Jezmerine looked alive, a smile on her face as though she'd only been sleeping.
But she wasn't asleep. She was dead and extremely pale, laid on top of an undecorated stone slab with shrouds covering her naked body that reached up to his sister's slender neck.
A necklace Sam had crafted for her when she was young, brushed her collarbone, dried specks of blood still stuck to her skin.
The prince laughed beneath his breath, finding humor in how Jezmerine feared she'd die: being dragged somewhere to be beheaded, and yet here she lay with her heart torn from her chest, taking his along with it.
Sam expected those rosebud lips to bloom from a smile to a full toothed grin, expected her to leap from the stone and wrap her arms around him as he wept while she patted his back and told him she was only playing. But she wouldn't.