The Tangled Tree Page 20

  I swallowed hard, feeling the butterflies fluttering in the pit of my stomach again. ‘Because you believe that you have finally found a way to control me?’ I asked, only half teasing him.

  ‘No,’ Kohén’s eyes were eternal. ‘Because I have always been under your control, and I think maybe you’ve finally realised that it is not you that will be ruined by our love, but I.’ Kohén wrapped his hand around the nape of my neck and pressed a kiss against my forehead. ‘Please, don’t ruin me, my love,’ he whispered, and then he turned and strode away, raking his hands through his hair so that the light above caught his silver ring and caused it to wink at me.

  I watched him go for a long moment, cupping my lower abdomen as though comforting the butterflies still dwelling within, not only those caused by Kohén’s tenderness towards me, but the fearful ones that Satan and Karol had manifested in there. I didn’t want to take Satan’s advice, but her warnings about what might happen to me in the next forty-eight hours were still lingering thanks to Kohén’s words, and when I remembered the look on Karol’s face when he’d come rushing after me…I couldn’t take it. For better or for worse, I pulled the door closed and sank back against it with relief when I heard the deadbolt slunk into place within.

  I locked myself in the gilded cage, and then I pulled up my knees so that I could hug them and cried and cried for the suicide that the swan had just assisted with, on behalf of the duckling she’d once been, and would never be again.

  14.

  Kohén was so pre-occupied on Friday that I didn’t see him again until noon, when he delivered me my lunch, kissed me quickly on the forehead, remarked that I didn’t look so good and that perhaps I should take a shower and then took off again, telling me that he was too busy to explain all that had happened since he’d seen me last, but that he would be back as soon as he could.

  I didn’t have a mirror in my room now and wouldn’t have reached for one if I had, but I touched my swollen face tentatively and then looked down at myself and realised that I probably was a fright. After he’d left me I’d done nothing but cry and sleep, my toga was a bit grimy looking after all of the sweating and running around that I’d done earlier that morning, my hair had gone from being fluffy to lank and there was an indent in my leg from where I’d fallen asleep on top of the power cord to my lamp.

  Wow, I better be careful! If Kohén starts to think that I’m gonna be like one of those wives that lets themselves go after marriage, I could be in real trouble! Well, maybe not me, but Kohl will...

  Vowing to start taking care of myself now that I’d had four days to adjust to my new, sequestered life, I took my dinner tray over to the vanity that I’d turned into a desk and sat down to eat, but the moment I removed the silver cover from the meals, the scent wafting off the chicken breast was so overpowering that I practically gagged. Within a heartbeat, I’d slammed the silver cover back down over the steaming delicacies beneath like a musician with a symbol, signalling the end of a song.

  Oh my gosh, when was the last time I was able to keep something down? I thought, rising from the desk and going over to the bed again, lying down on my back as the room spun around me. Three full days? Four? Did I eat anything on Tuesday, or was I so excited for the parade that I skipped breakfast too?

  I whimpered softly to realise that I’d shrunk my appetite to the point of being non-existent and that if I didn’t turn it around soon I was likely to get very unwell... but I honestly couldn’t handle the idea of lifting that cover off the food again so I closed my eyes, rested my forearm over them to block out the glare rebounding off my white walls and breathed out slowly, telling myself that I’d ask Kohén to bring me something a little less overpowering next time… maybe even some of that soup that Kohl had been cooking up for the Banished. Not that I supposed that he was going to be doing that again, not after that morning’s incident...

  Oh dear… how much trouble is he going to be in for that? I wondered, laying my other forearm over my eyes and groaning when I remembered the way that Elijah had looked at Amelia-Rose in Kohén’s bedroom earlier. He’d been fit to be tied! So if he could express that much anger towards a noble girl that he’d apparently been trying to impress for years, then how was he going to handle the son he’d never tried to impress? Would Kohl get a whipping?

  My stomach cramped up at the idea and I turned onto my side, drawing my knees up to my chest in reflex to the pain I felt when I imagined what poor Kohl was probably going through right then. It was dangerous to think about him though, and as I balled up around the empty feeling inside me, I realised that I’d been avoiding letting Kohl into my thoughts all week intentionally, which had been selfish and unkind on my part, but a survival instinct that I’d latched onto when I’d realised that I would not be able to latch onto him instead.

  At first I had filtered Kohl from my thoughts for fear that it would push me over the edge of my hysteria and cause me to do or say something foolish on his behalf towards Kohén (as I had the night before, when I’d drawn unfavourable comparisons between the twins) and then I’d been so furious with Kohl for tainting his soul by committing murder that I’d been unable to think of him without pain and anger boiling over inside me. Then I had allowed myself to think of him, only to chastise him silently over his dalliance with Amelia-Rose but now… now I was thinking that if Constance didn’t heed my advice and help him through this awful time, then there was a chance that he was going to end up leading a miserable life regardless of what any of us did to help him, and I couldn’t bear that. I was suffering enough as it was on his behalf and I was okay with that because I still believed that I deserved it, but then again, I’d done all I had to keep him alive and well and by rebelling against all the comforts offered to him, he was throwing it back in my face! He didn’t have me, no, but he had his freedom, but he was using it to piss everyone off by the sounds of it, and that was just a waste. How was he ever going to win the nation’s respect if he debuted back in court by first flying into a fit of rage and despair over his brother’s girl, then by giving a bunch of dangerous convicts the chance to run rampant through Eden? I was sure Constance could find a way to smooth over most of the bad publicity that her sons were capable of drumming up but honestly… what had he been thinking when he’d handed dangerous people kerosene instead of coals? Surely he must have realised that… that...

  My breath caught and I sat up so fast that my room spun again as the question hit me hard in the gut: What if Kohl had handed the convicts kerosene because he’d understood exactly how much damage that might be able to cause with a little firepower?

  No! I thought. No he wouldn’t have! But my heart thudded in my chest- because I knew that if Kohl had done something like that, then there was only one reason why he would have done it and that one reason was me. Had he intended to help me escape all along? Was this his purpose now? Or had he merely hoped that the banished would have found a way to cause mayhem that might inadvertently lead to my getting the opportunity to run?

  The opportunity that I turned down…

  That realisation made my eyes burn. I thought that Kohén and I had both made it clear that there was no way that I was getting out of this harem now, but what if Kohl hadn’t believed that I’d genuinely surrendered my life in order to save his, and that escaping was a non-issue for me now? What if he kept trying to pull the kind of stunts that he thought might give me the opportunity to run, opportunities that I had no choice but to rebuff for his well-being? Kohén had threatened to kill him- had threatened to scalp him even, but what if Kohl thought they’d been impassioned threats made in the heat of a moment that would never amount to anything? I knew that Kohén hadn’t made such threats idly- he’d never said a word in his life that he didn’t mean… but if Kohl didn’t then what would it matter if Constance and I were both working our asses off to keep him safe? The third-born prince would be a ticking time bomb no matter what we did, and the detonator was balled in his angry fist and well out of my reach.
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  I sat up again, feeling all panicky once more. Had I said enough to convince Constance to do what needed to be done to keep him in hand? Had she believed that I wasn’t exaggerating how much trouble we were all in? Had the altercation with Cherry changed anything? What if right now, Constance was out there running her mouth- telling Kohén that I’d confessed all to try and trick him into admitting something that I hadn’t? Weak and tired as I was I could barely think straight and sensed a full-blown panic attack coming on, so I got up and headed for the shower, tearing off my toga on the way and leaving it in a heap on the floor. Once I was in there I washed my hair twice, brushed my teeth three times and even let the water run cold over me for a few seconds to try and combat the anxious heat that was broiling me in my own sweat from the inside, but when that didn’t work, I got out and dressed clumsily, leaving my hair out to drip down my back. I didn’t know where this sense of unease was coming from, but I felt like I was being engulfed by a million worries from the inside out, and I was powerless to keep them at bay or the panicked sweat from prickling through me.

  ‘Calm down…’ I whispered to myself as I paced my floor, fanning myself with a book on Companion Protocol. ‘Just breathe Larkin, breathe…’

  But that didn’t work either. For days I’d been pushing all of my worries into a little box inside me and locking it with a key after so they wouldn’t get the chance to eat at me, but something had changed that morning and now I felt as though that box had exploded and I didn’t have enough brain cells to sort all of my troubles out into categories, let alone the calm state of being required to soothe them. I worried about the tracker that Cherry had mentioned, and I wondered if Satan had really been lying when she’d suggested that I’d kill myself within forty-eight hours. Dying still didn’t scare me the way it would have if I’d been emotionally balanced (which I clearly, was not), but worrying about what would happen to drive me to give up on my life (and Kohl’s with it) was enough to make me chew my fingers at the knuckles.

  Will Karol grab me, take me into that dungeon room and rape me? Will Kohén? Possibly, but why? What would I do to inspire such cruelty? I’m playing along well, aren’t I? And Karol’s not that dark, is he? Oh God… I don’t know, I don’t know! Please God, let this be a trick of Satan’s! I don’t want to die feeling like this!

  Still so hot that I was feverish, I paced on, thinking about every single thing that could be going wrong while I was trapped in there, unaware of it and incapable of seeing it coming. I worried that Amelia-Rose had told Kohl what she had seen in Kohén’s room that morning, and practically screamed in horror when I imagined her telling him that I was obviously very happy to be Kohén’s whore. Then I worried about the way I’d enjoyed those kisses because I knew that my surrender did suggest that I was somewhat content to be Kohén’s whore, and that made me yank at my hair and moan. Was I content? Could I live like this? How could I have been so infatuated with Kohl a week before, but so indifferent to him now? Well, not exactly indifferent… but I’d found a way to shut down any feeling of longing that I’d had for him, and that made me wonder if I’d ever cared deeply for him at all, as I’d believed. Had I used him? Had he been a stand-in for the real prince all along? I closed my eyes and remembered Pacifica- remembered riding along on the back of Kohl’s horse, and a wave of lust and longing practically smacked me to the ground. I grabbed the end of my bed, bent over, cupped my stomach and gasped for air- trying to breathe through pain that was so intense that I was sure someone was tearing my heart in two.

  What are you doing to yourself, you idiot? My own inner voice cried. Forcing yourself to feel pain for Kohl just to make sure that you’re a good person? Fuck Kohl! Yes you cared for him and yes you hurt him but there’s nothing you can do for him now that you haven’t already! You need to save yourself, or he’s dead anyway!

  ‘Oh, what’s happening to me?’ I whimpered, sinking down onto the furry rug on my knees and bowing my head to the floor while another wave of grief slapped me. Was this Satan’s doing? It had to have been! What else could have possibly triggered such an emotional collapse given how I’d had a rather triumphant morning- according to Kohén? ‘Breathe Lark…’ I raised my head and as I did, I saw the source of my despair or rather- the reason why I was feeling worse now than I had in days. Next to my dinner plate was an innocuous silver bucket it and inside it was the one thing that I had managed to keep down for days- and the one thing I hadn’t used to fortify myself with that morning: alcohol.

  I’m sober! Oh my God! I feel like hell for the first time in days because it’s the first time in days that I haven’t had at least three glasses to numb myself with by now!

  Gasping, I lunged to my feet and crossed the space between myself and the chilled bottle of wine in one leap before plucking it out and frantically unscrewing the bottle cap. It was wonderfully cold and I when I lifted my mouth to the bottle I tilted it and began to slug it down, hard and fast, not stopping until it was half-empty. I lowered it, wiped my mouth and panted for breath again while I tried not to choke, and after a moment I realised that already my fever was abating.

  Oh that’s just wonderful! Solve your problems by becoming an alcoholic, won’t you? Grand plan. Tried and tested, that one.

  Fuck you brain! I snapped to myself, taking the time to reach for a glass now that I’d taken the edge off the next wave of anguish. My hands were shaking and clammy but I managed to fill the entire thing to the top without wasting a precious drop, and within a matter of minutes I was reaching for the third and last glass while sitting down at my desk, chuckling as the world began to blur around the edges for me, and a feeling of serenity began to chew away at the panic.

  ‘Much better…’ I whispered, taking in a long, smooth breath and enjoying the feeling of fullness inside my tummy again before I raised it to the empty room and whispered: ‘Now… who had what issue with what again?’ I snorted at my own stupid joke, and it was at that moment that my bedroom door handle clicked and began to rattle. I looked over it as the door eased open and Kohén poked his head through, and because I’d already been sort of grinning at my own idiocy, the sight of Kohén’s face made my grin spread further.

  ‘Your highness!’ I took a sip from my glass and then beckoned for him to come in. ‘I was hoping you’d stop by soon. I’m gonna need something else to eat, I think. And maybe another bottle of wine…?’

  ‘I already brought you some wine and strawberries for supper,’ Kohén said softly, closing the door behind him and moving towards my bed without looking at me, and I frowned because the fact that his gait had drooped a lot in the past hour had not escaped my notice.

  ‘Uh oh…’ I said, standing up and swaying a little as I watched him lean over to put my new tray and ice bucket onto my bedside table. ‘Who’s invaded now? Pirates? Pygmy’s?’ I giggled. ‘Salt and pepper bears?’

  ‘No one’s invaded,’ Kohén said, but he sighed to my boarded-up window and shook his head. ‘I have some pretty awful news though… and you’re not going to like it.’

  That sobered me up a little, and I was already imagining being frog-marched down to the dungeon room. ‘What is it?’ I asked, trying to sound calm and innocent of anything that I might be accused of. And because he still wasn’t looking at me, I picked up and emptied my glass of wine. ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Yeah. I…’ he sighed again and turned to regard me while I was draining the rest of my wine glass, and I saw that his eyes were downcast and navy. ‘I have to go to the ball, Larkin.’

  I snorted bubbles out of my nose and then coughed, and a look of surprise crossed Kohén’s face as he crossed to me, taking the glass from my hand and patting my back. ‘Hey, are you all right?’

  But I was chuckling. ‘That’s your crisis?’ I wiped the wine out from between my upper lip and nostrils and rolled my eyes. ‘Fuck me, you’re gonna cry like a bitch if you ever stub your toe or are forced to endure an actual unpleasant event, aren’t you?’

  Kohén’s
eyes slitted with annoyance. ‘Larkin! What a thing to say!’

  ‘Well excuse me, but what am I supposed to do? Get you a hanky to wipe your eyes with? It’s a party, Kohén, not a hanging. And how is the fact that you have to go news to you? I assumed all along that you’d be there. Everyone in the city is invited, remember?’

  Kohén waved his hand at me and walked away. ‘Yeah well despite what you assumed, I’d made up my mind not to go the second we…’ his cheeks turned red. ‘When I realised that you couldn’t…with Karol and all...’

  ‘That I couldn’t possibly go without risking the fact that Karol might find a way to separate me from you and everyone else?’ I asked softly, and he nodded and I shrugged. ‘Oh well, I’m all right with not going, Kohén, and I certainly don’t begrudge you going, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ And I meant it. I was sad to be missing a lovely ball, but not even slightly upset to sit out this particular one. Stand around toasting Karol all night? Ugh.

  Though it would have been nice to see Ora again… and my friends before they leave Eden forever...

  ‘But I’m not all right with it,’ Kohén said, looking at me mournfully over his shoulder. ‘Lark when have I ever been all right with you missing a special occasion?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Three times a day for the last three days?’

  He looked wounded. ‘So you do resent missing out on that stuff?’

  ‘No, well… not under the circumstances,’ I said, thinking about it. ‘I really wanted to hear Shep talk last night and I’m sad to have missed out on that, but I wasn’t much of a social butterfly before this happened, so I wouldn’t have wanted to be out in front of everyone this week anyway so… no. No I don’t resent you for it.’ I shrugged. ‘I wish things could have been different, but you know me- I’d prefer to hold a book over a dance partner any day.’