Page 5 of Monster's Pretty Bride

Her lips press together, but I catch it, the briefest flicker of a smirk.

Defiant little thing.

I move, close enough so she can feel the heat radiating from my skin. Closer so she can see the faint glow of molten cracks splintering along my chest. “Rest, bride. You’ll need your strength.”

She doesn’t ask what for.

She passed again.

I turn, striding from the room, the heavy doors slamming shut behind me.

She will fight.

She will resist.

I want her to.

3

ERYSS

The walls breathe.

Not in the way flesh does, not with lungs or warmth, but with something deeper, an exhalation of stone, an ancient pulse that thrums beneath my bare feet. The fortress isn’t dead, nor is it truly alive. It exists somewhere between, its bones fused with the lingering magic of its cursed inhabitants.

Now, I am caged within it.

The door slammed shut behind Naranus hours ago, but I still feel the finality of it rattling in my chest. The silence left in his wake stretches long, coiling around me like a beast waiting to sink its teeth into my throat.

I drag my fingertips along the jagged carvings lining the chamber’s walls, tracing the unreadable symbols cut deep into the stone. The language of his kind. The sigils hum beneath my touch, faint and electric, like a whisper beneath my skin.

Magic.

Not mine.

I exhale through my teeth and step away, surveying the space. The chamber is vast, built to house something larger than a human body. The bed, monstrous in size, sprawls in the center, draped in dark furs that hold the faintest metallic tang of something primal. A balcony juts out past a set of heavy doors, its arched entrance framed with gnarled obsidian columns. The wind howls through it, carrying the stench of scorched rock and the distant smolder of the forge below.

I tilt my head.

Chains dangle from the ceiling, thick as my wrist, anchored into the stone beams like relics of an uglier history. The metal gleams dully in the low light, worn smooth by time and use.

I trace their length with my gaze, following the path of their descent, the way they drape across the walls, the bedposts, the bolted rings in the floor. The king size bed.

A message, silent and damning.

This room was made for something other than comfort.

A chill brushes my skin, and I force myself to move, to take stock of the exits. The doors leading into the hall remain sealed, locked from the outside. The balcony is too high, the drop unforgiving. And even if I could scale the wall, I’d never make it past the sentries perched along the ridges.

Not without my magic.

I swallow back frustration and turn my focus elsewhere. My hand trails along the heavy wooden dresser, finding no weapons, no tools. Just cloth, thick, soft garments folded with meticulous precision. The realization prickles at something unwelcome.

This room is meant to keep me. Not break me.

I shake the thought loose and move toward the balcony, shoving the doors open. The wind rushes past, tangling in my hair, licking cool against my fevered skin. My pulse steadies. Below, the stronghold sprawls wide, its structures forged from the cliffs themselves, as if the land had swallowed a city and spat it back out as something terrible and unyielding.

I grip the railing, watching.

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