Chapter Nineteen

Prue had rather come to like the king in the last two nights, despite his foul temper, so she said, “I expect wisdom, fairness, and kindness from a king. Just because you haven’t a heart in your chest doesn’t mean you can’t act as if you had one.”

The king scowled quite ferociously, but Prue tilted her chin and stood her ground. “Fine!” he finally shouted.

They set to work and little more was said that night, but the king looked thoughtful as he labored.…

—From King Heartless

Everything was so gray without Val, Bridget thought morosely a few days later. She’d decided to take a short walk with Pip, who was trotting along jauntily beside her. Apparently now that she was the sister of a baron, she merited a footman to follow her. Something that she might find amusing were it not for the fact that everything was so gray, despite the fact that the sun was shining.

If only…

If only she could have one more chance to talk to him, to try to explain while he painted swirls of colors with words, to kiss him tenderly while he told her she burned.

To tell him again and again that she loved him even if he couldn’t quite return the words yet, his head cocked, his azure eyes glittering and alive.

But she’d betrayed him, given his worst secret, his most terrible vulnerability, to one of his enemies, and even with all his wonderful, beautiful, mercurial madness, Valentine would never be able to forgive that.

Never.

She felt the tears threaten her already-sore eyes again. She bent her head to hide them, which was probably why she didn’t see the carriage until it was already beside her, the door flung open.

Pip was barking madly, the footman shouting behind her, but she was grabbed by rough hands and thrown inside, a hood pulled over her head.

And then she felt the carriage pull away as she fought to breathe, to free her arms from the strong hands, as Pip’s barks faded into the distance.

THE PROBLEM WITH dreary old secret societies was that they must have their ridiculous revels in arcane places, the better to invoke the supposed mysteries, et cetera, et cetera.

Val stared out his carriage window four nights later near midnight and thought that really, now that he was almost to the Dyemore estate in Yorkshire, he’d rather be at Hermes House, reading a book he hadn’t yet set alight. Or staring at the wall.

He’d been staring at the walls quite a lot recently.

It was all rather… well, dreary, really. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it through whatever revolting ceremony Dyemore had concocted without yawning and nodding off.

He kept wanting to turn and ask Bridget her thoughts on matters and she wasn’t there, was she?

She was never there.

Even fulfilling his vow to go through with it, to become the center of the Lords of Chaos and gather all that raw power and illicit knowledge for himself, now seemed… a tedious chore. Without Séraphine there to rant at him with burning eyes, to tell him why he shouldn’t do this or that, and to explain so seriously that it was wrong of him and that he really, truly ought to try to do the right thing, the whole procedure was really rather tiresome.

He’d turn the carriage round and head back to London if he weren’t fearful that he’d set fire to the entire library and leave himself without any source of relief in this life at all.

Oh, Bridget.

He closed his eyes and thought that had he not cut out his blackened heart and left it in that foul ivory casket long ago, it might—it just might—be a broken thing in his chest right now.

The carriage shuddered to a stop.

He opened his eyes as the door was thrown wide on the nightmarish sight of torches and naked men in animal masks.

Might as well get on with it, then.

BRIDGET HAD SPENT a hellish three days and two nights being jostled and bruised on the carriage floor as it had journeyed to where she didn’t know. She’d had time to be terrified, imagining rape and murder, to become so tired she’d dozed on the quaking floor, almost uncaring, only to be awakened, terrified once more, every time they’d stopped.

She’d been allowed to relieve herself at intervals, humiliatingly, at the side of the road, in front of whatever men had kidnapped her.

They’d given her water and bread.

They’d not offered anything else.

Which, on the whole, rather alarmed her. If they meant to keep her for ransom from her brother, surely they’d want to feed her better? She didn’t want to think about what they might want her for if not ransom, but it had been a very long journey.

They didn’t talk much, but she could discern four voices: two within the carriage and two riding outside. All, to her surprise, sounded refined.

That didn’t make sense.

They’d bound her wrists behind her back when they’d first caught her. The rope was rough and tied quite tight. She was lying on her side on the carriage floor and she’d tried several times to surreptitiously rub the bindings off. All she’d succeeded in doing was tightening the rope around her wrists, with the result that her fingers now felt thick and nearly useless, which frightened her more. On the second day her kidnappers had noticed her movement and she’d been kicked in the side for her trouble. Her side still ached.

By the time the carriage stopped for the final time she’d moved past terror, past exhaustion, past terror again, and on to determination.

Bridget decided that really, this wasn’t how she was going to die.

So when the carriage door opened, when they took the hood off her head, and she saw the torches burning and the nude men in masks, she fought. She kicked and she bit and she lowered her head and brought it up violently into the chin of the man standing over her.

He swore and staggered back, blood dripping from beneath the rabbit mask he wore.

Three others seized her bound arms, though.

One in a fox mask stood in front of her. He held a knife and he had a dolphin tattoo on the inside of his elbow.

He was also horribly erect.

She twisted, throwing her weight against the men behind her, and caught them off guard. All three of them went down to the ground. She rolled, elbowing one in the stomach, but the other held firm. The fox brought the knife down.

Cutting, slicing her clothes from her body.

A thrill of horror went through Bridget. She raised her legs, kicking, twisted her neck, biting. But more hands joined the first ones, holding her down, keeping her immobile as the fox cut every piece of clothing from her body. She lay on the hard, cold ground, naked, with scalding tears streaming into her hair.

One came to stand over her, his body wrinkled and old, his mask, in cruel contrast, portraying a beautiful young man with grapes in his hair. “Bring her.”

She clenched her thighs together. Bared her gritted teeth. She wouldn’t make it easy for them, these savage aristocrats, these bloody Lords of Chaos, for it had to be them.

But they lifted her, held her high above their heads among the burning torches, and carried her somewhere. She could feel their hard hands on her bare body. On her shoulders and legs and buttocks, holding her aloft like a slaughtered doe at some medieval feast. What were they doing?

They bore her into a circle of torches and lowered her onto a great stone, freezing against her skin. The fox was there again, cutting the ropes at her wrists finally. But before she could move, her hands were seized and her wrists were tied to posts at the upper corners of the stone. Her ankles were spread and tied to posts at the lower corners.

She was a sacrifice, spread-eagled and bound, ready for the priest.

She stared up, horrified, stunned, terrified, and a man came to stand over her. He wore a wolf’s mask, his body was beautiful and without flaw, his nipples pink, with just a scattering of golden hair between his pectorals. She couldn’t see his dolphin tattoo, but she knew that was because he wore it on his left buttock.

Oh, God, no.

The old man handed the wolf-masked man a long knife. “This is your initiation sacrifice. Enjoy her in whatever manner strikes your fancy. You can share her, if you wish. And then kill her.”

And all Bridget could think of were Val’s words, whispered as he leaned his forehead against hers: you have to kill the thing you love.

Val raised the knife above her…