Page 111 of Heartbreak Prince

“I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.” His tone is shaky, fractured.

“When were you going to reveal the truth? Once the deal had been struck?” I march toward him, gripping the knife in one hand and the half-shredded pillow in the other. “When were you going to tell me that it’s a fucking marriage contract?”

“I told you my father was trying to marry me off.”

“To them?” I point the knife at the door. “To the incest twins in the palace stuffed with filth? They’re fucking each other, Vawn. And you’re going to marry both of them? Shit—” Nausea surges in my throat, and I stifle a gagging sound.

“My brother Erling arranged it.”

“Your brother hated you, and your father didn’t care about you. Neither did your mother, if she was allowing this arrangement to proceed.”

Vawn swallows hard. “I know.”

“Why would you consider this for a single second? Why?”

His tone is hard, his eyes equally so. “I didn’t have a choice then, and I don’t have a choice now.”

“You do, though. You could run.”

“Just run?” he exclaims. “Leave my family’s kingdom in the hands of the man who slaughtered them? Shouldn’t I avenge them?”

“They aren’t worth avenging.”

“That’s not for you to decide, Syth. It’s my family. My name. My duty. You of all people should understand duty. The only reason you stayed with me was for duty’s sake, because it’s your job. Because you were determined to see it through and fulfill your task.” His voice rises. “Well, now the task is done. You got me here—you can go. You’re rid of me. Leave.”

“And you’ll—what? Marry those two? Sleep in their bed? Breed with the girl? Is she the one you want as the mother of your children? She has some very serious problems, Vawn.”

“Yes, and she has an army. That’s what I need right now. I don’t have to ‘breed’ with her, as you so elegantly put it. I can have a… a mistress.”

Something in the way he says it, the way he glances down, as if he’s ashamed of himself even as he speaks the word—it drives me out of my mind.

I fling myself at him, heedless of the pain in my side, and with a scream of rage I jam the knife into the door, right next to his ear. A finger’s width to the right, and I would have cut him.

“Syth—ugh!” He grunts as I punch him below his ribs. “Syth, stop it!” He grabs for my wrists, but I’m too quick. I evade his grasp and punch him again, in the chest this time.

“I hate you,” I gasp between blows. “I hate you so much, I hate you.”

He takes the beating, which enrages me more.

“Fight back,” I seethe. “Fight me.”

“We both know you’ll win.”

I grab his throat, ramming the back of his head against the door. I wish I were taller. I want to look him straight in the eyes.

“If I stay in this room, I might kill you,” I whisper. “So I’m going to sleep in the other room.”

“Not the little cave next door.” Horror enters his gaze. “The rats, Syth. I could practically smell them in there. If you sleep in that room they’ll nibble on you. Stay here. Take the bed, and I’ll lie on the sofa. Look, they’ve put sheets and things on it, and they’ve changed out the pillows.”

I tighten my grip on his neck, and he swallows, his throat shifting under my palm. Until this moment, I didn’t realize how closely we were pressed together, but the proximity registers when I feel the stiff length of him against my hip.

“You’re sick for being hard right now,” I hiss at him.

“I am thoroughly depraved,” he admits. “And I—” His voice chokes off as my fingers constrict his windpipe. With my other hand I cup his hardness, ignoring the flicker of pain in my splinted finger.

“Is this for me?” I whisper.

He wheezes through my grip, his cock twitching firmly against my palm like a confirmation.