Page 82 of Caroline the Cruel
Hollis pulled a wine key from his pocket and got to uncorking the bottles, pouring them each a glass.
What an elaborate effort. He’d re-bottled the wine after he’d tainted it. His thoroughness almost impressed her. Without hesitation, she took the one offered to her, sniffed it, and took a long drink. “Delicious,” she said.
Hollis looked overly pleased with himself. “I’m glad you like it.”
Caroline studied the man across from her as he sipped his own glass, knee bouncing as if he weren’t aware he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he believed. She’d told him she could heal the intoxication from her system and what was alcohol but a tastier poison. Fortunately, he hadn’t made the connection. His eagerness to end her seemed to outweigh his critical thinking skills, which, based on how elaborate Avondale was, he didn’t lack them.
“Another glass?” he asked, springing to his feet.
She chuckled, covering her mouth. Obvious indeed. “Please. What has you in such a good mood, Prince?”
Hollis finished topping her off, then relaxed back in his chair, appearing determined to calm himself. Perhaps he was aware. “I’m having wine with a stunning woman who no longer hates me. I’m eager to see how our relationship evolves. I’m right, aren’t I? You don’t hate me?” His forehead wrinkled as his eyebrows shot up eagerly.
“Something like that, though I’m still unhappy with the stunt you pulled in Avondale.” She frowned as she ran her finger around the rim of the wine glass, causing it to sing.
“Listen, Caroline,” he said, and his legs spread even wider than they’d been before. She was sure it was an unconscious movement but telling all the same. “It’s one thing for one of us to sleep with you, but love or a marriage wasn’t in the cards. Honestly, I think Breicher was looking for an excuse to end it, anyway.”
Violet starbursts flashed across her vision, but she seized them before they manifested on her face. It was best to ignore the stinging comment, because there was truth to what Hollis said, and she was still trying to figure out how she felt about that. “Yes, it seems you were right.” It was time. Caroline had better start acting poisoned before she murdered him.
Furrowing her brow, she brought her hand to her stomach, and Hollis leaned forward at the gesture. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I need a second.” Getting to her feet, she took a few steps toward the bathroom, then staggered, catching herself on the back of the couch. “Hollis, get help. Something’s wrong,” she cried as she tumbled to the ground.
“How long is it gonna take her to die?” a rough voice Caroline didn’t recognize asked.
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me that,” Hollis said.
Footsteps shuffled through gravel as the man Hollis had handed her off to carried her across a yard. The cool night air ruffled her hair, and the smell of horses came into her awareness. The man placed her, none too gently, in a carriage and she had to bite her cheeks to keep from wincing aloud. “Go drive. I’ll stay here with her in case she stirs,” Hollis commanded. The carriage bobbled as he climbed inside, quietly clicking the door closed behind him. Then they were moving.
Caroline estimated they rode two hours through the night to the outskirts of the city, when the carriage came to a halt. She didn’t dare open her eyes, but gave a convincing agonized groan at the abrupt stop.
More shuffling, the door creaking open, then the man Hollis was working with seized her wrist with a meaty hand, then she was being pulled through the door, and cradled as they followed along behind Hollis.What fun.
Muffled sounds of a lively gathering were taking place somewhere in another room of the building they were entering. They must be going in through a back entrance. “Take her to the room. I’ll be up in a bit,” Hollis said.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t have buried her in a deep hole and left her to die there,” the unidentified man said, and a whiff of his foul breath hit her face drifting up her nostrils and she almost gagged. His head must be angled toward hers, studying her blank face.
“Until I see her dead body, I won’t be convinced,” Hollis said.
“We could cut off her head?” The man’s voice lifted at the end of the question a little too hopefully. He was nervous Hollis was leaving him alone with the dying queen.
Smart, she chuckled internally. He should be worried.
Hollis huffed, like he’d considered it. “No. I plan to put her bleached corpse on display for all the kingdoms so it will be known she is well and truly dead. Then I will take my rightful throne…and hers. We are so close, I can taste victory.”
A gruff hand stroked her head, and one of them lifted a lock of her hair, twirling it between fingers, which must belong to Hollis since the other man’s were occupied holding her. “She’s such a pretty young thing, it’s too bad.” Hollis’s voice trailed off as he left them.
“Very well,” the man answered, and started climbing the stairs. Soon after they entered the room, he unceremoniously dumped her on a bed, and the scraping of a chair being moved sounded.
She’d give Hollis a minute to get comfortable at whatever bar he’d nestled up to, probably the one in the inn. Because she knew the former king now and his penchant for winter’s sin, she suspected he’d be looking to celebrate the victory he believed firmly within his grasp.
It would be divine. Her punishments always were… especially the dramatic ones where she had to play a long game, draw out her anticipation, then watch the thing snap shut when her victim—no, that wasn’t the right word—the wrongdoer was lulled into complacency. She’d let them think they’d won, then strike. She felt the lesson sank in deeper that way.
Ten more minutes. Caroline’s heart began giddily thumping but halted as hands once more were laid upon her.
“Youarea pretty thing, aren’t you,” the man said, turning her so she was face up. Then he was stroking her cheeks with his sticky fingers and heat from his noxious breath brushed against her lips like he was leaning down to—
No. She reached out to seize the man’s voice before he could shout. Then she snapped her eyes open and relished in the terror she caught as he stared at her very alive silver, awake and alert, staring back at him. “Get off me.”
