by Casey Bond
“Prince Rule,” I answered. “Is she here, or is she in the Dark Forest?”
The woman swallowed thickly. “Please wait here.” She rushed back up the steps.
A few minutes later, Luna, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, walked down the staircase in a simple black dress. “You’re either brave or stupid,” she greeted.
I smiled. “Both, at times.”
“Which is it today?”
“Today, I need help.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why should I help you?”
Offering a charming smile, I hinted, “I can pay you handsomely.”
She gestured to the expansive walls of her palace. “I have all I need.”
Trying a different tactic, I tempted, “I have a piece of information that you’ve been craving.” Dangling carrots was one of my favorite things.
She continued down the stairs, raising her hand and using the wind to plaster me against the wall. My cheeks flapped against the intense pressure. “Give me the information, Rule, and I won’t kill you where you stand.”
“And you’ll consider assisting me?” I added hopefully.
“Fine,” she snipped. “I will consider it.”
She stopped the wind and I fell to the floor. Dusting off my lapels, I supplied, “I know who sent the plague to the Seven Kingdoms, and who, even now, is hunting any and all witches.”
Her brows raised, curious. “Who?”
“King Thab.”
“You know this how?” she asked skeptically.
“One of his… soldiers… wandered into an area I had warded.”
She laughed. “And straight into a trap.”
“Let’s just say that after spending some quality time with me, he was very eager to provide the information I requested.”
Luna slowly nodded. “Thank you. Now – you should probably leave, before I send a message to your mother carved into your delicate flesh.”
Squirming inwardly, I bantered, “As interesting as that sounds, I was hoping you’d tell me how to sever a tether.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You can see them?”
“To a point, but they blur together.” That was the problem.
She shook her head and turned around, effectively dismissing me, and began to climb the staircase.
“Please!” I cried out. “Please. I’m begging you, Luna. I need help.”
She turned around slowly and gave an appraising look. “Why would you want to break something so sacred?”
I decided to be honest. “I’m bound to someone I hate, and who hates me in return. I just want it to end.”
She considered me for a second. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She ascended the stairs, and then I heard her rattling around in one of the upper rooms. A loud clang, followed by the shrieking of a bat, echoed down to me. When she returned, she held a vial in her outstretched hand. “Drink this to illuminate the tethers,” she instructed. “Use something sharp to slice through the one you want to be rid of, but be sure of the one you cut. Once a tether is broken, it is broken forever.”
I nodded and accepted the vial, disappearing before she could change her mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ARABELLA
DAY 4
I sank back against my door. Rule followed me to the room despite my protestation and locked me inside, forbidding me from leaving until he came for me in the morning. He refused to let me see Carden. Brave was still missing. The walls had turned to gold, along with the bedclothes, but the wardrobe was bare. No gowns. No shoes. Nothing.
Crossing the room, I sat on the bed and waited for Rule and the fourth day to officially begin. I thought about Carden. Rule said he was safe, but I couldn’t trust him. I’d tried the door handle and it wouldn’t budge. There were no windows, no secret passageways. I was stuck. I’d been stuck since I left home, I realized.
For the briefest second, I wished I’d never left.
Oryn was probably still out there somewhere looking for me. I hoped he stayed the hell out of this forest and away from the fae altogether. Nothing was worth the risk they posed. People had said it for years and I brushed it off as if no fae would ever bother with someone as insignificant as me. Father wouldn’t care if I was alive or dead; but if any of this was real, at least my mother would know I’d grown up and was okay.
Then there was Carden. My heart ached for him. I wouldn’t have lived this long without him. We survived together.
What seemed like only minutes after I sat down, the door swung open, but then no one stepped into the doorway. I stood and walked to the door, peeking down the hallway in both directions. “Brave?” I whispered.
“You have to hurry. You’re almost late,” she warned, grabbing me by the arm. We ran through the hallways as fast as we could and she let go of me just outside the heart door before it closed behind me.
The Queen looked disappointed to see me. Rule stood at her side, behind the throne, refusing to look in my direction, and Carden stood in front of the clock, waiting for me, already transformed into the beast. He tracked my movements, snarling as I came close. There was no more recognition in them. He didn’t know me, or if he did, he’d been told I was the enemy.
My stomach trembled as I slowly approached. The clock face appeared in his eyes, hands swirling in rapid circles, orbiting his pupil. And then…
They stopped.
“Let the fourth day begin,” Coeur intoned coldly. I thought we would fall, but instead, a door appeared behind us. It was painted red with a crystal handle, a brass lock in its middle. I caught the flash of something shiny in my periphery and looked to Carden. The key hung around his neck, caught on the hackles that stood at attention at the mere sight of me.
I had to somehow get it off his neck.
“Carden…” I whispered gently.
He growled when I lifted my hand, so I put it down and lowered my head submissively. Keeping my eyes trained to the floor, fastened on his massive paws, my bare feet, and the distance closing between them, I inched forward. I reached up and stroked his fur, feeling his warm breath on my arm and then my neck as he sniffed me.
Darting one hand out, I grabbed the red ribbon and tugged until the fabric gave and the key clattered to the floor. Carden let out an angry roar, but I crouched down, covering my ears with one hand and grabbing the key with the other, then hurriedly turned around and shoved it into the lock.
The door opened into a lush garden, dark except for the pale moonlight shimmering on the bushes. The beast Carden was momentarily dazzled by the view and followed me meekly into the night. As the cool rays of the moon shone down upon his head, Carden changed back into himself. Shaking his head confusedly, he rushed to me.
“Where are we?” he stammered.
“It’s day four,” I answered flatly.
He paled, rolling his shoulders back, his muscles popping from disuse. “Why am I so sore?”
Unease continued to trickle down my spine. “Do you remember anything from last night? Rule wouldn’t tell me where you were, but he said you were safe.”
Carden winced at the mention of Rule’s name, but he only answered, “I don’t remember anything.”
I pressed, “Do you know if you were the beast?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
The garden was eerily quiet, like the calm before a storm. The pale purple petals of moon flowers curled upward, but there were no comforting insect sounds. No crickets chirping. No small animals rustling around.
The forced serenity set me on edge.
There was a maze of hedges, disconcertingly similar to the one I chased the rabbit into, but this one was different. The twists and turns weren’t in a discernable pattern; they were as random and chaotic as the castle’s interior.
The castle stood menacin
gly behind us in the darkness, the windows brightly lit. As we walked on the gravel path that wound through the garden, each window pane began to shift and morph, forming a colorful tapestry of stained glass that held my worst nightmares trapped within them.
“What is that?” Carden breathed, unnerved.
“It’s my life.”
One set of panes showed my father raging at us because we used his liquor money to buy food at the market. The glass shifted as he threw the empty bottle, shattering it against the wall. It showed me cowering when he flew at me, his fist closed and rearing to strike, and Oryn trying to stand up for me, taking the brunt of our father’s anger as he always did.
The next window showed my mother packing a trunk, bending to put items inside and straightening to grab the next thing to go in. She filled it, not with her things, but with mine and Oryn’s. I would recognize the pale pink blanket she’d knitted me anywhere. Why would she take that with her?
I rushed to the next window to see Father walking in on her. She quickly shut the trunk lid, but he’d seen enough. The panes shifted as he backhanded her and bellowed. I could almost hear the words his glass mouth formed. That she wasn’t leaving him. That she wasn’t taking his children away. That she was an ungrateful wretch and he’d be better off without her. That he’d bury her if she tried anything like this again. I remembered it now…how could I have forgotten?
He stormed out of the room.
She sat on the trunk and cried. She sobbed for hours.
Father was in the next pane alone, pacing in his study. He called for a servant. Soon, there were empty trunks spread out in front of him with gaping lids. He began to pack them, filling the empty spaces with anything and everything of value from the manor house. Coin, silver, gold, gems, even Mother’s jewelry. The servants carried them away.
The next pane showed the trunks on the back of a carriage with Oryn and I looking out the back window, our father seated across from us. Mother, barefooted and crying, chased the carriage, waving a white handkerchief. She eventually collapsed into the muddy road.
“Wait – so he’s the one who took us away?” I gasped. “But why did he tell us she was the one who left us? And why did we live in a dilapidated old cabin if he had so many valuables in the trunks?”
“Keep walking,” Carden instructed, looking ahead at the next window, the one that showed our carriage being robbed in the middle of a dark forest. I didn’t remember this part happening, but Oryn was older than I was. He had to remember it.
The next pane was of my brother. Anger painted his brow as he threw open the cabin door and headed into the woods, dark slivers of glass swallowing him whole. I remembered him promising that he’d get something for us to eat, one way or another.
It wasn’t fair that he had to bear that burden alone. He should’ve told me. Tears clogged my throat and flooded my vision. I used to think I wanted our family to be whole again, but now I realized I was fighting for something that would never be. Our family wasn’t torn apart by my mother; it was torn apart by my father. By hatred and violence, and every dark and ugly thing that Oryn and I tried to pretend never happened.
I couldn’t save our family, but I could still save my brother, the way he’d saved me so many times. Oryn was still worth fighting for.
Carden put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in for a hug, holding me until I pulled away.
“All this time I knew my father had a drinking problem, but I assumed that deep down, he was a good man, only made that way because of his grief at being left by my mother. How could I not see him for what he really was?”
“Our hearts don’t always want to see the bad in those we love,” Carden answered quietly, rubbing circles on my back.
“She was right about that,” I whispered. “Hearts are beastly things.”
“No,” he hugged me tighter, “they aren’t. They’re wonderful things. Life without love wouldn’t be worth living.”
“Have you been in love before? Was there someone special for you back in the Seven Kingdoms?” The tether pulsed strongly between us as I braced myself for the answer I didn’t want to hear. No, now that I took time to notice, I could tell the tether had wrapped itself around the pair of us and was squeezing tight.
Carden shook his head. “No, I didn’t know what love was or how it felt, until now.” His dark eyes bored into mine.
I wanted to raise myself up onto the tips of my toes and kiss him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The beautiful fae woman from the other night popped into my mind and wouldn’t leave. Was he with her last night? Was that part of Rule’s game – to tear us apart? I knew Carden wouldn’t hurt me purposely – he didn’t want anyone else – but the reality was that he wasn’t always mine now. And he wasn’t that fae woman’s, either.
Sometimes, he was Coeur’s.
She could transform him into whatever she wanted him to be… the way he was now, caring, considerate, and bound as my heartmate; or cool, callous, and barely recognizable like last night; a monster, her own plaything. I shuddered at the thought.
We kept walking deeper into the wounds of my past as the garden wound further around the castle. In the next pane was my greatest shame. The one thing I hated myself for. The moment of weakness that allowed her to carve that word across my chest for all the fae world to see. But I felt like it was there for the human world to see, too. I felt that everyone who saw me knew what I’d done and looked down on me for doing it.
I let a young man use me for money.
The excuses were valid. I was hungry. Starved, to be honest. Oryn was gone. He’d been gone for months, and I didn’t know if he was coming back. Father was worthless. We had nothing to eat. Actually, we’d had nothing substantial to eat for almost two weeks. I’d resorted to eating grass and chewing bark. I would have done anything – I did do anything – to stop the pangs in my belly.
I let a man have me, and then I took his money and ran as fast as my feet would carry me to get food. Afterwards, I smoked and cured the meat I’d bought with my shame to make sure we had enough to last a few more days. I thought about keeping it all to myself and letting my father starve, but in the end, couldn’t do it.
Afterwards, I tried to push the memory out of my mind and pretend it never happened, but Oryn caught word because the guy was a boastful bastard who liked to needle my brother more than almost anything in the world. I knew who he was and how Oryn felt about him, and I still did it.
It wasn’t done in a moment of weakness, either. He’d made innuendos before when I passed through Brookhaven, but on the night it happened, I sought him out. I made the offer. He happily accepted.
And I’d hated myself for it ever since.
I hated what I did.
Who I let myself become.
The situation I was in.
What I thought was my mother’s selfishness.
My father’s demons.
My brother’s absence.
My life.
And all the circumstances in it that were easier to blame than my own paltry weakness.
I stood frozen in place, watching the scene unfold in the stained-glass window, terrified to turn around and see the disgust I knew must be lurking in Carden’s eyes as he watched my greatest shame revealed.
Carden gently turned me around and looked me over, though I still wouldn’t meet his eyes. But instead of hurling insults, he asked, “How are you in gold and I’m still wearing black?”
I looked down at my golden dress and gave a whisper of a smile. “Long story. This time I was the one who insulted Coeur, or stood with Rule as he attempted to stand up to his mother.”
“Attempted?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
Pulling his shirt open, Carden looked down at his chest and pursed his lips together. “The words are gone.”
“Yeah.” I turned a
way from him.
“I don’t want you to think I see you any differently because of what we saw in the windows, Arabella. I respect you as much now as I did when I first met you. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of, but I hope you feel the same way about me.”
“I’m not good enough for you,” I admitted.
He pulled me toward him. “That’s not true. You did what you had to,” Carden whispered. “Most people wouldn’t have lasted as long as you did.”
“That wasn’t strength, Carden,” I spat. “That was weakness in its most basic form, and most people would have done exactly that. And they would hate themselves as much as I do for it.”
Carden argued, “Don’t say that! Don’t let that one moment of weakness define who you are. Everyone does things they aren’t proud of. Believe me – I’ve done plenty, and I’m sure she’s about to show you everything.”
Fireflies blinked on and off around us, hovering through the garden maze. Carden tried to thread his fingers through mine, but I pulled away. Even though it made no sense, even though I knew he wasn’t himself, seeing him with the fae girl the other night and knowing he woke up with her in his bed still hurt. But more than that, I couldn’t believe that after seeing my most shameful secrets, he would feel anything other than disgust for me.
I didn’t want to call it love. Could anyone really fall in love with someone they’d only known a handful of days? Then again, everything in our pasts was being laid bare. Maybe we already knew each other better than most couples did after spending a lifetime together.
“Do you want to keep walking?” he asked.
“Not really,” I answered truthfully. “I like the calmness of nothing happening…which is what’ll make her take it away,” I chuckled ruefully. “It’s peaceful, just enjoying the night and watching the fireflies.”
“It is. You’re right. We should enjoy it while it lasts.”
So, we stood there, watching the winking bugs and the moon and the shadows, and for a few brief minutes, it felt like we were okay. I actually thought Coeur had calmed down and that we might squeeze one more day out of this life.