Bonds of Cupidity (Heart Hassle Book 2)

The die drops to the floor and bounces on the wooden planks.

It rolls and rolls and rolls.

It feels like it’s going to roll forever. That I’m going to be stuck in this awful in-between of dread and terror where I don’t know exactly what’s happening, except that it’s about to get so much worse.

The quiet sound of it rolling on the floor is somehow so loud that it jars my teeth. The die comes to a stop, and so does everything else.

The prince glances down at the die at his feet, and whatever he sees makes a smirk appear on his face. He picks it up and holds it out for me to see. A symbol that resembles two overlapping circles is displayed.

“What does it mean?” I ask breathlessly.

His smirk widens into a grin.

I try to snatch my arm away from his grip, but he only tightens his hold. “You think I did not recognize you? You think that by hiding your wings and dyeing your skin, that I could not see?” he pulls me close, until his lips touch my ear. “The moment I saw you walk up to that cage, I knew you. No one plays me. No one. You say you have never played a game? Wrong. You’ve been playing mine.”

He backs up, leaving me swaying in fear, and makes some sort of signal to one of his men. In the next instant, the ground of the arena begins to shimmer and rumble. Everyone gasps when the huge monster appears.

It’s a grotesque giant, with a single eye held high on its skull that swivels around like an owl’s head. Gray scaled skin covers him and a wicked looking axe is clutched in his grip. Fifteen feet high with arms and legs like tree trunks, he hones in on his prey. He sprints at the contestants from across the arena, making them scatter. But he only follows one.

Sylred.

Sylred dodges it left and right, doing all he can to shake it off, but the giant keeps after him. Even when another contestant gets in its way, the giant completely ignores him. It even goes so far as to run around him.

His single-mindedness is clear. This is Sylred’s monster and no one else’s.

The giant corners Sylred and, raising his massive arm, swings his axe. I flinch as the weapon comes down, but Sylred somehow rolls on the ground and dodges it.

Meanwhile, Ronak, Evert, and two of the other contestants have decided to go on the offensive and run at it from behind to attack it with nothing but their limbs.

Evert runs right at its heels, sliding in the dirt, and then stops suddenly, crouching down. In a perfectly orchestrated move, Ronak sprints forward and leaps onto Evert’s back.

With seamless timing, Evert blasts upward at the same time that Ronak squats down, and with their shared momentum, he then launches into the air and latches onto the giant’s head.

I don’t know how he still has any of his strength power, considering he’s been locked up in an iron cell for days and is half-starved, but Ronak somehow manages to snap the giant’s neck in one brutal move.

It takes everything in me to try and not react. The prince is watching me too closely for me to do anything but let out a tiny breath of relief.

I’ve barely blinked when the prince already holds two more dice out for me. “Roll. Two, this time.”

I look at the offending game pieces. “The symbols. Each one represents a monster?”

“Very good, Emelle. And each die belongs to a contestant. You determine who gets what. Now roll them.”

I shake my head and lean away. “No.”

He laughs at my pathetic resistance and takes hold of my hand, shoving the dice inside. He curls my fingers over them and then flips my hand over. I clutch the dice in my palm until my nails cut into my palm.

I don’t want to cast the dice. I don’t want to be responsible for who will have a monster unleashed on them. “Please. Please don’t do this. I’m not a threat to you. I wasn’t attacking you that day, not really. And I wasn’t spying!” Not the way he thinks I was, anyway.

But the prince just grips my wrist and squeezes hard enough to make tears spring to my eyes and my fingers automatically pop open.

The dice fall.

He picks them up and signals to his fae again. Two more monsters appear. One resembles a giant serpent, the other a figure made of fire. The fire female sets her sights on one of the contestants I don’t know—the fae that I’d given the bread to.

The serpent sets his yellow eyes on Evert. Ronak and he try to take it down, but it’s viciously fast and has wicked sharp fangs. It’s at least twenty feet long, and when it spits, a steaming spray of venomous acid shoots from its mouth.

I flinch at a strike that Evert barely evades, but the prince is crushing three more dice into my hand, his cruel grip hurting my fingers. I swivel my head to look at him in horror. “Three more.”

I shake my head defiantly, even as my lip trembles. “No, please. That many at one time, and they’ll all die!”

He looks at me with fake pity. “Emelle. Haven’t you realized? That’s the whole purpose of all this,” he says, gesturing around the amphitheater. “It’s just one elaborate game to show them how easily I can end them. It’s nothing but a form of amusement for me and my court. You think I want them to survive? You think any of us really care about them?” he laughs, and the sound makes me want to claw his face.

He shakes his head at me. “I want them to suffer. To be humiliated. To have their honor stripped away from them. I want them to see me watching and realize that they are nothing but pawns here to entertain me. And every single spectator in here wants to watch it happen, too, because they’re secretly grateful that it isn’t them down there.”

“And what about me?” I challenge, trying not to wince under his punishing grip.

“You will roll three more dice.”

With a squeeze on my wrist, he forces me to drop them again. Three more monsters come into the arena to join the other two. A massive hound with red eyes and a frothing mouth. Then there’s a rolling, slick and faceless blob with iron spikes jutting out all over it. Lastly, what is perhaps the most terrifying monster of all. A little fae girl.

She looks young. Innocent. Completely angelic. Until blades split out of her limbs and her skull splits in half to reveal rows of spiked iron teeth.

The prince releases my wrist only to roughly grab hold of my face. “You spied on me. Attacked me with strange magic. Tried to hide in my own realm. And then you had the audacity to show up at my ball, stand in my castle, and feed my contestants,” he spits out. “Now tell me—which one of them was the food really for? Was it because you are working together to undermine me? Or simply because you care for him?”

I grind my teeth, refusing to answer.

His blue eyes glitter. “Still defiant? Hmm. What fun you are.” He releases my aching jaw with a cruel smirk. “I love it when things don’t come too easily. I shall take great joy in beating you in this game.”

He snaps his fingers, and four guards appear suddenly, taking me roughly by the arms. “Wait!” I struggle against them, but it’s no use. “Wait, it’s not over! Let me watch! I need to see who lives!”

He just watches the guards drag me away. “No. That’s part of the game. You don’t get to know.”

The guards manhandle me out of the box. I barely register Princess Soora’s blank face before I’m dragged out. I hear the cries and shouts of the crowd grow quieter as I’m taken downstairs and into the cells below the amphitheater.

In my panic, my wings burst out of my body. I try to use their sudden appearance to my advantage and throw the guards off me, but they barely pause before dragging me forward again.

“I’ve never seen wings like that,” one of them says.

They take me down the dark corridors and then they throw me into a cell with solid iron walls. The force of them tossing me inside makes my body scrape across the wooden floor, skinning my shins and palms in the process until I smack against the wall and come to a stop.

Someone hauls me up before I can even shake off the pain. The guard wrenches my arms behind my back, crushing them against my wings painfully.

Chaucel saunters through the door with another guard in tow. I see his green eyes widen at the sight of my wings before a smile crosses his face. “Ah. There she is in all her glory. The traitor who attacked the prince.”

I fake some courage and bitchiness, because the last thing I want is to appear weak. Somehow, I manage to roll my eyes at him. “Don’t be so dramatic. I attacked him with love.”

Well, Love Arrows. About fifty of them. But it’s not like they would’ve been fatal. I don’t think.

“Who sent you to spy on the prince?” Chaucel asks.

“Your mother,” I sneer.

He looks over at the guard beside him. “Help her be more cooperative, won’t you, Gammon?”

Oh, yeah. It’s the dick guard who roughed up my guys. And by the way he’s stalking toward me, I’m guessing he’s about to rough me up, too.

Bam!

The punch to my gut sends me keeling over and heaving violently. I cough up bile, tears filling my eyes as I try to breathe through the pain. The guard holding me straightens me up before I can recover.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Chaucel asks pleasantly, as if he were discussing the weather. “Tell me who sent you and why you were spying on the prince.”

“No one. I wasn’t,’ I say imploringly.

This time, Gammon backhands me across my left cheek. My neck snaps violently to the side, and I see stars and taste blood.

Gods, this guy is like a professional hitter.

“Who sent you and why?” Chaucel repeats.

“No one! I swear.”

Another hit, this time right at my eye. I cry out in pain, but I can’t even raise my arms defensively because of the other guard holding them back.

“What kind of magic did you attack the prince with?”

I’m sobbing now. I don’t want to. The last thing I want is to give them the satisfaction of my desperate tears, but I can’t help it. I’ve only had a physical body for a few weeks, and I’m certainly not strong enough to withstand torture.

“I told you! Love magic.”

I don’t expect it when Gammon goes for my wing.

He takes the right one in his hand and bends the top ridge back until there’s a loud snap.

I scream.

Agony makes me bend over and vomit all over the floor. Chaucel is speaking again, but he has to repeat himself several times before I can clear my head enough to hear it.

“Who runs the rebellion?” Chaucel asks.

“I don’t know,” I cry.

“Who?” Chaucel yells.

“I don’t know!”

I’m panting in both pain and adrenaline, but Chaucel just shakes his head at me and sighs. “I feared this would happen. That you would make things difficult for yourself. A pity, really. You are very beautiful. I’d hate to see you ruin your pretty face permanently,” he says, pulling up my chin to look me in the eye. “And those magnificent wings. What a shame we’ll have to cut them off if you continue to lie.”

Horror washes over me. He catches the look on my face and smiles again. “Ah. I see I have your attention. I think we’ll leave you with one last parting gift before we let you think about what is to happen if you should continue to disappoint us and not give the prince the answers that he seeks.”

Chaucel nods to Gammon. This time, he doesn’t stop at one hit. He goes for my face, my arms, my stomach, my back, and my wings.

I lose count at his brutal punishment. Then I’m in a heap on the floor, black dots swimming in my vision, and they’re leaving, slamming my cell door shut with their promise of a swift return. Probably with a saw to cut off my wings.

Tears, snot, saliva, and blood drip from my face and soak into the wooden floor as I lay sobbing. My guys are up there, maybe being ripped to shreds by monsters, while I’m down here being ripped apart by different kinds of monsters.

I don’t know if they’re okay. I hate that the prince took that from me. The not knowing is as debilitating as my current injuries are.

Then I remember Okot. I try to crawl to the door so I can call Okot’s name in case he’s locked up here, too, but I can’t move more than a few inches before the pain becomes too much.

A giant swell of applause vibrates through the arena all the way down to the floor of my cell, and my gut churns. Their applause could mean anything. The fae have cheered for the contestants both evading death and meeting it.

I’m not sure how long I lie here, but I’m jolted into full consciousness for a soul-deep intuitive reason.

I feel it.

Like a rubber band being pulled too tight, my body suddenly snaps.

And then I disappear.