Carefully, she stepped out of the WC and the wall shut behind her.
There wasn’t much left of her nook.
The shelves had been ripped out from the wall, fingernail marks cut deep into the wood. Feathers coated the floor as if glued down by oil, and the remains of the armchair made for lumpy mounds.
Books were shredded into confetti, and the table pulverised. Drapes hung from the ceiling, the railings torn out from the stone walls.
Rain had destroyed the alcove with his own hands.
If this was a sign of storms to come, Callie doubted the shelter of her bathroom would protect her from the wrath.
Her body stiff, she waded through the ruins to the arch of the alcove, and peered into the room. Nothing was in disarray. The bed was made, silk slips and cotton dresses were folded on a stump. No shattered mirrors or torn drapes. Everything was orderly, and Rain was nowhere in sight.
Callie dropped onto the foot of the bed. Her legs were too weak to wander, so she sat and waited for Davina to come with a meal.
If she would come.
As she waited, she fiddled with the leather corner of the book and stared at the sheer drapes. The pond winked at her under the bask of daylight flooding that side of the room, as if inviting her in for a swim. But the water wasn’t safe to drink, so it couldn’t tempt her.
She was parched, hungry, and growing more tired by the minute.
Callie hadn’t even known that she’d fallen asleep until a soft shake of the shoulders woke her.
Davina’s face blinked into sight, and Callie forced herself up on the bed.
“Thirsty,” she managed to choke out.
“I know, dear.” Davina brought a cool pitcher of spring water to her lips. Callie gulped it down, hard.
“There you are,” Davina soothed. “Drink it all.”
She did. And when the pitcher was left with only a few drops, Callie didn’t feel the burn of hunger as much. Still, Davina rested a tray of fruits on the bed and made her eat until she couldn’t fit anymore in her stomach.
“Good,” whispered the servant. “Now, sleep. Three days barricaded in a cold room, your body will need the rest.”
Three days…
Callie let Davina guide her down onto her side, but didn’t close her eyes. “Where is he?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
Davina smiled and patted her hand. “The prince is expected to return tonight. I was ordered to check the chamber every hour for you. He demanded you be cared for.”
Was she trying to reassure Callie? Were her words folded over meanings?
Callie was too numb to think on it.
Davina took the pitcher and tray, and left through the ever-moving vines.
Callie didn’t sleep much. She tossed and turned until the sunlight began to fade from the room, and she eventually dragged herself out of the bed for the pond.
After she washed and changed into a fresh dress, she planted herself by the balcony doors and watched the sunset, waiting for Rain to return, waiting for the inevitable confrontation.
She couldn’t stay hidden in the WC for the rest of her life.
The sun hadn’t yet been swallowed by the earth when the drapes swished over the floor behind her.
She felt the chill of Rain’s presence on her skin.
Silence slipped over them.
She couldn’t bring herself to face him, so she watched his faint reflection in the glass doors. In his armour, Rain stood by the drapes and stared at her back, as though her spine held all the answers to his unspoken questions.
He lowered himself onto a tree stump next to the pond, and kept a distance far enough that Callie felt somewhat safer. She wondered if he meant her to.
“You were right to run.” A touch of regret softened his voice. “I might have killed you in my anger.”
No matter how gently he spoke, his words rattled her.
Fae don’t lie.
For a fleeting second, she wished they could. Some truths weren’t worth knowing.
“I sometimes forget the frailty of your kind,” he admitted, as if revealing a great secret to her. Maybe he was, but she didn’t hold his secret in high regard. “If I were to offer an apology, would you accept it?”
Callie was too numb to snort. “Would you mean it?”
Rain slowly came up behind her. Her gaze locked onto his reflection every step of the way.
He crouched down, a breath away from her back, and ran his gloved fingers down her bare arm. “Would it make a difference if I did?”
Retorts danced on her tongue, ready to spring free. But she bit them back, and stayed silent. Not out of fear. She needed the regret in him to blossom. She needed a peace-offering from him—time on the balcony, a visit to Meghan, freedom in the orchard. Anything to get her dormant plan moving.
All that her time in the toilet really taught her was that her plan was everything. She needed to escape. Better sooner than later, but it wasn’t a game of snap they were playing. He was playing chess, and she needed to catch up.
Rain drew closer, his cheek grazing her damp hair, his chin resting on her shoulder. “I regret my actions that evening, Callie. I am sorry.”
She studied his face in the glass, the sincerity troubling him in the way of furrowed brows and grimly set lips.
He found her gaze in the glass.
“Tell me something true,” he said. “Something honest.”
“I’m terrified of you.”
Her expression stayed stiff. Her fear didn’t crack the numbness that had captured her, but her words were enough for him to stroke her arm again.
“Another,” he demanded.
“You destroyed all the books in the alcove.”
He was silent a moment. Gloved hands reached down her arms until they found her fidgeting fingers on her lap, and clasped. “Are you angry?”
She shook her head and looked down at his hands cradling hers.
He turned his head and whispered a kiss over her cheek. The word breathed from his lips, the same word she’d spoken to him days before. “Tired.”
A word that had stuck with him, she realised.
“Tired,” she agreed.
Rain held her in his near-embrace a while, his lips exploring her cheek, her jawline, and down to her neck. He planted a final kiss on her skin, then broke the quiet between them.
“Come to bed with me, wife. Come to bed, and I will restore your books.”
Every muscle in her body jumped and she made to cringe away from him. His arms caged around her effortlessly, and pulled her against him.
“You assume again,” he said. “I don’t ask that of you yet. Rest with me.”
It should have relaxed her. He didn’t lie. He wouldn’t take that from her. Not if she was unwilling. Still, the mere thought of lying in the same bed as him disturbed her skin into bumps.
But she had a game to play.
Callie glanced at the rose-dome as it flickered. She watched a withered petal drift from the flower and land at the stem. The dead petal didn’t shimmer anymore, but the other five still shimmered—more than before.
The pool of dread in her stomach deepened, and she turned away from the rose.
Rain guided her to the bed.
Neither of them slept.
They rested.
And in the morning, after he kissed her hand and left the bed, he dressed into his armour. His duty called and she was glad to be rid of him.
He left with a promise. “I will return for dinner tomorrow moon, and we will eat on the balcony.” He took her hand again, ghosting another kiss over her limp fingers.
She stared at him, unfeeling.
Then, he said, “You will have a book before then.”
Her heart fluttered and her mind sprung to life with her plan.
Check.
12
As loathsome as the war creature was, he held true to his word.
A book was delivered by a male servant to the room. He wasn’t much older tha
n Callie, and his auburn hair matched the chestnut of his warm eyes. The servant only looked at her once before he offered her the fresh brown book and hurried back out through the vines.
Callie would’ve liked to talk to him some. Davina wouldn’t talk too much, and Rain’s way of speaking spun Callie around in circles until all she wanted to do was sleep.
She turned over the book in her hands. On the spine, with new glittering gold letters, a mere word made her rush with excitement. A word that shattered every last shard of numbness in her.
‘LIBRARY’.
Then, the blissful expression was wiped from her face as she saw the attached note poking out from the blank pages. A simple card, with cursive yet jagged writing, ‘Guards await your arrival.’
A drop of ink marked the bottom of the card, as though he’d touched quill to paper to write something else. Another warning. A signature.
Whatever it had been, he’d decided against it.
Callie quickly changed dresses. The one she’d been wearing was far too sheer for her comfort around strange guards, but her options weren’t limitless.
Some of her clothes had been destroyed in the alcove fit, and she found that she only had three left on the stump. Three dresses and one undergarment—that she already wore.
Settling on a blue sheet-like dress that reminded her of Ancient Greece, she climbed through the mess in the alcove and pressed the new book to the wall. Like it did with the toilet book, the wall melted apart as if peeled back by hot claws. Only this time, she didn’t face a plain white room.
She stood at threshold of a room that took her breath away.
A library larger and grander than the one at her university.
University…
That word whispered over and over in her mind, and twisted until she didn’t recognise it anymore. Then, the word vanished entirely, and she couldn’t remember what she’d been thinking about.
Callie blinked away the sudden stupor that had taken her, and pinched the bridge of her nose as if fighting off a headache.
“My Lady.”
Startled, Callie looked up.
Standing in front of her was a fae in a silver tunic, and a sword fastened to his hip. Cat eyes gleamed at her from beneath the rim of a red cap, and she couldn’t figure out if his stare was hungry or hateful.
“Hi,” she said with as much awkwardness as she felt. “He said I could come here. Look—”
As she made to show him the note, the guard waved away her panic and stepped aside. “The High Paladin instructed us to allow you one hour.”
The hit of disappointment at her cut time was so strong that she almost didn’t pick up on it. ‘Us’. But she did, and rinsed her gaze around the high balconies way above where six guards stared down at her, sprinkled around at their posts.
Seven guards all up seemed too many for a human in a fae’s castle. What could she do that would need that many pair of eyes?
The guard before her gave a stiff bow, and she realised that it was hatred in his fierce gaze. He didn’t want to bow to her. He didn’t want to bow to a human.
He introduced himself as Easton, and left her to wander the first floor. He was very clear that she could only walk the aisles of the first floor.
Callie didn’t recognise any of the books on the dusty shelves.
None of them were from her world, and as far as she could see, none of them were written in any human language. The letters and symbols in the books were something like she’d never seen before. Jagged edges, curved flicks, and a bold print. She thought of Rain’s note, of his unusual handwriting.
In what felt like a few minutes, Easton found her deep in the aisles. “It is time for you to return to your chambers, My Lady.”
With a pinched face, she left the library without a reading book.
Callie tried again the next day.
Rain wasn’t due back until dinner, so after sometime after lunch she used the library book in the alcove. It took her by surprise when the wall slipped away. She hadn’t really expected it to, since Rain had said nothing about two visits. But then, he hadn’t said anything about just one visit either.
“My Lady.” Easton, as if a reader of her mind and moves, stood before her and bowed stiffly. “You have one hour.”
She rushed past him, but not too fast. Callie didn’t fancy the risk of being struck down by a sword longer than her legs.
This time, she headed straight for the unexplored aisles farthest away from her disappearing doorway. She wandered the aisles again, reading foreign titles, lost in a world that didn’t make sense.
Half her time had been wasted when someone rounded the corner.
She heard the soft footsteps behind her.
“There’s no chance an hour has gone by already,” she said, running her finger down the spine of a solid gold book.
Easton said nothing.
Callie frowned and looked over her shoulder at the strict guard, but saw that he wasn’t there. No one was. Then, she shifted her gaze downwards and saw the bearer of the footsteps.
A small boy hugged himself to the edge of the shelves, half-hidden from sight. Bright lilac eyes glittered from his curious face, and a layer of moss was spread over his small hands—hands that wore blood red nails that could take out her throat with a single swipe.
Callie stepped back from the gold book and faced the boy. She placed him around six years old, but it was hard to tell.
He could kill her easily, that she knew. But his nervous smile and timid stance softened her defences.
“Hi,” she said and tried—for the first time since she’d arrived—a sincere smile. “Who are you?”
A petulant frown wrinkled his face. “I saved you.”
Callie’s brows shot up and a small smile played on her lips.
“You saved me,” she said with a nod. “When did you save me?”
“You were in the lake.” He crept out a bit further from behind the shelf. Bolder. But not bold enough to step into the aisle with her. “I warned you about the merfolk.”
“That was you?” breathed Callie, and she slowly got to her knees.
Her hand waved him in closer, but he only took one step.
“Thank you,” she said. “I could have drowned out there.”
“I know.” He looked down at his silver shoes, tied with laces made from silk.
Callie tried coaxing him closer with a warm smile. “Why did you help me?”
He looked around, nerves plastered onto his face with a glossy sheen of sweat.
“I won’t hurt you, you know,” she said. “We’re just talking. It’s all right.”
Lilac eyes burst with fear and swerved to Callie. “I’m not allowed to talk to you.”
“Says who?” She frowned, her shoulders slumping.
It was the first conversation she’d had in weeks that didn’t fill her with fear. Though, she doubted the same could be said for the boy.
“Why can’t we talk?”
He ran off.
The boy reeled back from the shelf’s edge and disappeared, scurrying into the other aisles. Callie made to go after him, but as she rounded the corner, she saw Easton coming towards her.
“Time.” It was all he said. Sharp, to the point.
Callie looked around but she didn’t see the boy.
With a defeated sigh, she left the library.
The night’s air was crisp with chills.
Callie, full from her meal, sprawled over her pillows by the balcony’s fireplace and waited for the flames to turn green.
Rain studied her over the tureens and picked at the leftover grapes.
“Is the library to your liking?” he asked.
It was his third attempt at striking up conversation with her over dinner. She wasn’t icy with him, or ignoring him. It was the boy.
She couldn’t rid her mind of him, of his sad eyes, his terrified whispers.
“Everything’s in a different language,” she said, rubbing her full bel
ly in lazy circles. “I can’t read any of it.”
Rain chewed a bloody slice of meat. After he licked away a drop of blood from his lip, he moved the table to the side with a mere push of the hand, then slid closer to her.
“The aisles by the firepit,” he said. “Those collections are from your world.”
Callie turned to lie on her back and stared up at him with hooded eyes, heavy from overeating. “Your guards don’t like me very much.”
“They don’t have to like you to protect you.”
“Protect me,” she echoed, a smile on her lips. “Watch my every move, you mean. Guard me. Make sure I don’t step out of line.”
“That too.” He ran his fingertips from her hairline to the tips of her raven strands. “But don’t mistake them. On my orders, they would die to protect you from harm.”
“Why?”
“You are my wife.”
Callie blew a raspberry with her mouth. It summed up her still not-so-warm feelings at the reminder.
“You are odd, I suspect even for a human.” Rain withdrew his hand and rested it on his knee, but his gaze never left her face. “Many would sacrifice their own mothers to be my wife. I do not think they would make crude sounds with their mouths.”
“And I would think most would,” she said pompously.
“The library does little to lighten your mood.”
The threat was there. It tickled her spine and swerved her gaze to his.
“I like it,” she said. “You can’t take it away from me.”
“I can.” The smile that tugged at his lips was a wicked one. “But I will not. Yet.”
Muscles relaxing, she turned her attention to the stars above.
The constellations were all wrong in their realm. Different. Bunched together in some places, a circle of them around the moon, clear images dotted out across a night-sky canvas. It was too … perfect.
How little she knew about the realm unnerved her. A constant feeling of never belonging, always sticking out like a stain on a white jacket.
It wasn't unlike how she felt around Rain. In fact, his presence sometimes amplified the lost sensation. Just as little as she knew his realm, she knew so little of him.
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 20