Gerard accepted them both from her.“They’re perfect, but I don’t have a plan.”
She pulled his head down and planted a kiss on his cheek while dropping a bag of coins in his pocket. “You have eight hours of sailing before you arrive in Urka to come up with one. You won’t fail me. Or her.”
He prayed to Pater that he would not.
19
NORA
“You smell of manure,” King Pierre said, tipping Nora’s chin up and causing the chain around her neck to draw blood. The guards had already taken the crown and the jewels from her body.
Pursing her lips, she held in a cry of pain. She wouldn’t give that nincompoop of a king the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her. That every breath she took was agony.
She saw that he’d brought a dozen courtiers with him into the dungeons. Bullies always needed an audience. The courtiers were no longer wearing purple wigs but were back to the powdered white. Their bright silks and delicate laces were incongruous with this dank and dirty place. They watched her with vulgar fascination through their quizzing glasses and the bars. Pointing their fingers and laughing while keeping a safe distance from her.
And then she saw him.
Prince Alexandre.
He wore a dark gray suit, a frilly white shirt, and his usual enormous wig. His face was powdered and painted. She had once thought of him as a friend. Yet here he was with the rest, gawking at her misery. Mocking her pain. Except he didn’t open his mouth to jeer at her. His face was a blank mask, but his eyes seemed to beg for her forgiveness.
King Pierre smacked her face with the back of his hand. She’d been unprepared for it. She stumbled and fell back against the chains, which kept her upright. Blood filled her mouth with the salty taste of iron, and Nora felt a rough jerk from the metal collar around her neck. It cut into her skin. She had to bite down on her lower lip to keep herself from screaming in pain. Warm blood ran over her wrists and ankles. The sores from the manacles had been reopened.
“Have you changed your mind, witch?” he jeered. “Will you marry my son?”
She glanced at Alexandre, but he lowered his eyes to the floor. He would not help her. Nora knew she wasn’t invincible. She’d been beaten and bled before. Despite her great strength, her body bruised just like everyone else’s. She felt pain like everyone else. Her skin held a lifetime of scars.
King Pierre sneered in satisfaction. “Superstitious fools! She is only a woman, and a weak one at that. And like all of you, she will bend her will to me.”
Curling his lower lip in disdain, he laughed in triumph. He’d thought he’d humiliated and defeated her. Broken her spirit. The courtiers laughed too, but it sounded forced. As if they knew how precarious their own positions were. Perhaps they were just as much hostages as guests to their king in his beautiful palace of marble. He chose when they came and if they left. It was an opulent palace but still a prison.
King Pierre held up his left hand and their forced laughter stopped. A pregnant pause. Nora could not allow him to think he’d won.
She spit blood into his face and it splattered onto his peach suit with embroidered peacocks. “I would rather die than marry your son, and you will never rule Yakura. It belongs to Màthair and She does not suffer fools. And you, Pierre, are the biggest imbecile I have ever laid eyes on.”
The courtiers gasped and raised their painted eyebrows. King Pierre’s mouth fell open, wobbling up and down in surprise. He clutched the lace cravat at his throat and stepped back, his high heels clicking on the stones. He was like a player in an absurd theatrical.
“How dare you! I am the greatest king in all the world.”
“Self-proclaimed?” Nora spat before she could stop herself.
The courtiers shifted nervously on their feet, and when the next blow landed, she expected it. His knuckles glanced off her left cheek and more blood dribbled from her mouth. She heard a slight crack and was pretty sure King Pierre had broken his hand. He was not a fighter. A trained soldier would have known not to clench their fists too tightly.
Nora smiled, barring her bloody teeth. “Gah!”
A lady in a puce dress screamed, fainting to the floor as her worthless companions viewed the scene in shock. No one moved to help her. A gentleman ran out of the dungeons, his squeals echoing through the stone walls. The remaining nine courtiers stood like statues. Nora could not tell if they were scared for her or of her. Or simply feared for their own lives.
Alexandre stepped forward. “Father, I think we should go.”
Two ladies turned as if to walk away.
“You can’t leave yet, Comtesse and Duchess,” King Pierre said, holding up his hand imperatively. “I need to teach thisgirla lesson.”
“Father, she is unarmed,” Alexandre said, walking through the open door inside the prison cell toward King Pierre, “and in chains. There is no honor in this.”
King Pierre cradled his right hand with left right. “You speak to me of honor, Alexandre? You? A worthless son who cannot even accomplish the smallest task that is required of him? Who does not wish to produce an heir like a real man? You are an embarrassment to our family name.”
The prince winced, stopping mid-step. Alexandre’s face looked as if his father had given him a blow as hard as the one that had broken his father’s hand. His eyes fell and Nora felt sorry for the prince. She knew how it felt to be deemed a disappointment by your father. To be destroyed inside by his pointed words. To doubt your own worth.