He narrowed his eyes and blocked her in by bracing an arm over the couch. “Overdose?”
She shrank into the cushions. “Shit, don’t hurt me! He said it was just a game, something to make the prince’s blood run hot. Spike it with too much spice, y’know?”
“Who, Amir?”
“Amir, what? No.”
Ice gripped Niko’s heart. “The spice was for Vasili?”
She nodded and bit her lip. “He takes it all the time for the pain.”
“Did he just make a delivery to the prince?!” Niko growled.
“Y-yes?”
Shit. He pointed at the girl but backed off. “Stay here. I’m not done with you.”
An overdose. Spiked spice. He ran from the girl’s room, darting through corridors and up steps, cursing the wretched maze-like layout of the palace until he found familiar hallways. The last time he was here he’d been high, but as he came down he’d been able to map the route to Vasili’s room.
He turned the handle to his chamber and shoved, but the door didn’t give. “Dammit. Vasili?” He tried again, shoving it harder. Locked. “You in there?” A swift kick would break the lock. He backed up.
The door opened.
Vasili made an effort to straighten. His gaze drifted aimlessly, his mouth forming unspoken words. He slid down the door to his knees and, panting, slumped forward onto his hands.
He was too late. Spice overdoses could be lethal.
Niko knelt and reached out to support the prince, but the man turned his head and bared his teeth like a terrified animal. “You need help,” he said softly. The prince’s back heaved in time with his labored breaths. “The spice was tainted. You’ve been poisoned. Get to your feet.”
“Don’t…touch...”
Niko flexed his fingers. “All right, fine. Then I’ll watch you die in a pool of your own bodily fluids. Is that what you want?”
Vasili reached up the door, grabbed the handle, and heaved himself onto his feet. “Leave.”
He was impossible. Spice was ravaging his body, burning his veins, shredding his mind, making him see and think things that didn’t exist, just like it had with Niko. He could die, and still he stubbornly refused help. “Make me.” He closed the door. He should find Julian, but he dared not leave the prince. If Vasili collapsed, his body might go into shock.
Vasili staggered to the bed and stumbled into a post. “I said…leave. Or…” He wet his lips, his pink tongue darting. “… have you whipped.”
Niko prepared to catch the prince but kept his hands at his sides. “If you must, but I’m not leaving.”
The prince bared his teeth again in answer. Sweat beaded at his hairline. He clutched at the post, his knuckles turning white as milk. But his glare was scathing. Niko glared back, unfazed.
Vasili’s body let go, collapsing on itself. Niko grabbed him under the arms and pulled him into an awkward embrace, ignoring the hands shoving meekly at his chest.
“I have you.” Maybe the words helped; maybe they didn’t. But it was something.
Vasili sucked in a sharp hiss. Then with startling strength, his trembling fingers locked around the back of Niko’s neck. His hard mouth crashed into Niko’s. Vasili was sharp and bitter, all teeth and tongue. There was nothing sensual about it. The kiss was an attack. If the prince had held a blade, he would have stabbed Niko instead.
Niko grabbed the man’s chin and forced him away. “You don’t want to do that.”
Vasili’s mouth ticked. Then his lashes fluttered shut and his head lolled, and he was out cold, limp in Niko’s arms.
At least Vasili couldn’t argue while unconscious. Niko scooped him up and laid him on the bed, then quickly unlaced and unbuttoned his clothes. Spice overdoses had killed soldiers on the front. There, he’d known to keep victims cool. He had to do the same with Vasili before his body shut down.
Vasili’s fingers twitched on the bed covers.
Niko peeled back Vasili’s shirt, revealing the pattern of scars on his chest. It was no surprise the prince refused to be touched. The scars were likely numb, but the small islands of unharmed skin between them would ache. Niko tracked their path, going all the way down, stopping at Vasili’s navel. Vasili breathed too fast. Sweat glistened on his face and neck, pooling at his navel.
No doubt this man’s mind was formidable, but his body was just like everyone else’s, and spice would kill him.
The chamber door opened. “Your Highness?”
“Julian! Get in here.”
Julian would know how to handle Vasili. He immediately tore off his chest plate and weapons belt, dumping the armor on the floor and rushing to Vasili’s bedside. “What happened?”
“Spice overdose. The man you denied comes here? He was paid to spike Vasili’s dose.”
“What?” Julian pressed a hand to Vasili’s forehead. “He’s burning up.” He grabbed the pillow from the other side of the bed and propped it under the prince’s head. “Keep him elevated. If he starts to vomit, lift him.”
Julian gathered up supplies from the room, knowing exactly where to find towels and ointments.
Vasili’s torso heaved and Niko braced for the worst. “We should get a healer.”
“Won’t do any good.” Julian placed a washbasin on the bedside table and used a wet cloth to dampen the prince’s face and neck. “Need to keep him cool.”
Niko undid the prince’s boots and yanked them off, then pulled his trousers clear. The marks on his thighs stood out starkly against his skin. The scars were longer and deeper between his legs. Niko had known that, but seeing them so close made his gut roil. The scars weren’t from battle wounds, like Niko’s. Vasili’s were meticulous and old. He’d been tortured, repeatedly, for years.
By elves.
He hadn’t been hidden away, as Niko and most everyone outside the palace assumed. He’d been taken and tortured by monsters. It was a miracle he was coherent at all.
“He takes spice for the pain…” Julian said, noticing Niko’s lingering gaze.
“I know.”
“It’s never a lot. He always has it under control. Not like this.”
Julian genuinely cared for Vasili. It had always been there, but now it was obvious in the way he reverently stroked the cloth over his skin and defended him.
“You don’t need to explain.”
Where did that leave their relationship? Maybe they didn’t have one. There would be time to consider it all if the prince survived.
Niko helped tend Vasili into the night, until his breathing and heart rate stabilized. Then he left, telling Julian he had something to follow up on.
He returned to the girl’s room to find her door ajar.
He shoved it open, tasted and smelled wet metal in the air. Blood. Then saw the body swinging from a beam. Her grey face suggested she’d been dead for hours, slung up by the neck, made to look as though she’d taken her own life.
Someone had guaranteed her silence.
Chapter 15
“I told them never to lock you up again,” Julian explained.
Niko paced alongside him in the palace corridor. He’d spent the rest of the day in the dungeon after some well-meaning servant had seen him with the body and called the palace guards.