Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
But I don’t need to.
I underestimate my wife. Have I learned nothing?
Because she straightens, growing inches taller before my eyes. When she takes hold of the banister, I tug free of one set of hands only to have two more grab me.
Amal begins to walk down the stairs. She’s unsteady and I think they drugged her, too. They must have. Even so, as she pauses to steady herself, to steel herself, her eyes never once leave mine. Not for a second.
She’s barefoot. I notice it immediately, each careful step exposing a glimpse of pale skin beneath the crimson silk. My gaze travels higher and my jaw tightens. The fabric has been wound tightly around her chest. It’s not to hide her, but to display her, deliberate and calculated. And yet, she holds her head high. If they wanted to humiliate her, they failed.
She’s wearing enough lace to circle the island three times over. I imagine hanging Senna with a length of it and it satisfies something dark and cold inside me.
But Senna barely registers. All I see is Amal.
I watch her descend the seemingly endless staircase, watch the crowd part as the sea did for Moses, and there is only her. I think of all the times I’ve pressed her hand to my chest, my heart, and I feel her there now.
In my heart.
My wild bride.
My fearless bride.
The woman I will lay my own life down to protect.
The men holding me back release me and I hurry across the space to her, reaching her in a few long strides. Once we’re in the middle of the room, guests create a circle around us and that screeching, hideous music grows louder, heavier.
This ritual, whatever it is, it has begun.
I wrap my arms around Amal as she throws her weight against me. I hear her breath catch as she lays her cheek against my chest and for a long moment, I hold her tight to me, feeling the frantic beating of her heart, breathing in the scent of her, needing to be certain this is real. She’s real. And I have her now. She’s safe now.
“All may join,” a man says. Robertson.
Couples spill onto the dance floor around us, their movements graceful, studied. But with every turn and measured step, the circle draws tighter. The dancers weave together, shoulder to shoulder, an elegant prison to trap us at its center.
I know there will be no running with Amal and Sev. I think I always knew. It wouldn’t be that easy. Even if we could run, she’s the only woman in red. They’d see us a mile off and we wouldn’t get to that mile. Not with all their manpower.
I hold her tight, looking down at her face. “Amal?”
She lifts her head and I see why she doesn’t speak. The lace has made an elegant gag, rendering her speechless. I feel for the knot at the back of her head but there isn’t one because it’s woven through her hair and held in place with what feels like a thousand hairpins.
“It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you now, baby. I’m going to get this off you and get us out of here,” I promise her, even as over her head I glimpse my brother being forced from the room by two soldiers. Even as two more come to stand beside us and Senna gestures for us to move.
I guess act one is over.
“Do you have the gun?” I whisper to Amal, hoping against hope that somehow, she was able to smuggle it under the dress. Somehow, she managed it. But she looks up at me with such a sad face, and I see the tears drenching that lace. “It’s okay. It’s fine. Don’t worry,” I reassure her. It would have been easier to have some firepower but honestly, we are so fucking outnumbered.
So, we move, heading in the same direction as Sev, me holding so tight to her hand that I force myself to loosen my hold before I break her finger. Her little bare feet seem so out of place here, so vulnerable in this room, among these people with their stiletto spiked shoes and sharp-toothed grins.
When the door is closed behind us, all noise falls away as if there is no one here at all. As if there aren’t two-hundred guests in the Great Hall and a string quartet isn’t playing a requiem for their horror show of a party.
We’re hurried down a dimly lit corridor that seems to go on forever. Lights flicker here, not candles although they’re made to look like that. At one point the hall is so narrow we must walk single file. I keep hold of Amal’s hand, glancing over my shoulder afraid she’ll slip away, disappear if I don’t see her. If I’m not touching her at all times.