Page 45 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
Soon.
I placed one foot on top of the other. But I couldn’t feel it. That fact scraped the back of my throat with wrongness, nauseating.
Eyelids drifting, I swayed.
Just wait. Just a little longer. Just…
A dark night. The silhouette of a man with tail swishing. And at his feet, light pooling on the still and silent body of my sister. Her chestnut hair pooled around her head, gleaming and gorgeous. The man crouched over her, and that was when the light hit his face. A square jaw. Straight nose. Strong chin. Beautiful and brutal.
From my hiding place, I cowered. I had no weapon. Certainly not one that would affect a fae. And how could I explain a dead prince in his own capital city?
I blinked away the image in time to stop myself from staggering forward. Curling up in the snow was an appealing option right now. It would be quiet and it couldn’t be any colder than I was right now.
It would be peaceful.
That was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever known.
I caught my knees as they bent. I locked them.
No. Stay standing. No matter how tired. No matter how tempting.
I had no idea how much time slipped away, only that I blinked and the prince was striding away from the columned dome, passing me without a glance. “Come along.”
I told my leg to move. It might’ve obeyed, albeit slowly.
Then the world tipped, the snowy ground flying right up at my—
Everything went white.
20
“Little bird?” His voice came from far away, somewhere beyond the white. “Pet?”
Something burning touched my waist, and I whimpered but couldn’t pull away.
There was the crunch of an object dropping into crisp snow. “Shit. You’re freezing.”
I tried to lift my head and tell him to fuck off, but only a slurred mumble came from my mouth.
Then I wasn’t on the ground anymore, but that burning sensation seared the whole of my right side and around my legs and back. I couldn’t cry out, as pain snatched my shallow breaths. But for some reason, I curled against that brutal fire—better that than the ice I was encased in.
It hurt and yet I craved it.
I tried to ride its pain down into oblivion. It seemed a good escape, and I was so tired.
But something jostled me and gently—so gently—stroked my cheek. “Zita? Zita!”
My eyelids fluttered, giving me snatches of an image that made no sense. The prince’s face crowded my field of view. A frown was etched so deeply between his brows, it looked like someone had drawn it there with thick, black charcoal. Flame surrounded that pretty face. That explained the burning.
No. Not flame, just his impossibly red hair, falling in a curtain, the crown gone. Understanding crept through my sluggish mind: his face was above mine as he held me.
The heat I leant into was him, his body. His arms around me. He carried me somewhere, tension thrumming through his muscles where he held me so tight. He’d even wrapped his light jacket around me, blocking a little of the chill air.
As I blinked up at him, the corner of his mouth flickered. “There,” he breathed with something that sounded like relief. But even with that threat of a smile, his eyebrows pulled tighter together. “Don’t die, little pet.” The sense of movement sped.
I dipped into brightness and darkness, squirming at the pain of his heat.
“I ordered you not to die.” His voice rumbled through me, pulling me back. “Stay awake.”
