But he didn’t. He shook his head and came up in front of me; reaching down and helping me to my feet. I should have known something was wrong at that point, but my deep-rooted craving for at least one of my family members to accept me in some way took over, and I waited for an explanation.
He told me he wouldn’t tell our father he caught me hanging out the window if I would just accompany him to a little soirée he couldn’t be seen alone at. He didn’t elaborate more than that, but only admitted Landric would not approve of our appearances at the event. He used his perfect vocabulary and made me believe he just wanted to hang out with his baby sister. I was stupid and let my hopeful little heart believe and went out with him, even when he told me I couldn’t possibly wear the ‘childish garbage’ I usually did. He snuck into Astrid’s room and retrieved one of her gothic-style outfits, insisted I wear it, and despite my discomfort, I did. Astrid is older than me and younger than Khan by about one and a half centuries on either side, and she quite enjoyed rebelling against our parents in desperation for attention. I have always wondered why her intent to embarrass them has never received the same reactions as my inability to keep my mouth shut did.
What the party was could have been called a sex exchange, to put it mildly. The minute we entered the building I was assaulted by the overwhelming smell of alcohol and sex, and I nearly gagged on it. I turned to ask Khan what the hell he was thinking, but he was already walking away; getting in the personal space of a small redhead wearing a purple and black corset top and a black skirt with purple ribbons keeping it tight to her toned legs. She was fit, like she’d been working her whole life, and she had a brand on her arm that screamed she was official property of the Spring Court.
Hold up.
When I saw her arm I took a double take around the cramped, sweaty room. Everyone in there was either branded or lower class Fae, and I realized what this actually was. This was a group of humans joining together and giving up; hiding away and trying to have one semi-normal evening before they were maimed, killed, or even worse by their superiors.
What could possibly have made Khan think I would enjoy this? He knows how I feel about humans and their captivity, he knows I think it’s unfair and horrible, and that the main reason I get in trouble around home is because I am the one sneaking food to the humans my father keeps. I am the one sneaking them out of the house and trying to let them get to one of the rebellions no one believes in but me. I am the one who wants the way they are treated to change, and he brings me to a place to show me just how horrible they feel?
Having decided I’d rather pluck each strand of hair out of my head than continue on with the evening after mere minutes of being in the room, I made my way to the wall and leaned against it. Khan had made grand headway with the Spring girl by that point; leaning over her skinny frame with her long, red hair wrapped around his fingers and his other hand snaking up her skirt. I don’t know if she was aware of Khan’s status in the Fae Courts or not, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. She had to know he was Fae and, after a few drinks and probably a little glamour, she ended up with her legs wrapped around his hips and her corset pulled open far enough to leave nothing to the imagination anyway. It was late in the night and most of the people there were too hammered to notice her throwing her breasts around in my brother’s face, but I couldn’t stomach the sight any longer.
I shook my head, looked around the room and instead, focused on other details. The music was loud, making the floor shake and causing people to scream at each other to be heard. Astrid’s skimpy, black bejeweled shorts and midriff-baring red shirt got the attention of a deeply tanned young man with short dark hair, and when he approached me through the crowd of other half-naked individuals I stiffened involuntarily. He looked harmless enough, but he reeked of alcohol and his eyes were hazy as he loomed over me in a way that made me want to run away and hide. Khan wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention and I didn’t have a guard beside me as I normally did. I wasn’t used to being left alone, and I really didn’t like feeling so exposed.
His full lips moved and I knew he was trying to talk to me, but with the music blaring as loud as it was I couldn’t understand a word that came out of his mouth. Knowing I was nearly deaf with the music, the man reached out and rested his hand on my waist; trying to pull me away from the wall and speak with his hands. He stumbled though, and ended up sandwiching me between himself and the smooth concrete. His mouth opened and he was laughing, I’m sure, but I felt like I was going to throw up. I tried pushing him away from me, but he didn’t seem to understand and smirked down at me; his hand sliding from my waist to the bare skin of my thigh as he fingered the too-high hem of my shorts. Panic gripped my throat but before anything could happen, he froze. His eyes grew wide and his brow furrowed, and slowly his mouth opened and he looked as though he couldn’t breathe properly; giving me a pleading look as though I could help him. I didn’t know what was going on until he hacked and blood spilled from his lips, dripping down his chin.
The music abruptly cut off when someone pulled the plug and suddenly I could hear him; this horrid choking sound coming from deep in his throat. His knees buckled out from under him and he fell in front of me; landing in a heavy lump on the floor with a blade hilt sticking out of his back. I was eye to eye with one of my fathers’ guards, and one look down confirmed my thoughts — he had that boy’s blood on his hands.
I couldn’t hold in the banshee scream that tore itself from my throat.
Khan looked up when the music cut, and when he saw the guards swarming in the building and one of them in front of me, he took off in the other direction. I yelled for him, but it was like he didn’t even remember me. The guard rolled his eyes and extended a hand; wrapping it around my upper arm and yanking me forward.
“You are in an obscene amount of trouble,” he hissed in my ear just as a male voice cried out, “It’s the Fae!”
My plea for him to let me go was drowned out by the hell that broke loose. People were plowing into each other and trying to escape without being captured or returned to their ‘owners’. Khan was nowhere to be seen. The man holding me was yanking me around like a rag doll, letting other humans ram into me without a care in the world. He stopped one of the guards by the door and said, “If they’re branded, bring them back and turn them in to the other royalties under King Landric’s name. Do away with the rest of them.”
“No!” I yelled, but they didn’t hear me.
“Should I keep the fit ones, sir?” he asked the guard, who shook me for speaking. The man by the door was young and human, obviously one of the few who were bred to kill and maim from birth. There wasn’t even a spark of sympathy in his cold eyes, just blind obedience.
The guard holding me smirked. “What do you think?” He shook his head. “What else would I mean by ‘do away with’?”
My stomach flipped and I doubled over and puked with the realization of what he was saying. These humans, all of them, would be taken and branded; used for sex or work or whatever else the highest bidder said was fit. Everything they had been running from, the broken acceptance that caused them all to cluster together and drink themselves into oblivion, had come bursting in the door with the Winter prince and princess.
The man holding me dragged me out the door even as I continued to heave and retch. He either didn’t hear me over the commotion or simply didn’t care as he threw me forward against the wagon they’d brought to collect me. I let out a sob when my gut connected with the wooden panel, wanting nothing more than to run away and never be seen by these people again. I might have attempted that had I not been trapped in a pair of three-inch wedges that were killing my feet. Humans were screaming and being slowly escorted out of the buildings and into the back of the second wagon, all to be crammed inside and carted back to the mansion where I lived. One of them escaped the clutches of a guard and took off running in the opposite direction, but no one followed. A gunshot rang out against the previously quiet night, an
d the running being fell to the ground. I snapped my head forward too late, the image already burned behind my eyelids; making me feel sick again.
While I tried not to pass out in shock, I was thrown into the back of an escape-proof cart with iron cuffs hooked around my wrists and ankles. The guards didn’t acknowledge the pained sounds I made as the metal burned into me; they just slammed the door and locked it from the outside. Within moments, the horses up front jerked to life and we were headed to Hell.
I must have fallen asleep at some point in there, because it felt like mere moments after the door closed I was being drug back out. It was the young guard that time, and he led me past the rolling box with my hands still bound. The sounds of sobs and screams were harsh through the back vehicle and I felt my own eyes fog up. Even though Khan told me to go, I still felt that whatever happened to all those humans was entirely my fault.
Speaking of — where the hell was my brother?
As I was towed into the foyer a dreadful sight greeted me, answering my internal question bitterly soon. My father was sitting in his chair and my mother was seated at his side with her head in her hands. My sisters were nowhere to be seen, which was not unusual, but Khan was standing opposite my mother, looking down at me with disdain as he rubbed her shoulders comfortingly. I felt my jaw drop and couldn’t seem to form words, let alone full thoughts. Why isn’t he in trouble? I thought. Why hasn’t he been walked into the room in iron shackles?
“Thank you, Murphy,” my father said to the man who drug me in. “Please see to the rest of the humans, would you?”
Nodding silently the guard left the room, leaving me alone under the stares of my family members. My father’s face was stony as he stood and came to glare down at me.
“I see you were dressing inappropriately, as well,” Khan said, but he closed his mouth when my father raised a hand in a request for silence. Father looked down my body at the too-tight shirt I was still wearing and the dangerously short shorts clinging to my legs. My feet were blistered from the heels, and at that moment I seriously considered kicking them off and chucking them violently at Khan’s head. How dare he tell me I was dressed inappropriately? He was the one who told me to wear this!
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Father asked, and I shook my head; looking at the ground. I knew from experience it was best to accept the anger without resistance.
“No? Well then, I’ll start,” he continued. “Do you have any idea what it does to my reputation to find out that one of my children has not only willingly escaped my home, but has been found at a human brothel?” It wasn’t a question he wanted an answer to. I could tell by his voice, which gained in volume with every word, and I tried not to cringe. “I have also been informed you were being ravished against a wall — a WALL, Lumikki Trine. That is very becoming,” He added sarcastically.
I cowered at the use of not only my full first name, but the addition of my second. Father rarely pulled even a partial true name for fear someone would discover his and use it against him, and when he did you knew he was seconds away from strangling you with his own bare hands. I felt myself begin to tremble, but still didn’t say anything to him.
“Tell me, did he make you feel important? Hmm? Did he make you feel like a woman?” Khan snorted and cleared his throat, but was ignored. “What is this rebelling you’re doing to me?” Father hissed, inches from my face. “Are you trying to embarrass me with this infatuation of humans you have? Because it’s working.”
“We’re all very disappointed in you, Lumi,” Khan added suddenly, and my eyes snapped up. “Being the daughter of a king, especially the daughter of Landric, we all have much higher expectations, and you continuously fail to meet them.”
Shut up, I told myself. Shut up and let him belittle you. You know Father adores Khan, and you know it will only end badly for you. Don’t open your mouth. Let it go, Lumi, let it go—
“How dare you!” I cried at him, unable to listen to the sensible voice in my head. “You were there with me all night! You’re the one who forced me into this mess, and you dare stand there and accuse me of this?” I pulled in a ragged gasp. I hated to cry in front of them, but was finding it hard not to at that time. “Why don’t you tell Mother just how deep you burrowed into that poor Spring girl’s bosom, eh? Just how far your hand went up her skirt?”
Khan, unsurprisingly, looked appalled by my words. Father turned to look at him. “What is she talking about?” he asked, and I was stunned that he’d even put a grain of salt to my accusation.
“I haven’t the slightest clue,” he said. “I was only with her after dinner last night. I most certainly wasn’t with her at any sort of…party.”
“Your clever wording won’t get you out of this!” I screamed. “Just because you weren’t ‘with’ me doesn’t mean you weren’t there. You’re a disgrace!”
My mother snapped my name at me but it was too late. The words were out of my mouth, and when my father turned to look at me, his knuckles slammed across my cheekbone with inhuman speed. Startled, I stumbled off my heels and hit the ground hard; my elbow and hip taking a great amount of the impact.
“You disgust me more by the second, Lumi,” he hissed down at me. He called for a guard and asked that I be taken to a basement cell, one without windows or visible keyholes, as I am ‘one who would escape’. With a searing look at Khan, I was towed away and locked up for ‘safe keeping’.
Which is where I sit now. I am still sheathed in the provocative clothing of my sister’s and I have marvelous shiners on my cheek, elbow and hip. My stomach is red and blotchy from where the guard threw me into the cart and I look like I’ve been beat to hell, which, honestly, I have. In my time down here I have come to the conclusion that the only reason Khan asked me to go was in the worst case scenario, he would be able to duck out a back door and saddle up his horse and get home before anyone got over the fact they found the princess at a human sex craze.
I shake my head to clear it from thoughts of my brother and parents before I break down in tears all over again. I’m tired and I don’t want to think about anything besides sleep. I huff and shift onto my non-bruised side and rest my cheek against the cool stone floor. And like the first night I got here, my eyes start to burn before I can drift off to sleep. After a few minutes of holding it in, I start to cry.
Terror grips my heart when a streak of light comes down the hall and the man who brought me into the front room that day, Murphy, follows it. I’ve been up a few hours now and my stomach has been protesting vehemently all morning. My mouth is dry and sticky and tastes as though an army has walked all over it. I was on the verge of passing out before he got to the door of my cage. He stares at me for a moment and I swear I see a flicker of pity, but he says nothing. Instead, he opens the door and pulls me to my feet.
“Has Father asked for me?” I ask. My voice is hoarse from lack of use but I don’t bother to clear it. No one cares if I sound like my dainty self right now, especially me.
“No,” he says. “Not necessarily. You are to be primped and taken to the center of town within the hour.”
I knew it; he’s auctioning me off like cattle. I had been considering this possibility since I was thrown down here. I’m sure someone would leap at the chance to gag me (or any faery princess) to a whipping post…or a headboard. It seems out of character for my father to pull such a common move, but considering my record I doubt anyone would frown upon his work. He’s always wanted to be the ‘kind’ king, and as of this moment he always has been. Discarding a troubled black sheep won’t change him in anyone’s eyes. For a minute I consider fighting, but something tells me I’ve been starved for exactly that reason and I know there is no point — I couldn’t fight off a gnat at this point.
Murphy settles me into a chair and a few drugged-up human pets scamper in. He remains; standing close and making sure I don’t put up a fight as the girls wash and style my hair into rings and change me into clean, proper attire. I am change
d from my party clothes into a sleeveless blue day dress and flats like a child’s doll, and I can’t even bring myself to care. A few brushes of make-up and I look semi-decent, save for the exhausted and horrified expression in my eyes.
Murphy plucks something out of his pocket and hands it to me. It’s a wrapped package of saltine crackers and a bottle of water. “Eat that slowly,” he says. “You don’t want to shock your system with it.”
I stare at him in shock as my hair is abused with hot curlers. He ducks his head as if he’s embarrassed for expressing kindness and I murmur a weak, “Thank you” before ripping the plastic open. The salty bite of the crackers is possibly the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, though that could be because of my starvation. At this point I could probably eat a rat and think it tasted magnificent. “How long was I down there?” I ask, and look at the boy in the mirror.
“Three days,” he says. “Today would be day four.”
I blink and shake my head. It felt like longer. I crack open the bottle of water and take small sips per Murphy’s instructions and nibble on the saltines. Murphy waits to lead me into town until I have finished my tiny meal, and once I’ve been properly cleaned and dressed for whatever the occasion is. He leads me in through the back of the courthouse and my parents and siblings are standing by, all wearing official clothing and looking grim. Except Father, though —he looks absolutely giddy.
“Excellent,” he says when he sees me. “Almost attractive. Thank you, Murphy.”
Murphy nods silently at my father’s praise and steps aside. There is an uncomfortable quiet in the room; my sisters refusing to meet my gaze and Khan standing proud as a peacock beside my parents. I am swaying on my feet and it isn’t long before Mother and Father step out to address the large group of people surrounding the building. I can’t see over their heads, but the crowd is several feet away, surrounding something in a semicircle.
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