Page 515 of Flirting with Darkness

“She is hopelessly outclassed, it’s true,” the purple one said. “Eventually, he’ll turn on her and kill her.”

My blood froze. Still holding me, Tor had gone very still.

“It’s inevitable,” the third agreed.

“Do you think that the rumors are true, that Tor scouted her out for his bride years ago?”

“I don’t know about that. I’m sure that one rumor is true… Tor loved her for himself.”

That was what I had wanted to hear all this time, the Tor had always loved me, that he wanted me.

The purple one laughed a beautiful, trilling laugh, as if she had heard the most hilarious thing in the world. “It’s darling that he loves someone, especially someone as wonderfully ugly as he is. But his love? That will not save her.”

I wanted desperately to talk to Tor, but his arms loosened around my waist. He melted back into the shadows

One moment he was there, a steadying but somewhat terrifying wall behind me, and the next he was gone.

I couldn’t breathe. What I’d just heard was so strange and upsetting.

I was still trying to process it when the girls came closer.

I tried to take a step back, intent on following in his footsteps. I stepped onto a plant, and it released its fragrance: flowery with a hint of iron. The plant was pale green with some of its long leaves withering and falling off, but it seemed alive enough.

Then those leaves unfurled into long tendrils. I tried to take another quick step away, but they darted out and wrapped around my ankles. I felt clumsy with my gown tangling around my legs as I tried to dance away.

The tendrils dragged me off my feet, and I slammed hard into the ground. My ears rang and I could've sworn I heard the eerie tune that had played when Tor and I had our pretend wedding. I tried to scramble up, but my hands seemed to sink helplessly into the earth, as if the garden was trying to swallow me.

I'd wanted to escape the girls, but now I screamed for their help.

The girls ran to me like a pack of wolves, but when they neared me, they slowed down to a stroll and then to a stop. They stood over me and started to laugh. Their voices, brassy and nasty, rang in my ears.

“You have no idea how dangerous everything is in our world, do you?” One of them asked me. “You’re going to get eaten alive. If not by Tor, then by something else.”

“It could be the prince.” Purple laughed.

I struggled to free myself; the faster I broke through tendrils, the faster new ones seemed to creep over every limb, tightening painfully. "Please help!"

"Help yourself, if you want to be queen."

A tall shadow rose over all of us. The girls looked toward it; even the plant seemed to freeze.

The prince.

“Help me,” I called to him. I might have wanted to make it clear that I didn’t need him earlier, but now I was very much interested in his help.

“I see you girls are as worthless as you are stupid and ugly,” the prince growled.

The next second, he shouldered them aside, a knife glittering in his hand. For a second, I was terrified, after everything I’d just heard.

But then he knelt and slashed through the tendrils. Now that the worst of the panic was fading, I felt as if the plant had been trying to pull me apart. Every joint and tendon ached.

The girls flood. I tried to stand. But my knees wouldn’t quite hold my weight.

He was watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. Pity, or maybe he thought the girls were right that I would never survive in this world. Maybe he would send me back home. I should be relieved by that thought.

Then, to my surprise, he scooped me up and help me against his chest.

“No, I’m fine, you don’t have to do that…”

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