Page 9 of A Reign of Roses
I opened my mouth to swear at her—but nothing followed. Silence, no matter how I screamed or rasped or whimpered.
“Much better.”
Octavia returned to the gory task at hand, adjusting the tubes affixed to the backs of my hands and creases of my arms. When I winced, I swore her smile bared fangs. She studied the pale white lighte that dripped through her contraption and into the great glass barrels at her feet. Her graying, hip-length hair grazed my legs as she worked. The sound of Maddox’s sinister hums reverberated in my ears. Sick glee at my pain worming itself through his vocal cords. I wondered if he was even aware of the grating noise.
I slouched back into my chair, strands of hair fluttering up from my face with my sigh of defeat.
The same oversize velvet chair I’d sat in almost every day. In the same lavish room I’d awoken in two months ago. Which was perched atop the same suffocatingly high tower in the same palace in the same capital of the same nightmarish Fae Realm it seemed I’d never, ever leave.
Once Octavia had purged everyounce of lighte from my veins, Wyn laid me, depleted and still unable to speak, across the deceivingly sumptuous bed. My arms collapsed across my body and I crumpled myself into a ball. I didn’t care who saw.
And maybe it was that notion exactly—that acceptance, that acquiescence to her power—but as Octavia strolled from the room, she offered me a serpentine grin and a flick of her wrist. With my next cough I found my voice had returned.
The kingsguards had walked in just as she’d left. Their armor reminded me of the exoskeleton of a rare silver crustacean—no leather or steel in sight, but a shinier, scalier alloy rippling over their joints. The helmets so skin-smooth it was as if their skulls had been dipped in the stuff. Only a sheer red visor covered their faces, and I had the errant thought that if I were ever in a position to fight one of these men, it would be the only entry point for my blade. I was sure no man-made weapon could penetrate whatever their breastplates and greaves were made of.
Maybe the Blade of the Sun could have. My blade, long gone now.
The muscled guards carried weighty barrels of my lighte from the room, which produced a peculiar shame deep in my stomach. I tipped my head toward the ceiling and that floating, pearl-crusted chandelier.
When I heard the doors slam behind them, I finally allowed myself to sit up, my legs tangled in layers upon layers of gentle petticoats.
My two shadows had lingered behind as always. Maddox, with his cold beady eyes, carved jaw, and cropped straw hair, stood ramrod straight by my door, same disturbing tune floating absently from his nose. Wyn had shuffled to the washroom and was just nowreturning with a cold compress for my forehead. His knee was worse today, since I’d kicked it.
I turned my face from his offer. “I don’t know why you bother.” My throat was hoarse from Octavia’s spell.
“I don’t know why you fight it every time,” he said, dabbing the cool rag across my head anyway, the damp fabric soothing my clammy temples.
It was a strange order Lazarus had given my two guards all those weeks ago: keep me here, in this mighty looming tower, high above the rest of the palace—even farther above Lumera’s walled capital city of Solaris, which I knew I was held within but hadn’t seen any of, aside from the staggering view from my one window. Even at the expense of my health and theirs, as I learned in my first few weeks here, when I’d nearly scratched Maddox’s eyes out trying to escape and he’d punched me so hard in the jaw it had taken a week for my face to regain its shape.
And yet, also,serveme. Make me comfortable, ply me with quince tarts and juniper perfume and delicate fans of osprey feathers at the tail end of summer. Light those stifling, revoltingly sweet sandalwood candles each day. So long as I never left the suite, make sure I waspleased. Entertain me with repetitive card games and fruit wine and stacks and stacks of books rife with the same propaganda extolling thecommandingandrighteousFae King Lazarus Ravenwood.A pinnacle of heroism, fairness, and vigor. As beloved as he is feared.What a load of shit.
A bound captive and honored guest. The prisoner who was soon to be queen consort.
Wyn was better at doting than his brutal counterpart. They might have made a good team, if only they didn’t despise each other almost as much as I despised them both.
Wyn dotted the cloth along my collarbone with care. I would have shoved him off had I had a scrap of strength left. To his credit, Wyn never allowed his caretaking to grow inappropriate. Or, he was as appropriate as one could be when imprisoning someone and allowing them to be drained of their bodily fluids against their will.
Even as Wyn kept his hands to himself…I still fought him ferociously. And Octavia, too, even knowing I’d never break her torment. Because stopping—stopping would mean I’d given up. And I refused to lose hope that one day, even if it were centuries from now, I might know what it felt like to be free.
And when doubt crept in as it had so viciously today, I thought of Kane’s crooked smile. When I screeched so loud they plugged their ears, or bit so hard I drew blood, his words were the ones that rang through my mind like a temple bell.That’s my vicious bird. Such claws. Such violent, gorgeous claws.
I’d only resorted to actuallyhearinghim a few weeks ago. Or, what I thought must’ve been a few weeks ago. I’d lost all sense of time here, holed up in this marble-floored, scarlet brocade suite. Drained of lighte, lonely beyond fathoming, pale from lack of sun—sleeping and scowling in a constant, dizzying rotation…Kane’s imagined voice in my head was all I had left.
My suite door creaked open, and with it my blood froze in my veins. Maddox poked half his head outside to converse with someone, and I held my breath.
A minute ticked by.
Another.
But in the end he only nodded and closed the heavy anthracite doors once more.
I didn’t allow myself to ask what was coming next.
“She’s arrived a few days early,” Maddox snipped to Wyn. “His Majesty requires more guards. Stay with her while I aid them?”
“Of course,” Wyn said.
But Maddox only scowled at him. “Without fucking anything up?”
