by Casey Bond
He watched her like he was equal parts hunter and prey. Like she was beautiful and dangerous, because she was. Arabella might be deadlier to a man’s heart than even Queen Coeur.
Blinding pain erupted as coarse bristles of fur emerged from my skin and my gums stretched to accommodate a new pair of elongated teeth. I rushed past the fae, past the guards, knocking a few over as I burst through the doors holding us in. Nothing can stop me now.
I ran through the hallways, faster than I should be able to, looking for a mirror and finding nothing.
Then it hit me. I’d never seen a mirror in this place. Except for the shard that hung around Arabella’s neck.
I had to find her. I had to see.
Sniffing the air, I caught her scent… She was gone from the table, gone from the room. I tracked the smell of her through the labyrinthine castle until I came to a door where her scent was strong and fresh. She was inside. She’d just gone in.
Rule had been here, too, but his scent was fading.
I tried to grip the door handle, but my pad and paw couldn’t turn it. The metal slipped through again and again, until her voice came from the other side. “Who’s there?”
She was afraid.
She should be afraid.
“Carden,” I answered.
“You don’t sound like Carden,” she replied.
I growled impatiently, “It’s me.”
The door knob turned and her eye appeared in the crack, widening as she took me in. She tried to slam the wood closed, but I was too fast. My paw pushed it open, careful not to hurt her. She quickly backed farther into the room and put distance between us.
“Who are you?”
“Carden,” I answered in frustration. “I need to see your mirror piece.”
She shook her head, putting her hands out and backing away. I stalked forward, trying to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. When I did, we both screamed. Arabella threw her arms up to protect herself… from me, I realized.
“It’s me, I swear. Arabella, it’s me. She turned me into a beast.”
After a moment, Arabella’s muscles relaxed a little and she peeked from between her arms. “Oh, my goodness. That’s what you called her, right? A beast?”
My heart sank. “Yeah. That’s what I called her.”
“Is this why you were so irritable tonight?” She dropped her arms and stepped toward me, reaching out to take hold of my paw.
“I think so. I feel so many emotions, but mostly rage.”
“Why were you so mad tonight?”
“You were with Rule.”
She shook her head. “You were mad before, when I first sat down with you.”
I didn’t realize why I was so angry with her then, but now I knew. I smelled him on her. She had spoken to him before she came to me. “You’d been with him before you sat down at the table.”
Exasperated, she explained, “I only talked to him for a minute, and then left him to find you.”
A growl tore from my chest. “I don’t like him around you.”
“Well I don’t like it when you growl at me!” she snapped.
“I hate his scent on your skin,” I whispered, moving in close, my chest rising and falling painfully.
“Your teeth are big.” She slowly raised her hand and cupped my face with her palm. “But your fur is soft as silk.” Her skin was warm, her touch light and delicate. Nothing like her. She was the strongest woman I knew. She didn’t complain once during the trial today. Not when the sun scorched us until our skin withered and burned. Not when the grass sliced us. Not when she had to wear the heavy boots. Not when she saw the specter of her horrible mother.
“I’m afraid I might hurt you,” I admitted, sniffing her hair.
She shivered when I placed my paw on her waist. “Then don’t.”
“I’m out of control.”
“Have we ever been in control here?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure. Maybe control was the illusion and everything in life chaos. Suddenly, a strange feeling flooded through my body. It started at my feet and spread upward like wildfire. I jumped away from her.
“What’s wrong?” she yelled.
I gripped my head where the heat was scalding me from the inside.
“Carden, talk to me. What’s happening?”
I had to get out of there before I hurt her. Breaking through the door, I ran away. She cried out for me, chasing me out of the room, but I was fast and lost her among the maze of hallways. I found a door that led outside. The guards keeping watch over it scurried to the side to let me pass through, their spears clattering to the floor as they gasped at the sight of me. To them, I was a monster.
To them, I was dangerous.
ARABELLA
I chased him until he disappeared around a corner and then vanished altogether. “Miss Arabella, you must go back to your room now. It isn’t safe out here. There’s a beast on the loose.”
“Brave?”
“You must come with me,” she insisted, grabbing my arm and pulling me back toward my room.
“It’s not a beast,” I whispered. “It’s Carden.”
She stopped for a moment and then began tugging me forward again. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not safe for you out here.”
“Why did they replace you?”
“The Cursed and Unseen are everywhere. They watch for the Queen, and they were watching us. Queen Coeur was angry that you’d named me. She said we were too close.”
“What will she do if she knows you’re helping me now?” I asked.
Brave was quiet. “Just come along. Don’t you worry about that.”
“I am worried,” I argued.
“I’ll disappear again,” she insisted.
“Wait,” I said, pulling her to a stop just outside my door. “Can you see each other? The Cursed?”
“Only if she allows it. Some of them spy for her, but I can’t see any others. I’ve never been able to.”
“So, there could be someone in my room right now and we wouldn’t know it.”
She didn’t have to voice it. I could hear her thick swallow.
“I’ll go in alone. Thank you, Brave. You’ve once again lived up to your name.”
She let go of me and all went silent. I didn’t hear her move away, but wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t dreaming all of this up. That she was gone or here. That Carden was a beast and that Rule had fed me and given me water. It all seemed surreal.
Maybe I was still in the game. Maybe this was part of me trying to survive.
And maybe I lay dying somewhere, and my mind was making this entire world and ordeal up to keep my body alive.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Arabella
DAY 2
Someone shook me. “Wake up, Arabella. Wake up. That’s a good girl. You need to get dressed.”
It sounded like Brave, but she’d gotten in trouble for being too close to me. It couldn’t be her.
The person nudged my shoulder again. “Wake up, please. You’ll be late if you don’t get moving,” she begged. I blinked and sat up, letting the blanket spill into my lap.
“Am I awake?”
“You are, Miss, but you won’t be for long if you don’t get dressed. It’s almost dawn. The game begins at sunrise.”
My heart pounded as I threw the covers back. I couldn’t be late. Carden would pay the price if I was. Brave helped me step into a sapphire dress made of light-weight, delicate material. It was going to tear so easily... “How are you here? I don’t understand.”
“Master Rule made it so,” she said tersely.
He helped me again. I wondered why and what he might want in return. “You don’t like him.”
“I…” she started. “The Queen insists that you wear your hair up today.”
“Why would that matter, and why do I have to wear a dress? I can run and climb and move easier in breeches.”
Brave exhaled loudly. “I’m not sure. It’s probably because today’s challenge won’t be a physical one.”
“What other kind could it be?”
She zipped the cobalt blue, gauzy gown and paused with her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers squeezed my skin gently. “The most excruciating pain is the kind that’s soul deep, and our Queen is very good at inflicting it. Keep your wits about you,” she advised, quickly brushing my hair, twisting and pinning it into a knot. “Just remember that the game only lasts until sundown.”
“Telling time in the game isn’t easy,” I shot back. “If the damned clocks in our eyes would actually give us the time instead of spinning nonsensically—”
“Nothing about the game is easy.”
She picked up the shard of mirror from my chest. “Good luck, Arabella.”
A pair of shoes appeared at my feet. I stepped around them defiantly and walked to the door, knocking on it once. The shoes floated in the air as Brave lifted them up. “Are you sure you want to rile her today?”
I wasn’t sure it was wise, but I’d be damned if I was wearing her shoes. I’d already complied with her dress and let Brave tie my hair up. That was as much as she was getting from me.
The azure-colored guards escorted me to the throne room, down hallways that seemed to bend the wrong way, some too short and others too long, along alternating tiles that seemed to stretch and bend and curl in on one another in swirling patterns that weren’t there the day before.
The second day of hell began with the loud chiming of the clock. Carden, as human as the day I’d met him in the alley, stood in front of the ticking monstrosity wearing a royal blue suit. For a moment, I wondered if I’d dreamed the entire evening… it seemed surreal, like it didn’t really happen. Maybe it didn’t.
His bare toes stuck out from his pant legs and he wiggled them at me in greeting. The Queen wasted no time. That tiny moment was all I could cling to when suddenly the clock’s ringing stopped, the floor fell away, and Coeur shouted, “The game begins!”
Down…
Down….
Down we fell.
Instead of air, we fell through water, bubbles rising around us as we were pulled through. I held my breath, fighting the urge to gulp in something, anything. My limbs tangled in the fabric of the stupid dress I wore. Carden thrashed about beneath the water and I reached for him, needing him to hold on just a little while longer.
Then the water darkened and I lost sight of him altogether.
Faster and faster, I was dragged down through the cool water. It wasn’t going to end. I was going to drown before the second day’s challenge even began. Or maybe Coeur wanted to show how weak humans really were. They couldn’t even hold their breath long enough to make it into the arena she built.
My lungs burned.
Bubbles flew out of my nose. Something sharp pierced my back just to the left of my spine. I gasped and sucked in the fresh water, closing my eyes and reaching out in case Carden was within arm’s reach.
My hands were empty.
My lungs were full.
And then everything slowed.
I stopped struggling and let the water take me.
The current slowed and I floated, the fabric floating up all around me like an ephemeral balloon. Brilliant light filtered in through the dark abyss; so serene and clear and warm, and I wanted it so badly. I wanted it to come get me. To take me away from all the pain.
I tried to reach out for it, but my arm wouldn’t work. My fingers wouldn’t even twitch.
And then it was gone. I was dry and coughing up air instead of water, with nothing but pale blue sky above me and Carden at my side. Wide-eyed, he rushed to me and patted my arms, shoulders and cheeks. “You’re okay.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am.”
“Did you drown, too?”
“No, but I saw you… I saw you in a glass tank. It filled with water and you were struggling, trying not to breathe, until you…” His voice broke. “You couldn’t hold your breath anymore. You put your hand up to the glass and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry,” and then you inhaled and you were floating there, arms limp in the water. Your hair was floating all around you. Then I heard a roar behind me and you were here. The tank was gone and you… you’re here.”
Confused, I muttered, “I never saw the tank or you, but I was in water and fought until I couldn’t anymore. And then there was this beautiful light.”
“You died?” he breathed, clutching his chest and pulling me into a tight hug. I clung to him, too. “I watched someone very dear to me die and it was the same. He kept talking about the light and how beautiful, warm, and comforting it was.”
“I didn’t die,” I replied. “But I was as close to death as I’ve ever been.”
The blue sky faded away and the ground beneath my feet became smooth and cool to the touch. We were surrounded, top, bottom, and on all sides, by mirrors.
“She really did hate my necklace,” I breathed.
The mirrors tilted this way and that. “It’s a maze.” Carden reached out in front of him at the empty space and I looked beyond his hand at the thousands of reflections of him, each staring back at me.
Some of them began to move, swiveling left and right, shifting forward and back and then rearranging themselves again as if the maze were a living thing, adapting to us somehow.
“Carden, the mirrors… they’re changing.” It was a trap. If we went into that maze, we weren’t coming out alive.
“We should go this way,” he urged. “We have to find our way through. It could take all day, so we need to go fast. Step where your reflection isn’t.”
“Carden!”
“What?” he turned, but his eyes caught on something behind me. I looked over my shoulder and screamed.
It was Carden, not as he was, but as the beast. His fur was the same dark hue as his hair and his eyes, the same black with the golden seam I would recognize anywhere. He was stalking toward one of my reflections, blood dripping from his canines. The me in the mirror was holding her shoulder to staunch the blood flowing down her arm. “It’s me, Carden!” she pleaded, tears running down her dirt-smeared face.
He lunged and tore into her other shoulder. I cried out and fell to my knees, the flesh on my own body torn from his teeth. Carden dropped to the floor with me. “How do I stop it?”
“I don’t know! But he’s going to tear me to shreds if we don’t!” I screamed.
The real Carden in the blue suit placed himself in front of me and roared at the beast in the mirror, whose returning roar shattered the glass between them. And then suddenly, he and the mangled version of me were gone. Obliterated. Bits of glass, as fine as sand, covered the floor.
“If we break all the mirrors, will it be over?” I bantered, letting out a pent-up breath.
Carden looked like he’d seen a ghost. He knelt beside me, holding his blue jacket on my shoulder. The fabric soon became wet and the coppery scent of blood filled the air between us. “I thought it was a dream,” he whispered.
“All of this feels like a dream to me. Nothing feels real anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“You didn’t do this, Carden.”
“Didn’t I?” he asked, eyes flashing with anger. It was the look of self-hatred, a look I recognized all too well. “That beast just attacked you and that beast was part of me!”
“But it wasn’t you!” I argued. “You were beside me. That was the Queen’s doing. That was part of the game. Never forget that.”
“I called her a beast and that’s exactly what she turned me into.”
Placing my hand on his heart, I waited until his heartbeat calmed beneath my palm.
“She can turn you into a monster, but don’t let her have this part of you. This is what she wants to ruin.”
He inhaled deeply and pulled the jacket away from my shoulder. The wound was gone. Carden’s eyes widened. “Did you do this?” he asked.
“If I did, I don’t know how.”
He stood and pulled me to my feet, finger tugging at the shredded, icy fabric flopping down from my shoulder. “I ruined your dress.”
“That wasn’t you,” I argued.
He pursed his mouth together. If he was like me, he didn’t know who he was in this place. He didn’t know who or what was real and what was safe, because everything seemed desperate and dangerous.
A gust blew over us and the shards of mirror that lay all over the ground turned to dust and floated away on the breeze. The blackness beneath our feet turned to shining checkerboard marble. The darkness beside us turned to walls of blue that felt like satin under my fingertips. All along the wall hung large, gilded mirrors.
“Could it be sunset already?” I asked. We were back in Coeur’s castle.
Carden slowly turned in a circle. “I don’t think so.”
Behind us was nothing. Ahead of us, a corridor stretched as far as the eye could see. Carden threw the soiled jacket on the floor and rolled his shirt sleeves up to his elbow. I couldn’t help but picture the crown he wore yesterday upon his brow. It was like seeing him in it changed my perception of him and made me all too aware of how ridiculous it was of me to think of him as I lay in bed last night, hoping he was safe, hoping he really was my heartmate and that somehow, we could end this game and Queen Coeur forever.
Because even though he was a prince and I was just a piece of trash girl from the woods outside of Brookhaven, I wanted him beside me. Win or lose, I’d fight for and with this boy.
He offered me his elbow. “We stay together.”
I nodded and wrapped my hand around his arm. In that moment, with his dark eyes burning into mine, part of me thought Coeur was mild in her punishment, in placing us in her twisted game. It was fate who was the cruelest of all, allowing me to meet him, my heartmate, at exactly the wrong moment in time. One that would damn us both.