“I know.” Meghan’s words were wrapped in suppressed cries. Her lips glistened from the tears that streaked down her face. “But I don’t think we can—I don’t think we can ever leave.”
Callie ran her hooded eyes over the crowd. Humans dressed in fashion from across history slumped around each other, meeting in moments of connected time, then moving on.
“There has to be a way,” said Callie. The fire of her need to flee didn’t cling to her voice; it sounded empty. As hollow as she felt. “You see that altar up there?”
Meghan tried to crane her neck and look back at the altar—the dance wouldn’t allow it, and forced her to bow.
Through a stifled groan, Meghan said, “What about it?”
“There’s a throne on the left,” said Callie. “The fae who sits there, he watches me. He’s not here now, but he’ll come back. And he’ll watch me again.”
“Sick bastards,” muttered Meghan. Her feet began to slide back, threatening to take her away from Callie.
Callie forced her legs to drag forward. “If I can get him to come over,” she said, “maybe he can help us.”
“They’re the ones who did this, why would they save us?” Meghan’s voice grew louder as the dance tugged her back into the crowd.
Callie could feel the pull of her own legs. The music didn’t like too much talking. It wanted to separate them.
“He wants something,” said Callie.
Why else would he watch her so often? Of all the hundreds of humans, his eyes followed her. She had something that he wanted.
“I’m going to try and bargain with him—for the both of us.”
Meghan was swallowed up by the crowd before she could answer. And the dance punished them for their chat.
The flutes whistled faster tunes, and Callie’s feet obeyed.
With the faster song came more tears.
It worked.
It had taken longer than she’d imagined, but it worked.
Callie caught the eyes of the watchful fae on the fifth day.
The High Paladin returned to the hall to relieve another fae. He slouched in his blackwood throne with a lazy presence, looking bored. The same brown-leather armour he’d worn when they met was wrapped around his body, curving around the muscles beneath his pale skin.
Below the curve of his lashes, golden eyes fixed on Callie from across the grand hall. It never took him long to find her in the swarm of prisoners.
Callie seized the moment—the moment she’d waited painful days for. She looked back at Rain. Her eyes watered, leaking tears down to her cheeks, and she forced her lips to mouth, ‘Help me.’
Rain shifted in his throne.
His spine straightened and he slid to the edge of the seat. A stray lock of tar-black hair fell over his face as he tilted his head.
‘Please, help me.’
Callie hoped he understood her. Even if he wasn’t a very good lip reader, the gist should have shown in her pleading gaze, her tears, and her defeated limbs that slumped around her.
Beads of sweat gathered on her eyelashes. She blinked them away. When she opened her eyes again, gaze reaching across the hall to the throne, the Paladin was gone. He’d vanished.
A sob choked in her throat.
Callie bowed her head and rocked her hips.
The melody would never let her go.
Just as she was about to succumb to sobs, a deep voice brushed against the shell of her ear; “Why should I help you?”
Callie spun around, but the dance fought against it. Her feet tripped under her and she lost her balance. Callie cried out as the ground came rushing up at her—
But it didn’t reach her.
Rain had caught her and lifted her up against him.
One of his arms slipped around her waist, supporting her dead weight, and his free hand clasped onto hers. He danced with her against the frantic song, rocking her in a slow sway.
It was almost soothing.
Her heavy gaze touched to his. A sheet of indifference masked his face, but his eyes betrayed him where his expression would not. They swarmed with plots and schemes, like storms forming.
“I asked you a question, human.” The breathless whisper to his voice had been swallowed by an icy tornado. If Callie’d had the energy, she would’ve shuddered from the danger in his tone. “I expect an answer.”
It strained her neck to look up at him.
“I don’t have an answer,” she croaked. “Because there’s no reason I can think of for you to help me.”
Beneath the glow of the torches, his black hair shone like tarmac on a hot day. It draped freely down the side of his face, the tips ending at his collarbone. But his hair couldn’t hide the points of his ears, or the scar that reddened the skin along the curve of his ear.
“If I were to free you from this dance,” he said slowly. Callie’s heart jumped to her throat. “What would you give me in return?”
It came out of her mouth before she’d had the chance to doubt herself. “Anything,” she blurted out. “Just name it—set me free and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
The mask remained firmly on his face, as if carved from marble. “A bold offer to grant any of the fae.”
Callie shook her head, and her face crinkled, scrunching up into an anguished prune.
“I can feel my skin grating off the bones of my feet,” she choked. “My body wants to collapse. It needs to. But I can’t stop.” Callie snivelled and gazed up at him. “Please, help me—help us.”
“Your friend,” he said. “Meghan, is it?”
Her dyed-blue hair, frizzed from the days of dancing, stuck to the sides of her face.
Rain released her hand before he dragged his finger down her jawline, peeling the hair from her skin. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought the gesture to be tender.
“It is within my power to help you.” The sharpness of his fingernail grazed over her jaw, along to the underside of her chin. He tilted her head further back and studied her face with his calculative eyes. “Speak your proposition. Say it aloud to the walls of this court.”
Callie’s brows furrowed. Her eyes fought against a blur to focus on his face.
“I—I promise to give you what you want,” she said, “if you free us—Meghan and me.”
He slipped away from her.
Callie staggered at the loss of the support. Her knees jerked beneath her weight and she held out her arms for balance.
Rain was gone.
And still, Callie danced.
6
One week.
Callie had danced for one whole week. Her bones had ground away to nothing inside of her, her skin had stripped away from her muscles. It shocked her that she was still moving, still alive.
The innkeeper knew where she’d gone. Would she have sent a search party? Callie didn’t doubt her grandparents looked for her. They would tear apart the town in their pursuit of their only grandchild—the one they raised.
But even if they found her in this other realm, they would become trapped like she was. They would dance forever.
Callie had to find her own way out.
Rain was supposed to be her escape. But Callie realised now, she had nothing to offer him, and she never had. He only toyed with her for entertainment. Fresh meat, she supposed.
And now she was stuck in the dance forever.
Meghan hadn’t been around since they’d last spoken at the wall.
The dance kept them apart. Too much talking, not enough dancing.
Callie had seen her hair once, like an orange bobbing over heads, but before she could go to her, the orange melted into the crowd again.
Callie wondered if Meghan was searching for her as well, or if she’d lost herself to the pain of it all, the misery of forever.
The naked waiter glided by.
Callie met his gaze. A rope of dread dropped to her stomach at the devious smirk he shot her way. Like he knew something she didn’t, something more unb
earable than the dance.
Then, he turned his back on her and prowled through the unchained humans for a victim. That was his job, she’d come to learn. He was to hunt the humans who have evaded a life sentence in the fae realm and ensure they never left.
Callie’s heavy arms lifted suddenly, as if a jolt of the music had shot through her. Her body twisted around, straining the muscles in her back, until her legs wobbled beneath her—they wouldn’t follow the rest of her body.
Gloved hands steadied her.
The brown leather gave him away. Callie pictured the swarms of gold before she turned and met his gaze.
Rain had found her again. And this time, he wanted something. The swirls of rose-gold in his solid eyes told her as much.
As his arm looped around her, he pulled her closer.
Callie couldn’t resist him. She melted against the support and let the pain roll off her body.
His head dipped to hers, his ear brushing over her flushed cheekbone. “Anything?”
Numbness had taken her body and mind. It showed in the lazy nod of her head and drooping eyelids.
In the days that had passed since their last meeting, Callie had seen awful things. Awful, cruel, deplorable acts done by fae to humans. She needed out.
A part of her suspected he’d known that. He’d known that the dance would break her quickly. And he’d been right.
Rain pulled his head back and smiled down at her, but the smile was tight, filled with malice.
Callie wondered if she should take her promise back. But then, she and Meghan would be in the dance forever—and what fate could be worse than that?
“Say it,” he demanded.
Hooded eyes met his fierce rose-gold ones, and she sank against his hold. The relief was overwhelming. Maybe this time, he wouldn’t walk away. Maybe this time, he would whisk her off the podium to freedom.
“I’ll do anything,” she begged. “Just…make it stop.”
Callie frowned and parted her dry lips to speak again. But the moment her chapped skin separated, he ducked his head and—
He kissed her.
Callie didn’t feel the tenderness in the kiss. The smooth touch of his lips grazing against hers was lost on her, the warmth of his apple-flavoured tongue was overwhelmed by the burst of agony that tore through her.
Layers of the dance’s spell peeled away from her body, like flesh stripping from bones. Music seeped out of her pores, leaving only sweat and fatigue in its wake. The force of the curse left her body—and with it, the little energy she had did too.
Callie’s entire body lit up in flames. That’s how it felt—to be burned alive; bubbled and boiled.
And then, nothing.
All she remembered before darkness swallowed her was the sudden urge to use the toilet, and Rain’s stony face looking down at her. His last words to her that night were laced with danger and stalked her into a deep sleep.
‘The only way to break the curse is to welcome you into my court. Welcome, Callie.’
The Prince’s Prisoner
∞Part Two∞
7
A chirp pierced through her dreamless sleep.
Callie’s iron eyelids struggled to open. When they did, only half-so, the colours of dusk danced over a marble sculpture. She squinted and tried to focus her blurry vision on the sculpture.
Only, she realised that it was a chest, as pale as the moonlight, seemingly carved from stone.
Her eyes dragged up the muscle definition to the head it belonged to.
He was asleep.
The High Paladin, Rain laid beside her. His lashes rested on the smooth skin of his face. His chest rose and fell in slow, steady breaths, and his pink lips parted in the centre.
Callie tried to summon the energy to move, but only scraps gathered, enough to turn her face to the side.
As her eyes roamed, she could make out a room through the blur. It wasn’t the hall. Nothing like the hall of curses.
It was a bedroom, or a chamber, grand with its high ceilings and alcoves.
She and Rain lay on the bed, facing tall drapes that divided the room. The feathery mattress cuddled her sinking body, and animal hides were sewn together into a large, heavy blanket that draped over them.
She forced her tired gaze up to the bed-frame. Carved from oak, it erected in four spiralling pillars that reached up to the ceiling where they tangled around ivy vines to create a roof.
Callie’s hand slid under the animal hide. The clothes she’d been wearing at the hall weren’t on her body anymore. Instead of soft cotton touching her fingertips, silk slid along her skin.
The fur blanket was too heavy for her to lift. Callie managed to push her chin to her collarbone and squint down at her clothes.
Lilac satin clung her to body like a second skin. A long nightdress.
Rain shifted in the bed.
Callie dropped her head back onto the mattress, fighting against the heaviness of her eyelids. But they pulled themselves down, as if commanded by other powers. The sensation brought the dance back to mind.
“Hush, human.” The rough morning-voice came from Rain. Callie turned her head to glower at him, but all she could muster was the same strained gaze since she woke. “You must rest more.”
He shifted onto his side, facing her, and his hand reached out for hers. He didn’t open his eyes to watch her fight against the nearing touch. Her energy failed her, and she groaned uselessly against a pillow.
Rain touched his fingers to her head, and instantly, Callie was tugged back into her mind.
Darkness drowned her all over again.
The next time Callie woke in her groggy state, it wasn’t to the chirp of a bird. It was a clatter of cutlery that pried her eyes open.
Callie lay on her side, hands tucked underneath her cheek like a pillow. After a few blinks, she realised that she was in the middle of the forest-like bed. And she was alone.
Rain was gone. He wasn’t anywhere she could see, either. Though, from the bed her view of the room was limited. Directly across from her, the room was cut in half by a wall-to-wall sheer curtain. Through the thin fabric, the outline of an indoor pond and balcony was faint.
The bedroom wasn’t a squared layout, like the rooms at her own home in Ireland. The walls here were jagged, forking off into small alcoves—like those at the hall—and velvet drapes curtained openings that led into smaller sections of the room.
Callie could see through the gap in a curtain ahead. Behind the velvet drapes was a reading corner with a high-back armchair and dozens of fireflies trapped in jars.
A clatter rang through the room. It was the same as the sound that had woken her.
Callie rolled onto her front and pressed her hands into the mattress.
Her arms trembled under her weight as she pushed herself up. They gave out; she collapsed back onto the feathery mattress with a grunt.
Whoever else was in the room had heard her.
The pitter-patter of hurried footsteps echoed out.
Callie tried to sit up again; her arms shaking like leaves in a storm, but all she could manage was an unsteady crouch. She stayed that way on the bed, darting her tired eyes around the room.
The footsteps drew nearer—until the sheer curtains parted further down the room and a woman rushed through them.
Callie watched her cautiously.
The woman wore a drab grey dress that reminded Callie of puritans. The black apron tied around the woman’s waist was smeared with soot and yellow sauce, much too faint to be mustard. Her hair pulled against her scalp before meeting at the nape of her neck in a firm bun; and her beady black eyes widened at the sight of Callie.
The woman was human.
“Where am I?” whispered Callie. The woman simply gawked at her. “Please, can you tell me where I am?”
The woman staggered forward. But not over to the bed against the wall where Callie crouched. Her stocking-covered legs scrambled over to a stump encircled with wooden-stools. On to
p of the oak stump was a golden tray, filled with half-eaten meals and cups with dregs of tea.
The woman snatched the tray, turned, and ran out of the room.
Callie’s gaze followed the woman as she fled. The archway she left through wasn’t blocked before—but the moment the woman disappeared through it, vines snaked out from the edges and formed a cage in its place.
Callie suspected it was meant to trap her in the room.
Before she could give it much more thought, she shifted back onto the side and lay there. Her gaze found the vanity table opposite. A floating rose encased in a glass dome was placed on the table, the petals seeming to shimmer at her—or wink.
Sleep took Callie quickly.
8
Sleep didn’t demand her company anymore.
Callie had been awake since sunrise, and had yet to collapse back into darkness. When the dawn’s pinks and purple hues melted into blue, she climbed out of the bed.
Above the bed, the light flooded the room through a glass window on the ceiling, bordered by ivy vines, and caged just like the archway.
The stump across from the bed supported another tray. On top of the gold platter was a bowl of freshly picked fruits; two plates of sliced ham and cheeses; a teapot with cherry-scented steam twisting out of the spout; and a pitcher of water so clear that Callie suspected may have come from the lake.
The rose was gone.
Eyes on the lure of food, Callie slid off the bed. The wooden floor touched the soles of her feet. She cringed, waiting for the onslaught of pain. But it didn’t come.
Callie bent her legs and checked the soles of her feet. The flesh was smooth, pinkish and without injury.
How long had she been asleep?
There were no traces of aches or sores on her body, anywhere—not her legs, arms, or back.
Callie crept toward the stump and eyed the food. It had been put there for her, she guessed, because there was no one else in the room. But just as she thought that, there was a rustle at the entrance.
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 16