Page 104

Lyra’s pleasure poured through the turquoise thread in my chest, pinning me to the deck more brutally than the blade ever could, a mutilated gasp tearing from my throat as every echo of her moan seemed to drive the steel deeper beneath my ribs.

Aldric’s head snapped up as the bundle of ropes slipped from his hands and hit the deck at his feet.

His eyes widened when he saw the sword still buried beneath my ribs, and for once, the prince seemed to have nothing clever to say. He rushed toward me, nearly tripping over his own boots before dropping to his knees at my side.

“Solas!” he yelled, shrugging out of his jacket before tearing his tunic over his head and bundling the fabric in his hands.

When he reached for the wound, I bared my canines, a low growl rumbling through my chest in warning.

I deserved this pain, for my body to bleed as much as my heart sluggishly beating in the rotten cavity of my chest.

Aldric froze for half a breath, contemplating his life, but kept going.

“Easy,” he said, voice gentler now, as if he were trying to soothe a wounded beast. “I’m going to help you.”

“Touch me, Prince, and I will⁠—”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted with a scoff, pressing the fabric around the ruined flesh. “You’ll kill me in some vicious, horrifying way. Hard to do if you are dead yourself.”

Pain took my vision as his hands pressed down against the wound.

I cursed in the old language, head tipping back towards the oppressing clouds.

Aldric’s brows furrowed, but he did not pull away.

“The way I’ve seen you pine after my sister makes you significantly less intimidating,” he muttered, staring down at the blue-black blood soaking into the white of his tunic, spreading fast beneath his hands. “And now you’re bleeding⁠—”

I jerked toward him. Little more than a violent shift of my shoulders, but it was enough. “Do not talk to me about Lyra right now,” I growled.

The prince flinched back, scrambling away from me so quickly he lost his balance and landed hard on the deck, one hand half-raised as if that would stop me.

I leant back on my elbows and gripped the blade close to my side, fingers slipping on blood-slick steel. I gave it a hard pull.

The sword moved barely an inch before pain ripped through my side and dragged a rough, ruined sound from my chest.

Not a scream, but something close enough that humiliation burned hotter than the pain.

Aldric’s mouth opened and before he could speak, I levelled him with a deadly stare. “Do not,” I warned, breathing hard, “say a fucking word.”

Solas’s boots thudded against the deck as he jumped over the railing of the quarterdeck, face turned down in a scowl as he took in the damage.

“How is that possible?” Solas murmured, running a hand over his auburn beard.

Then, without giving me the chance to ask, he stepped in, gripped the hilt of the sword, and tore it from my flesh with a sickening squelch.

Agony tore through every nerve ending in my body, punching the air from my lungs, dragging a sound from my throat that was too close to a snarl to be a scream.

My spine bowed off the deck, fingers clawing into the timber as the blade grated free of bone and muscle with a wet, sickening pull.

Blue blood poured from the open wound, the flesh refusing to knit back together.

Just like the bond.

It stayed wide open in my chest, flooding me with Lyra’s pleasure, her reluctant heart aching for someone who was not me.

I yelled, slamming my fist against the deck.

The torn flesh gaped around the empty space where the sword had been, the edges darkened and wrong, as if something beneath my skin had already begun to decay.