The great hall, usually a place of warmth and hearty noise, felt like a tomb. The scent of roasted meat, usually comforting, now cloyed in Lyssa’s throat. She sat stiffly on the chair opposite her father, Lord Barlon, her hands clenched in the folds of her fine burgundy gown. Across from them, blotting out the light from the high window, sat Lord Corvus.
He was a monument to decay. His bulk strained the velvet of his doublet, buttons threatening to pop. His jowls quivered as he worked his jaw, tearing into a calf’s leg with bare, greasy hands. Grease and wine stained his thin, grey streaked beard. Each wet, smacking chew was an assault. Lyssa stared, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated disgust.
“Are you sure she’s pure, Barlon?”
The question hung in the air, casual as a comment on the weather. Corvus didn’t look up from his gnawing.
Lord Barlon, a mountain of controlled tension, took a slow sip of wine.
“My daughter has been raised with the utmost propriety, Corvus. She is untouched.”
Corvus finally looked up. His eyes, small and piggish, swept over Lyssa from head to toe, a slow, wet inspection. He dropped the bone with a clatter and licked each of his fingers, one by one.
“She looks… used.”
Lyssa flinched as if struck. Barlon’s knuckles whitened around his goblet. “I beg your pardon?”
“The look in the eye,” Corvus mused, reaching for a goblet of wine. He drank noisily, a trickle of red escaping the corner of his mouth. “Not that vacant, frightened innocence. There’s a… a knowledge there. In the way she holds herself. The hips. A virgin sits tight, closed off. Hers look like they’ve… swayed.” He leaned forward, his breath, a fog of stale wine, rotten meat, and decay,washing across the table.
“Fifty wives, Barlon. Fifty. I know the look of a girl who’s been opened. Even just a little.”
Barlon’s face was stone. “You are mistaken. It is nerves. The prospect of marriage.”
“Is it?” Corvus chuckled, a phlegmy, wet sound. He pointed a greasy finger at Lyssa. “Tell me, girl. Do you dream of a strong, young cock? Do you touch yourself in the night, dreaming of being filled? I’ll know if you lie. I’ll know on our wedding night when I peel you open and see how tight you really are.”
“Father!”
The word exploded from Lyssa, a shriek of pure outrage. She shot to her feet, her chair screeching backwards. Her whole body trembled. She couldn’t bear it. The vulgarity. The ownership.
“How dare you speak to me like that! How dare you…”
“Lyssa!” Barlon’s voice was a whip crack, but it lacked its usual absolute authority. There was a desperate edge to it.
“Sit. Down.”
She looked at him, her eyes blazing with betrayal. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. He stared at the table, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He was letting this happen. This king’s brother. This bloated, disgusting thing was insulting his only daughter, and he was doing nothing.
Corvus just laughed, delighted.
“Spirit! I like that. It makes the breaking more fun. She’ll fit right in. Number fifty-one. I have a special room for the new ones. Soundproofed. So the servants don’t have to hear the crying.” He winked at Barlon. “It never lasts long.”
That was it. Lyssa turned and fled. The heavy door of the hall thundered shut behind her as she ran, the sound echoing in the corridor like a slammed coffin lid.
She heard heavier footsteps, then her father’s voice, a low, thunderous command. “Lyssa! Stop!”
Her body, trained to obey him from infancy, froze. She stood in the middle of the sun drenched courtyard, her shoulders heaving, hot tears of humiliation and fury already blurring the green of the manicured herbs.
He caught up to her, his large hand closing on her shoulder, spinning her around. “You will not dishonor this house...”
“Dishonor?” she screamed, the sound raw and ragged. Tears streamed down her face. “He is disgusting! He is a monster! And you are selling me to him!” She beat her small fists against his chest, the blows harmless against his leather jerkin. “I won’t do it! I won’t!”
The fight left her as suddenly as it came. The sobs overtook her, great, wracking heaves that bent her double. “Please, Father. Please. Don’t make me. I’ll do anything else. I’ll join a convent. I’ll... Please.”
Lord Barlon’s stern expression finally fractured. A profound, weary pain etched itself into his features. He looked every one of his years. He didn’t try to offer empty platitudes. With a sigh that seemed to come from his very bones, he crouched, bringing himself closer to her height. Then, he pulled her into him.
He enveloped her. His arms, so capable of terrible violence, wrapped around her with a crushing, desperate tenderness. He pressed her head against his broad chest, his chin resting on her hair. She could hear the solid, rapid beat of his heart. “Oh, my dear, fierce girl,” he murmured, his voice thick. “My Lyssa.”
“Say no,” she begged, her voice muffled against his shirt. “Tell the king no. Your army is greater. They say it is! You could…”
“I could start a war,” he finished softly, his hand stroking her hair. “I could defy my king, my brother-in-arms, for my daughter’s comfort. And thousands would die. Our lands would burn. And in the end, they would take you anyway.” He held her tighter. “He is the king’s brother. The proposal comes from the throne itself. There is no ‘no’.”
He pulled back slightly, his large, calloused hands cradling her wet face, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were full of a love so profound it was agony.
“Listen to me. It will not be a marriage. It will be a transaction. You will live in his southern estate. He has dozens. He will visit you… once. On your wedding night. To consummate. To get his heir. Then he will likely forget you exist among his collection. You will have a title, wealth, quiet. You will be safe.”
The words were meant to comfort. They were the coldest, most horrifying words she had ever heard. Forget you exist. One night with that… that thing on top of her, his rotten breath in her face, his heavy, sweating bulk pressing her into the mattress.
Her tears dried up. A cold, clear hatred took their place. She looked into her father’s eyes, at the man who had taught her to ride, who had laughed as she swung a wooden sword, who was now delivering her to a fate worse than death because it was politic.
“I hate you.”
She said it quietly, with absolute conviction. She wrenched herself free from his grasp, the force surprising him. She took a step back, her tear streaked face pale and set.
“I will never forgive you for this.”
She saw the blow land in his eyes. Saw him flinch as if she’d run him through. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Lyssa turned and ran again. This time, he did not call her back. She ran past the stables, past the gardens, toward the only place that had ever felt like a sanctuary. The old, disused orchard at the western edge of the grounds. The place where, as children, she and Kian had sometimes shared stolen apples.
She collapsed at the base of a gnarled apple tree, its branches bare, her body shaking with dry, silent sobs. The phantom sensations of the last two days crashed over her. Kian’s tender cleaning, his worshipping mouth, the brutal, perfect possession when he pinned her wrists. The rightness of it. It was all going to be stolen. Defiled.
A shadow fell across her. She didn’t need to look up. She knew the shape of him, the sound of his breathing. Kian. He must have seen her run from the courtyard. He stood in the damp grass before her, his face a storm of worry and fury. His eyes asked a thousand questions.
She couldn’t speak. Instead, she reached for him. Her hands fumbled with the laces of his trousers, her movements frantic, desperate. She needed to erase Corvus’s words, her father’s betrayal. She needed to feel claimed, right now.