb.
“The guard doused me with it. Felt like they’d peeled the skin from my bones.”
I’d been doused in witch hazel before, and for months afterwards, I’d woken up screaming from nightmares. Not the sort of torture one could ever forget. Or forgive. “Who did?” I kicked the guard’s disgusting boot. “This one?”
She nodded.
Witch hazel and iron burned. She’d gotten my dagger somehow. It felt like I was missing something obvious. Not that it would matter if I didn’t get her out of this predicament.
She could escape the cell right now. The keys were just there. I could glamour her to look like one of the dead guards. Only, her face would be on wanted posters from coast to coast. She couldn’t cross the Forest again, and after what had happened with Muireann, Tearmann wouldn’t be safe even if she could come back in. How could I guarantee her safety in Hollowshade?
“Don’t you have anywhere else to be?” she grumbled.
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you to stop feeling sorry for yourself and bargain with me.”
I caught the first spark of hope since she’d seen me in the courthouse and her first smile. “What are your terms, oh great and powerful prince?” she asked.
“If I decide to use my immense power to save a weak, pathetic human such as yourself, then you must promise to never set foot in the Black Forest.”
“I don’t agree to those terms. Come up with something else.”
There was nothing else. She could never come back. It was better for both of us.
“The moment you set foot in the Forest, the Queen will either carve your heart from your chest or she’ll force me to do it. I would rather see you die tomorrow than watch you become one of her victims.” An impossible truth but the truth all the same.
“Please.”
I would not sway on this. Not even if the tears welling in her eyes filled this room and we both drowned. “Die tomorrow or choose to live far from me and my world. Those are my terms.” When I reached for her, she hid her hand, refusing me again. “Take my hand, Aveen.”