OURS: The Hunted Prince

Chapter 10:The Mad Prince

Ignorance is not an apology.

LUCIEN POV

The doctor’s words lodged in my chest like a blade.

Not a metaphor. A real one. Cold iron. Barbed. The kind we used on traitors before the Treaty, the kind that didn’t come out clean. It went in between my ribs and stayed there.

Coma.

Emergency brake.

His body chose death over another second of this.

The words echoed. Not in the room. In me. In the space where my heart used to be before three hundred years of war turned it to stone.

Cassius was still breathing fire.

Literally. I could smell smoke on his breath. His hands were flexing, opening and closing, like he wanted the doctor’s throat back in them. Like letting go was a mistake he was seconds from correcting.

The old man was on the floor. Gasping. A handprint blooming on his neck in the shape of Cassius’s rage. Purple. Black at the edges. The kind of bruise that doesn’t fade.

Draven wasn’t moving. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, Zane’s hand in both of his, like if he held on tight enough he could anchor him to this world.

But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

Because I was staring at our mate.

OURS.

The word tasted like blood in my mouth. Like copper and winter and something I’d been starving for without knowing the name of it.

Lying on Draven’s bed.

Draven’s bed.

Black silk sheets. Wards in the walls that would flay a man alive. A room no one entered except blood.

And there he was.

A werewolf.

On our bed.

In our home.

I still can’t believe we finally found him.

Three hundred years.

Three hundred years of empty. Of wars that meant nothing. Of thrones that felt like graves. Of women and men who looked at us with fear or lust or ambition, but never recognition.

I’ve thought of countless ways to react when we finally found him.

I’d pictured rage. That he was a wolf. That he was small. That he would hate us.

I’d pictured laughter. That after all this time, the gods had a sense of humor.

I’d pictured breaking him first. Just to see if he could be put back together.

I’m the talkative one. The one with the grin and the jokes and the chaos. Draven broods. Cassius kills.

I talk.

I talk when I’m happy. I talk when I’m bored. I talk when I’m tearing a man’s spine out through his throat because silence is a grave and I’ve lived in graves too long.

But this time?

This time I was speechless.

Our mate.

The name was new in my mouth. Tasted like snow. Like something clean in a world that hadn’t been clean since we sealed Death and called it peace.

Pale.

Not the pretty kind of pale. Not moonlight. Not ivory.

Corpse-pale. The kind undertakers try to hide with powder. The kind that means the blood isn’t moving right.

Broken.

There was a cut above his eyebrow, still weeping. A shadow of a handprint on his throat, fingers too big, too cruel. Fading marks on his wrists where chains had bitten deep. His lips were cracked. There was a bruise at the corner of his mouth like he’d been hit. Or like he bit it to keep from screaming.

Breathing too slow.

Rise.

Fall.

Rise.

Each one a second too far apart. Each one a question. Is this the last one?

Bruises on his throat.

Chains on his wrists in my memory.

The image was burned behind my eyes. Our mate on the floor of that cell. Cold. Not breathing right. OURS tearing out of Draven’s throat like a prayer, like a curse, like a name he’d been holding in his mouth for centuries.

Then it clicked.

Not a thought. A break.

Something in my head, in my chest, in the part of me that was still human, snapped.

HOW DARE THEY.

The words weren’t words. They were a sound. Low. Inhuman. The sound a predator makes before it feeds.

In one second, I was in the torture room.

I don’t remember walking. Don’t remember the stairs. Don’t remember passing guards who took one look at my face and pressed themselves to the walls.

One moment I was by his bed, watching his chest not rise fast enough.

The next I was standing in the dark.

The smell of blood and iron was already thick in the air. Old blood. New blood. My blood. Their blood. It lived in the stones here.

I asked our head guard to bring them here before we left to check on our mate.

I’d given the order hours ago. Or minutes. Time didn’t exist. There was only before we found him and after.

Before was empty.

After was this.

No. They can’t get off that easily. Not after everything they put our mate through.

Not after the chains. Not after the handprint. Not after his body decided death was better than another second of them.

They will wish for death, but they won’t get it.

The torture room is where we take care of traitors and people who commit unforgivable crimes.

It’s below the castle. Past the dungeons. Past the cells where we keep things that aren’t dead enough to bury.

The walls are black stone. No windows. No sound gets out. The only light is from braziers, and the only mercy is that we usually make it fast.

Usually.

And what they did was more than a crime.

It was blasphemy.

You don’t touch what’s OURS.

You don’t mark it. You don’t chain it. You don’t make it choose death.

You don’t.

I looked at the two half-dead guards chained to the wall and the memory of what I witnessed a few moments ago came rushing back to me.

OUR MATE on the floor. Cold. Not breathing right.

OURS whispered like a prayer. Like Draven was begging the gods to take it back, to undo it, to give him a mate that wasn’t broken.

I clenched my hands.

My nails bit into my palms. Blood welled. I didn’t feel it.

I raised both their heads up to look at me.

My fingers in their hair. Yanking. Forcing their eyes to mine.

And damn, Cassius did a very nice job on the face of the guard he handled.

The left side of his face was gone. Not cut. Peeled. Like fruit. Like Cassius had gotten bored and decided to see what was underneath.

Muscle glistened. Teeth showed through a hole where his cheek should be. He was bleeding profusely, the blood running down his neck, soaking into his shirt, pooling on the floor.

He was conscious.

That was the worst part.

He was awake for it.

But I was still not satisfied.

Skinning him was Cassius. Cassius is rage. Cassius is immediate.

I am worse.

I am patient.

You will beg for death by the time I’m done with the both of you. And guess what?

I leaned in. Close enough that my breath stirred the blood on his ruined face.

You still won’t get it.

“Do you know why?” I asked.

My voice was soft. The voice I used to coax secrets from prisoners. The voice that made them think they could bargain.

I saw the horror in their eyes when they saw the smirk on my face.

It wasn’t my usual grin. My usual grin had chaos in it. This had nothing. This was empty. This was the part of me that was older than the Treaty.

They knew what was coming.

And they would get every bit of it.

Because death would be a mercy, and traitors don’t deserve that.

Death is quiet. Death is an end.

They don’t get an end.

Talk more of the ones who dare lay a finger on our mate.

The word dare tasted like iron.

Who gave them permission? Who looked at him — small, broken, ours — and thought I can touch that?

When I’m done with them, they will see death, but they won’t have it.

They’ll beg for it. They’ll pray to gods they don’t believe in.

And I’ll smile.

I stripped both guards to the waist.

My claws did most of it. Fabric tore like wet paper. I wanted skin. I wanted to see the places they’d touched him with.

I chained them to the wall with silver cuffs that seared their wrists.

The metal was old. Older than Duskmoor. It hissed against their skin, and the smell of burning hair and flesh joined the blood in the air.

They screamed.

Good.

Blood trickled down their arms, black in the torchlight. It ran in rivers. It dripped to the floor. It would stain the stone forever.

I snapped my fingers.

The sound echoed.

A compartment in the wall opened. Silent. Oiled. Perfect.

I walked towards it and stared at the toys that were neatly arranged inside.

The joy I felt was unimaginable.

It was the first real feeling I’d had since the doctor said coma.

Since I saw him on that bed.

This? This I understood.

This was language.

We all have compartments like this in all the cells in the dungeon. Unknown to anyone except the ones they were used on — who didn’t live to tell the tale.

Draven had his knives. Cassius had his hands.

I had my toys.

I picked my favorites.

The pear of anguish.

It was beautiful. Bronze. Shaped like a fruit, with petals that bloomed. You put it inside a man and turned the screw. It opened. Slowly. Until it didn’t stop.

And the thumbscrew.

Small. Simple. Effective.

I clicked it, and I was satisfied with the sound it produced.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound was a promise.

“Who am I starting with?” I taunted.

I rolled the thumbscrew between my fingers, letting them see it. Letting them hear it. Letting the sound bounce off the walls and into their bones.

The one Cassius hadn’t skinned was crying already. Snot and tears and blood.

Pathetic.

“I will destroy the hands you both used in touching him.”

I said it like a vow. Like a prayer. Like OURS.

I turned the thumbscrew slowly.

First on the skinned one. On his thumb. The good one.

The metal bit. Then it sank.

The scream that tore out of the first guard was animal. Raw. Human.

It bounced off the walls. It would have deafened anyone else.

To me, it was music.

“We didn’t— we didn’t know he was yours!” he sobbed. “We thought he was just a prisoner! We never knew he belonged to the princes! We wouldn’t have dared—”

He went out of breath, choking on blood and snot. His words turned to gurgles.

I laughed quietly.

It wasn’t my usual laugh. No humor. No joy.

Just the sound of something breaking.

I plucked a branding iron from the brazier.

The coals were white-hot. The air above them shimmered.

The end of the iron glowed orange, shaped like an ornate L.

For Lucien.

For liar. Because they lied. They said they didn’t know. But they touched.

For lost. Because they were. Because we were. For three hundred years.

“Ignorance,” I said, pressing the iron to his bare chest and to the other guard’s stomach, “is not an apology.”

The stench of burning flesh filled the room.

It was thick. It coated my tongue. It went down my throat and sat in my lungs.

Skin bubbled. It blistered. It blackened.

Screams turned to whimpers.

Whimpers turned to silence.

Not because they were dead.

Because they couldn’t scream anymore.

I dropped the iron.

It clanged against the stone. The sound was loud. Final.

I stepped back, surveying my work.

Two broken men.

Both missing their fingers. I’d taken them one by one. While they watched.

Branded like cattle. My L sunk into their chests, into their stomachs. It would scar. If they lived.

Neither will walk again. I’d made sure of that. Knees were a privilege.

I wiped my hands on a handkerchief.

White silk. Monogrammed. One of mine.

Now red.

Soaking. Dripping.

I left the torture room still not feeling even a bit satisfied.

The screams were still in my ears. The smell was still in my nose. The blood was still on my hands.

And it wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

After all, I have a reputation to live up to.

“The Mad Prince.”

They call me that in the courts. In the taverns. In the bedtime stories mothers tell to make their children behave.

Be good, or the Mad Prince will come for you.

They think it’s because I laugh when I kill.

It’s not.

It’s because I don’t stop.

When I entered the hallway, my hands started shaking.

Not from rage.

The rage was gone. Burned out. Left me hollow.

But from the memory of him.

Pale. Broken. OURS on Draven’s bed.

The image hit me like a fist.

His chest rising too slow. His lashes against cheeks that were too hollow. The bruise at the corner of his mouth.

I could still hear the guards screaming, but it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t his voice.

It wasn’t him screaming our names. It wasn’t him fighting us. It wasn’t him alive.

Nothing would be enough until he opens his eyes.

Until he looks at us and sees monsters and chooses to stay anyway.

Until he wakes up.

I leaned against the wall. The stone was cold. It didn’t help.

My hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t make a fist.

Blood was under my nails. Not theirs. His. From when I bathed him last night and saw the cuts on his wrists.

Ignorance is not an apology.

And I wasn’t sorry.

Not for them.

I was sorry for him.

Sorry we were late. Sorry we didn’t find him sooner. Sorry his body chose death over another second of this.

Sorry.

The word was useless.

I pushed off the wall.

I had to get back to him.

Had to watch him breathe. Had to count the seconds between. Had to be there when— if— he woke up.

Because we found him.

And we don’t lose.

Not to death.

Not to gods.

Not to himself.

Never.