Twisted: Belle's Story (Destined Book 3)

by Kaylin Lee

  No! A voice in the back of my head screamed. You’re not done. You’ll never be done!

  I found my own voice and screamed, “Help!” at the top of my lungs.

  “Shut your mouth,” the man growled.

  He reached for me, but I dove out of the way and flew to my feet, then to the door, terror giving me a sudden, jerky speed. I flung the door open and screamed again. “Help me! Someone, help me!”

  He grabbed my hair and yanked me backward. Piercing pain from my injury stabbed at my head and cut off my scream, and then all I could do was whimper at the man. “Please, please let go of my hair!”

  He didn’t. He yanked my hair downward in a brutal movement until I collapsed on the floor, a tangle of shaking limbs and throbbing pain. He shut the door and locked it, then turned back to me, his lips twisted in a smile. “I did tell you to shut up.” He lifted the rope. “Now be good, or I’ll make this more painful than it has to be.”

  No one was coming. I stared up at him from the floor as the wound in my head stabbed viciously into my skull. No one. I was alone. I’d die alone.

  What had Ella said as she glared at me from across the table in the library? Try. I expect you to try. I scrabbled backward on the floor, away from the man, and screamed with all I had in me—a wordless cry, a torrent of terror and fury all in one piercing noise.

  The man reached back and then slammed his fist into my face.

  I tried.

  Chapter 12

  The ground was cold and hard. I shifted as the back of my head stabbed with pain, and then I remembered the rope he’d been planning for my neck. I clawed at my neck, but nothing was there—just raw, sore skin. Where was my father’s man?

  “Lady Belle, just relax.” A strange man crouched on the ground beside me. I could see him clearly in the light of my bedroom’s luminous, which someone must have turned on. What else had I missed? His hair was closely cropped, and his jaw was cleanshaven. A plain, black uniform fit his muscular form snugly. He looked like a Sentinel.

  “Wha—” My voice was hoarse. The memory of the rope around my neck returned, and I reached for it again. Still nothing there. I struggled to reach a seated position, but the strange, new man pressed me firmly back down. My wound sent a jolt of pain through my head as it touched the ground. I shoved his hand away and pushed myself up on one elbow.

  “You’re safe, Lady Belle. Please, lie down.”

  “Can’t.”

  The man eyed me strangely. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  I gestured to my head. “Hurts.”

  He nodded slowly. “Another injury? From the attack?”

  Why was he asking me so many questions? I closed my eyes as the room swayed around us. The attack. My father’s man. Was he gone? I opened my eyes. “That man?” My words came out rough and short, like gravel slipping through my tight, dry throat.

  The guard in the black uniform watched me warily. “He’s dead, my lady. Prince Estevan came when he heard your screams. He killed your attacker. That man won’t harm you again.” He frowned. “Do you know who he was?”

  I bit my lip. After all this time, I’d managed to keep silent. What would happen if I betrayed my father now?

  The next moment, I nearly laughed aloud. He’d already tried to kill me. I had nothing left to lose. “My father’s man.” I couldn’t force out anything more than those bleak, dry words.

  A low growl came from somewhere in the room, and the man shuddered. But he nodded as though he’d expected the answer. “We’ll get your wounds looked at now, and you can tell us more in the morning. We don’t allow healers here at the palace, but some Sentinels have training in basic medicine. One will be here any minute.”

  He glanced around the room as he spoke, and I finally realized that we weren’t alone in my bedroom. A trio of men in the same plain black uniforms stood behind the guard who crouched beside me.

  Beyond them stood Estevan, his arms crossed and his expression unreadable. He held my gaze, and I opened my mouth to ask him something—what, I didn’t know. Then the throbbing at the back of my head took over, and Estevan and my bedroom faded away into nothingness.

  ~

  “—know what it could be. She won’t rest her head back—”

  A relentless throbbing at the back of my head pulled me back out of the darkness. I rested on my side, my cheek pressed against a soft, unfamiliar blanket.

  “—seen to all her injuries. I’ve gotten the same training as you. There’s no reason she should—”

  I opened my eyes and squinted at the men standing beside me. Two dark blobs argued with one another. I couldn’t make out their faces, and I didn’t recognize their voices. Who were they?

  I groaned and shut my eyes. The back of my head had never pounded with such pain before, not even when I had first awoken after the Blight’s attack.

  “She’s moving.”

  “Lady Belle?”

  I managed another groan but didn’t bother opening my eyes again.

  “I’m going to examine you one more time—”

  The man’s firm hand felt around the back of my head, and before I could dodge away, he pressed right on my injury. I screamed and rolled away from his hand, off the bed, and onto the floor.

  One man cursed under his breath. “What’d you do to her?”

  I pressed my eyes shut and cringed at the new level of pain. They lifted me back into the bed, and thankfully, left the back of my head alone.

  “—nothing there. Listen, I swear it. It’s as though the injury only exists on the inside of her skull. It makes no—”

  “I know what happened. Lazy healers—”

  I curled in a ball on the bed as they spoke. Just don’t touch my head again. I thought I’d spoken the words, but no sound came out of my mouth.

  “What?”

  “Must’ve been a healer mage. Someone healed the external part of an injury but didn’t finish the job. Those lazy, incompetent—”

  Didn’t finish the job? That was one way to put it. The waves of pain in my head built in strength, as though preparing for a crescendo. When would it end?

  “—is going to be furious, but we have to tell him—”

  I thought of my father’s disgusted face hovering over me when I first opened my eyes after the Blight’s attack. My head throbbed at the memory, and the darkness pulled me under again. Finally.

  ~

  I shifted on the soft blanket, suddenly uncomfortable. The throbbing in my head hadn’t changed, so why was I awake?

  Shuffling feet stirred near my bed. I heard a man’s heavy, labored breathing, and then a strange click, like the cocking of a guard’s crossbow, followed by another click, and another elsewhere in the room.

  Had my father sent another man to end my life? More than one?

  I pried my eyes open. This time, I could see clearly. I was in a small, dim bedroom full of men in black uniforms, silent and watchful, their crossbows trained on an oddly familiar man with a gold armband who hovered at the side of my bed. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and his hands shook as he held a small vial out to me.

  “Lady Belle,” he said, his voice wobbly, “I’m going to put you under with sopor now. You won’t feel any more pain. I promise.”

  Sopor? Who are you? Once again, my mouth wouldn’t form the words.

  Then it hit me—sopor. He was our family’s former healer—the one who’d cared for me after the Blight’s attack. The one my father had forced to awaken me without finishing my healing and sent back to the Mage Division in disgrace.

  Movement stirred in the room behind the healer. He froze, the vial of sopor a hand’s breadth from my face.

  Estevan shouldered his way between two guards and came to stand at my bedside.

  The healer blanched, and his hand began to shake.

  “If you hurt her, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”

  The healer nodded rapidly. “I-I understand, Your Highness.”

  Estevan je
rked his head toward me. “Go on, then, mage. Do your job. And finish it this time.”

  Chapter 13

  The tall woman sat at a desk, her back straight, her golden hair twisted up in an elegant bun at the top of her head. Sunlight streamed through the high windows around her, making her look even brighter and more beautiful than usual.

  I stepped inside the room and glanced over my shoulder to be sure my big brother and sisters hadn’t followed me. I didn’t want them to know where I found refuge when I couldn’t take their teasing any longer.

  “Mama?” I shut the door softly behind me.

  She looked up and smiled. “Belle? Come here, darling.”

  I clambered onto her lap and pressed my face against her shoulder as she wrapped me in her arms. I breathed in the familiar scent of rosedrops, then sighed contentedly. If only I could stay with Mama all the time.

  But Father would never allow it.

  “My sweet, brilliant, little Belle,” she whispered, rocking gently me back and forth. “You’re so strong, darling. So strong, and so smart. But you’ll always be my baby girl.”

  Chapter 14

  “You think you’re smart, do you?” My eldest brother Lucas glanced up the footpath at my father’s back, then pinched the tender skin inside my upper arm and twisted hard.

  I kept silent. Crying would only make him twist harder.

  “I’m the heir, not you,” he hissed. “Next time Father asks us a question about the bank, I’ll be the one to answer.”

  The skin under my arm burned as he released me. “Yes, brother,” I whispered.

  He turned and followed our father toward the grand front entrance at Adrian’s, where music and laughter from the Founder’s Day party floated out into the warm, evening air.

  I waited until he’d walked several steps ahead before I turned around to find Mama. Then I caught myself and faced forward again, my eyes burning. Mama was gone. Why was it so hard to remember?

  Warm, silky fabric brushed my arms as Kaia and Jade passed me on either side. They paused just in front of me and turned back, their glittering, mage-craft dresses swirling under the luminous streetlamps that lined the footpath. My big sisters weren’t kids like me anymore. They were true ladies now, and prettier than any other ladies I’d ever seen, except for Mama.

  “Are you coming?” Kaia frowned and smoothed the dress around her hips, then tossed her long, dark, glossy curls over one shoulder.

  Jade lifted a gleaming silver flask and took a long sip, then passed it to Kaia. “Come along, little one.” She put one hand on my shoulder and propelled me, so I had to walk in front of them. “Father won’t like you to miss the opening dances.”

  Adrian’s was crowded, noisy, and overwhelming. At seven-and-a-half years old, I was the youngest Procus lady in attendance. I stood stiffly in my uncomfortable gown as the traditional opening dances ended, trying desperately to look like I belonged.

  “There he is.” Beside me, Jade nudged Kaia. “The Beast himself.”

  Kaia laughed. “He’s only thirteen. Isn’t that a bit young to have such a nickname?”

  “The king makes his son train with his own guard.” Jade wiggled her eyebrows. “I’ve heard he knows twenty ways to kill a mage with his bare hands.”

  I looked from Jade to the tall, dark prince, then back to my sister.

  Kaia patted my shoulder. “Hush, Jade. You’re scaring the girl.”

  Jade shrugged. “Better she be scared than anything else.”

  I frowned. “Prince Estevan doesn’t look so—”

  “Shhh,” Kaia whispered. “Don’t speak his name. Father might hear.”

  I crossed my arms, suddenly feeling obstinate. What could be so bad about the young prince? I thought he looked quite nice, if a bit serious. “Why?”

  “You think our family’s horrible?” Kaia jerked her chin toward the prince, where he waited on the edge of the dance floor with a stony expression on his face. “The royal family is far worse.”

  “And don’t think they’ll ever stop Father from his … his ways.” Jade tilted a glass of sheer liquid and drained it. “Even if the royal family would stop grasping at power for half a minute to notice us, Father would kill us if we ever asked for help.” She grabbed my chin and bent to look me in the eye. “And he would know if we asked. Trust me.” She released me, straightened, and faced the dance floor again, her gaze distant. “He always does.”

  Chapter 15

  The fomecoach swung to a stop, and a liveried guard opened the door. Heavy rain pounded down from the dark-gray sky, and I shivered as cold, wintery wind rushed into the coach.

  The guard held a wide, black umbrella over the door and extended a hand to me. “Welcome to Bank Argentarius, Lady Belle. You honor us with your presence.”

  I took his hand without responding to his greeting. There was nothing my father hated more than when his children showed courtesy to common servants.

  We entered the extravagant lobby, and a crowd of dark-suited bank clerks bowed to me. “Welcome, Lady Belle,” they murmured.

  It was hard to look down on them when they were all so much taller than I was. For the first time, it occurred to me that being made the official heir to my father’s bank might be more of a challenge than I’d realized.

  I lifted my chin and made my voice as cold as I could. “My office?”

  A thin man with stringy, dark hair stepped forward and bowed low. “Right this way, my lady.”

  I followed him up the marble staircase and into a large, immaculate room with a wide desk and a wall of windows looking out over rainy, gray Galanos Avenue. We stood just inside the door in awkward silence. I glanced over the office, then turned to face the man. “It will do.”

  The man bowed again. “My name is Ambrose, my lady. Your father has appointed me as your secretary.”

  “Ambrose.” I tested the word on my tongue and looked him over. “And what will you do for me, Ambrose?”

  His thin face was calm and neutral. “I’ll help you with whatever you require, my lady. Anything at all.”

  I tapped my fingers on one arm and tried to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of my rain-wet gown skimming my ankles. “You don’t look like much,” I said. “How did you come to such a position?”

  Ambrose’s expression remained impassive. He kept his eyes forward, not quite meeting my gaze. “I was your mother’s secretary at the bank, before she perished in the plague.”

  I scoffed. “My mother worked at Bank Argentarius?”

  The lines around Ambrose’s dark eyes tightened just slightly. “She did. In fact, I’ve saved many of her old notes from her work. I can share them with you today, if you’d like to see them.”

  Did he think that because I was only thirteen years old, I would be a sentimental child? He was in for disappointment.

  “No need. My mother was an empty-headed fool. I’ll be fine on my own.”

  Chapter 16

  I lifted the last page of a new stack of forecasts from my father. “The price of wheat is expected to continue to increase this year, creating a drag on Asylian market growth of approximately three-tenths of—”

  My gaze caught on a new stack hidden beneath the first one, and I stopped reading and sighed. “Oh, Ambrose. Not again.”

  I’d been at the bank for over a year, and he still tried to slide my mother’s notes in among my father’s memos and forecasts every once in a while. When would he give up shoving her past at me?

  I fingered the top page of the thin, worn pile of papers I’d been avoiding for the past year. The feminine scrawl that covered the first page was neat and pretty, but completely unfamiliar.

  I had few memories of my mother. Most were from when I was too young to read, much less recognize handwriting. She’d been taken early in the plague, before I turned five years old. She was nothing but a lovely, golden ghost now, forever consigned to a past I didn’t remember. A ghost my father despised. He made no secret of that.

  I bit my li
p and flipped over the top sheet of her notes. Detailed calculations covered the next page, the numbers thin and neat, with the occasional flourish. I narrowed my eyes as I followed her forecasts, checking her math as I went. Then I gasped. She’d predicted the peak of the market for trade loans before the plague crash, not in the middle of the peak but several months earlier, according to the date on the top of the page. It made no sense. Hadn’t my father always said she’d had more beauty than brains?

  The next pages held more of the same—calculations, forecasts, the occasional note of observation. “Common Quarter growing crowded,” she’d written on one page. “Expect new housing construction in Common Quarter and River Quarter within next two years. Cost of most building materials—significant increase. Two times? Three?”

  I ran my fingers over the delicate words she’d scrawled in the margin of her page of calculations. “What did she know about the Common Quarter, anyway?” Hadn’t she been just like all the other Procus ladies, caring for nothing but balls, mage-craft gowns, and gossip?

  Hours passed as I lost myself in her notes. I should be home, preparing for bed. I had to be up early the next morning for school at the Royal Academy, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the elegant, slanted handwriting that covered each sheet of paper.

  When I reached the last page, my chest tightened. I wasn’t ready to be done! Then I read the small note she’d added to the bottom of the last page. “This horrible plague will either ruin Bank Argentarius, or it will ruin Basil. Both cannot survive this nightmare intact. I have no doubt.”

  I shook my head. What could that possibly mean? Her other forecasts had all been frighteningly accurate, but both the bank and my father were wealthier than ever since the plague crash. She’d been the one to perish in the plague.

  Just outside the door, Ambrose’s small desk luminous was still on. I rose unsteadily to my feet and walked to the door. “Ambrose?”

  He glanced up from a record-book, then stood and faced me. “Yes, Lady Belle?”

  I gripped the last page of my mother’s notes and held it up, my tight fist crinkling the paper at the edge. “Either you’re lying, or my father is.”