Page 54 of A Bond in Blood

“Got to sleep, princess,” he said.

“I can’t,” I admitted.

His eyes went to the open windows. “Go enjoy the morning sun. You rarely get to see it since you’ve been here.”

He left me alone, giving me permission to leave with no companion.

My heart raced and I jumped to my feet, rushing to the closet. My hands ripped through my trunks for the outfit I was searching for. Finally finding it, I held it before me, my heart swelling with a longing for home.

Once dressed, I ripped the door open and ran down the hall.

After a fast stop at the library, I moved through the palace, finding the towering fortress halls empty. I fisted the scroll in my cloak, almost making it to the front doors when a voice cleared from the shadows.

I turned on my heel, startled to find an Unseelie man smiling at me.

“My, my, my.” He grinned.

I stepped back, glancing around the grand foyer of the palace. The stone stairs leading upward were now like a trap when they’d been my pathway to freedom just moments before.

“Where are you going?” he sneered.

“I don’t know why that’s any of your concern,” I replied.

The man grinned and I bit the inside of my cheek to hold in my gasp at the elongated teeth dragging against his lips.

“I think you’re lying,” he said.

“Bjorn, why are you loitering for unsuspecting victims?”

I turned, finding Frode standing in the shadows, a look of disdain tight across his face.

The fae whose name I’d now learned let out a disturbing laugh. “Frode, you know I must feed. My kind cannot go long without it.”

I stepped back, retreating toward Frode when the man’s hands reached for me, ripping off my cloak.

“My, what an outfit.” His tongue licked his lips. “Who gets to see you like this, princess?”

My hands covered the sealskin suit I’d changed into, grateful for the long trousers I’d slipped over myself. But my bust, there was barely a way to cover the curve of it through the suit.

Frode appeared beside me, wrapping his own cloak over my shoulders.

“The princess is from Nóatún, an island gifted in the sea. An island with a frigid fjord and filled with insane habitants who swim in its waters.”

Bjorn grey eyes peered at me while his fingers pinched my cloak together. He brought it to his nose, inhaling loudly.

“You smell amazing. Can’t I just have a taste?”

“I suggest you stop taunting the king’s guest, fool. Unless you want his wrath to come down upon you,” Frode replied.

Even with my suit covering my arms, and Frode’s cloak wrapped around me, my body grew cold at the hate in the man’s eyes while he stared back at the healer.

“Ulrich is starving himself,” he laughed. “Many of us don’t wish to do so.”

“Leave,” Frode commanded.

My hands gripped Frode’s cloak tighter, trying to conceal more of myself while the man studied me.

We were in a standoff. The monster taunting his prey. Only, I was his believed prey. The predator before me had no sway in my ability to fight for myself.

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