I shifted tentatively and yep, it hurt as much as I thought. “That’s going to make for a long week at the Academy.”
I glanced at the light flooding the room and its opulent furnishings. We weren’t in any room of the house where I’d grown up. “Where are we anyway?”
“Some house in the north,” she said lightly, and my eyebrows immediately shot up, only for me to wince. That hurt. I could not have emphatic eyebrows until my face healed.
“They took us to the retreat in the north? Against my will?” I demanded.
“All right, you don’t have to sound as if you’re going to murder me.” Jaik’s voice was warm and rich as he stepped into the room, and his presence seemed to course through my blood, making my head clear.
“We’re not trying to keep you here.” He paused just inside the doorway. “But I wanted to get you out of the public eye while you healed.”
“Thank you.”
They were simple words, but there was nothing simple about the charge between us.
Hanna stared between us, then rolled her eyes and threw the covers to one side. “You two seem like you have a lot that you’re going to continue to not talk about,” she said brightly. “I’m just going to go see about finding some breakfast pie.”
I knew my sister. She considered every pie to be a breakfast pie.
“Your sister is very sweet,” Jaik offered tentatively after she had slipped out of the room.
I snorted. “No, she isn’t. She takes after me.”
Jaik’s lips twitched, almost into a smile. I would get one out of him eventually. “I happen to think you’re very sweet.”
At that, I definitely laughed.
“In your own way,” he amended.
“Oh, you aren’t just mocking me.”
“I’m trying to be nice.” He stayed by the door, and the distance between us felt like a tease. “Although even in your current state, that whim is quickly fading.”
I had a million questions, a million worries, but for now, I wanted him closer. “Come here.”
“You sound so imperious when you talk to a prince,” he teased me.
“I happen to know that prince would tear apart a castle to save me.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
I pushed aside the blankets and tried to sit up. It felt as if the muscles in my back were tearing apart, and I gasped. But I managed to make it up to sitting, even though the world turned to a sick, hazy blur for a moment.
“All right, don’t hurt yourself, I’m here.” His voice was impatient as he knelt in front of me on the bed, his gaze worried as his hands settled on my knees. “You always get what you want, don’t you?”
“I try,” I shot back. “Just like you do.”
His gaze roamed my body, assessing, although his lips tightened. “You’re badly hurt. They used some kind of enchantment to keep you from shifting—”
My fingertips found the sore, inflamed mark on my chest where the brand had marked my body. Instant panic swept through me. I couldn’t lose my dragon. “How do we get rid of it?”
“It’s all right, Honor,” he promised. “You’ll just need daily healing sessions to lighten the brand until it’s gone. The right healer can break the enchantment to prevent healing as well.”
Henrick and Alis had wanted to make sure I couldn’t shift so they could recreate the torture I’d experienced when I was just a child. Everything that happened in that house felt like a fog—and mixed in with that fog were shards of memory from when I was a child.
The labyrinth. The torture. Which came first?
“They didn’t take anything from you that you can’t get back.” He sounded so confident, his amber gaze pulling me back to the present.
I tried to manage a smile. “I hope you’re right.”
He frowned. He started to say something, but I cut him off because I didn’t want to discuss my feelings. I wasn’t sure my dragons were the kind of men who wanted to discuss my feelings either, for that matter.
I’d seen Jaik kill Henrick, and then I’d begged Tal to protect Alis—and he had. “Where’s my stepmother? Is Alis here?”
When he hesitated, my heart sank.
“I tried to bring her with us, but I had a choice of getting you and your sister out or getting her out. My father wanted to take her into custody.”
“Why?”
“He showed up when we were flying out.” His tone was cool, calm, but there was a flare of anger in his gaze. “He said Henrick and Alis were involved in a plot against him, that was why Henrick had hired so much security.”
Was that possible?
“He took her for interrogation. We’ll find her, Honor. Talisyn said you asked him to protect her.” There was a quizzical note in his voice. He wanted to know why, but his first impulse had been to trust that I had a good reason for wanting Alis kept alive.
“I think she knows something about who I really am.” There was a sudden pressing in my mind, a heaviness that slowed my thoughts, but I wasn’t trying to reveal anything about my secret identity to Jaik. This was a far older, deeper secret. “My father never had a mistress. That was just a story my father let slip so I’d have the chance to fit into society. As much as I ever did.”
“You’ll always fit in now,” Jaik promised me.
“You have to like her or I’ll murder you is not the way to win people’s hearts, Jaik,” I chided him.
“I think it’s worth a try.” Jaik was still kneeling in front of me, his hands warm on my bare skin, sending tingles through my body. “Did your father tell you where you really came from?”
“He said he found me wandering abandoned, abused. He said my birth family must have hurt me.” The memories of being a child, strung up and lashed mercilessly, pressed against me and the room suddenly seemed too small. The wounds on my back burned.
But it hadn’t been my family that tortured me. The father I’d adored had been a liar. He’d hidden my past from me.
Rage pulsed through me, then soured in my mouth. I loved my father. I didn’t want to think badly of him. The memory of Henrick, his dark beard and bright eyes in the darkness, gave me someone else to hang on to. Someone to hate.
“Henrick and I met before.” My voice came out quiet, but full of steel. “He’d hurt me when I was a child. I have to find out why, Jaik. I have to find out what Alis knew.”
His posture was stiff. “Henrick hurt you more than once.”
“You already ripped his head off, Jaik.”
“I’d still like to do it again.”
“So protective. Who would have known?” I leaned forward to brush my lips against his.
He kissed me back, his lips tender, but when my hands slid down his shoulders, he caught my wrists in his hands, ever so gently.
“Absolutely not.” His voice was far firmer than his grip. “Not until we’ve been able to have you seen by the healer. Arren is on his way to get the best one in the kingdom right now. There isn’t one near the retreat who can handle the layered enchantments that keep you from healing or shifting.”
“I see, I see. So you’re going to terrify some poor, hardworking physician into coming at your beck and call.”
“If we’re lucky, Arren won’t have to do any terrifying. People are usually quite happy to give us what we want.”