ROYAL ROCK(68)

“I won’t do it,” I said. “I won’t betray him like that.”

“Why?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “You barely know this man. He’s only brought you trouble. Why would you be willing to risk serious injury for him?”

I swallowed hard. “Because he has given me something.”

“What?”

“I can’t explain it,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you’re in love with the idiot.”

“No,” I whispered. “Or maybe yes. I don’t know. But I know that I couldn’t go against him.”

Corvin laughed, shaking his head. “I suspected you’d say that at first.”

“What do you mean at first?”

He slowly moved his hands out from behind his back. He was holding two long, wickedly curving knives. A disgusting smile spread across his pig-like face.

“I’m going to give you plenty of chances to change your mind,” he said.

“Please, Freddy,” I said.

He laughed again. “You remembered! But don’t call me that. You can’t appeal to my humanity here.”

“Why? I’m just a girl. I don’t belong here.”

“You do belong here,” he said, coming closer. “You belong here, you wicked bitch.”

“You’re so pathetic.”

He crouched down in front of me. “Maybe,” he said, “but you’re tied to a chair and I can do whatever I want with you.” He rested the tip of one knife on my thigh. “Isn’t that right?”

I spit in his face. I had no clue where that courage came from, but I was so disgusted by him that I couldn’t stop myself. I spit directly in his eyes.

He reared back and wiped it off with his shirt. “You fucking whore,” he roared. He cut me down my right thigh and I screamed. “You’re going to regret ever coming to this country. I’m going to carve you into pieces, you invading bitch.”

“You’re insane,” I said, biting back tears. The pain in my leg was intense.

“No,” he said. “I’m a fucking patriot. I’m saving this country by ruining you.”

I struggled, but it didn’t do anything. He came toward me, laughing the whole time. As his knives rose, I heard the door behind me open.

Corvin cocked his head as someone spoke to him in Starklandian. He replied and then looked back at me. “To be continued,” he said, and then he left.

I let out a sob once he was gone. That bastard cut my leg open, and I was betting he was going to do worse. I shouldn’t have pushed him like that.

I needed to survive this. Trip was going to come, and he was going to save me. So what if I said some lies on camera? Trip would get here before they had a chance to even use the footage.

But what if he didn’t? I couldn’t see how what I said would really matter. I was nobody, absolutely nobody in all of this, and yet suddenly I’d been shoved into the center of the conflict.

I took deep breaths, trying to steady myself. The cut on my leg wasn’t deep, but it was very, very painful. I could only imagine what it would feel like if he turned those horrible knives against the rest of me. I’d be torn to pieces, and I’d be left a screaming wreck on the floor.

I couldn’t last. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t let a man cut me to pieces.

And then I realized something. I had said out loud that I was in love with Trip. I’d never said that before, or even admitted it to myself.

It was true, though. I found that feeling deep inside me, glowing in my chest, giving me the strength to fight, the strength to spit in the face of pain and terror. It was love for Trip, love for a man I couldn’t stand, love for a man who made me feel things physically and more that I never could have imagined.

I was in love. I began to half laugh, half cry as the realization shook my entire core. I was in love with Trip. I was in love with the king of Starkland.

Suddenly, my laughter was cut short as a deep tremor tore through the floor. My chair shook so violently that I was flung to the side.

My shoulder and head smashed onto the floor, and I screamed.





34





TRIP





I paced across the situation room, anger and frustration rolling through me.

“Update me,” I ordered Max.

“They will arrive here within the hour,” he said simply.

It had been too long since Bryce had disappeared. The army had been recalled and they were on their way back to the estate. There were reports that the rebel army nearby was moving away, back toward the south, probably trying to link up with their main forces. If that was true, pulling my men back was the right call, kidnapping or not. It could have been a more serious trap.