(JASPER'S POV)
I crossed the hall at a dead run, boots slapping the black stone, past the frozen guards, past the sprawled king, and dropped to my knees at Gilbert's side. He was still curled on the dais where my father had knocked him down, face against the floor, one arm flung over his head. Up close, he was so much worse than anything the bond had let me feel.
The collar had rubbed raw rings into his throat — angry red bands crusted with dried blood where the iron had bitten in over and over. Bite marks and claw marks ran down his ribs and across his back, some still bleeding, some already turning purple. His wrists were bloody where the cuffs had ground into the bone of them. And he was shaking — a fine, constant, whole-body tremor that had nothing to do with cold, and everything to do with learning to hold himself still while monsters had tore through his flesh.
I had never in my life wanted to kill so many things at once.
