Page 58 of Blackwarden
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A sour unsettled feeling had taken up residence in my gut after the last revel. I knew it was only a matter of time before Bevgyah came for me again. She didn’t seem like the type of person to let my rejection go unaddressed and unpunished.
But it wasn’t just the queen. It was everything. It was how she’d treated her Blackwarden, the harem, the way I was expected to submit myself to her every whim. I sipped on floral tea at breakfast and decided eating was probably not a good idea. I tried to sit off to the side in the harem, but Nessa found me. She always found me. She was far more kind to me than I deserved.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She gave me an adorable frown. “I worried when you left so early from the revel.”
“I don’t care for them,” I said, trying to keep my voice from wavering as tears prickled my eyes.
She rested a kind hand on my arm, her gaze holding mine. “I didn’t like them when I first came as well, but you get used to them.” There was so much honesty and well-meaningin her words. She was trying to be helpful, and I truly liked her for that. Even though I couldn’t get the image of her dancing nearly naked out of my head.
After a long moment she smiled and left me to sit alone and think over everything that had happened. There’d been something in the wine the queen had forced me to drink. I couldn’t remember all the details. It was like I only had pieces of what had happened. She’d touched me, kissed me, and I hadn’t entirely disliked it. At some point she’d tried to do more, but her Blackwarden had stopped her. After that all I could remember was his eyes as they’d watched me. The image of him sprawled out on the futon half naked and beautiful. He’d protected me...again.
I wandered back to my room, hoping I could avoid the gossip of the other maidens. Their eyes made my skin crawl and reminded me how much I wanted to go home, even though I couldn’t recall anything about it. Standing in my tiny room I remembered the book the Blackwarden had left for me. It was still tucked safely beneath the edge of my futon. The illustrations were beautiful, even the ones of the Dark Fae. As I flipped through, I realized there were notes in the margins. There was something so incredibly familiar about it. I continued to thumb through until I came to a page with an illustration that looked a shocking amount likehim.
“An apple is just an apple, whether green or midnight.”I read aloud, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.
I closed the book and slipped it back under my futon before I sat in the silence of my room for a long moment trying to decide what I was going to do, and why I felt I needed to do anything at all. When I couldn’t figure it out, I flopped back on the futon and glared up at the silks hanging above, letting my mind wander over all the half memories, the way so many of them seemed to overlap withhim.
As the day slipped into evening, I was so certain something terrible had happened that I snuck from the harem, determined to make sure the Blackwarden was okay. I’d already wandered these halls alone. If I needed to, I’d use the excuse that I’d gotten lost. I had, after all, only been in Bevgyah’s palace a short time.
Lucky for me, I didn’t need the excuse. The palace seemed empty. Braziers lit my way as I wandered from hall to hall, then ascended the elegant flight of stairs to the upper floor. I’d been here once before, but I’d been rushed along by one of the queen’s guards. I hadn’t noticed there were fewer braziers, and the walls like the hall below, were decorated with murals of monsters and Fae chasing naked humans. I made the mistake of looking closer and quickly turned away, that feeling of having seen something similar before coming to this place creeping through me.
The further down the hall I went the more certain I was that I’d come to the right place. I don’t know why, but up ahead, a single door at the end called to me. I could feel it, like a beacon burning through the palace. I was about to knock but decided to do something brash and likely very stupid. I turned the knob. The door was unlocked, and I slipped in, careful to pull it closed behind me quickly, for fear someone might have seen me enter. A brazier flared to life as I turned to face the room.
I gasped, unable to believe what I saw. He was chained up like a prisoner, hanging from a bracket on the ceiling. His head lolled between his arms as his long blue hair draped down his chest. The chains were only long enough for him to stand, and he sagged with the effort. His wings hung wide behind him, as though he didn’t have the strength to hold them tucked against his back.
“Blackwarden!”
He lifted his head, his face weary with exhaustion and confusion. I realized he was naked, shadows seeming to wrap around him and partially obscuring his lower half. I swallowed the tickle of embarrassment that I’d barged in on something I shouldn’t have, realizing the brazier had been dark.
He’d been left alone like this.
Rage flashed through me so hot it threatened to rip from my chest in a growl. I rushed to him but stopped short at the way he glared, those silver eyes of his like frozen daggers.
“You can’t touch me,” he said, his voice gravelly from disuse.
“Why has she done this to you?” My hands hovered in front of him, wanting to sweep the hair from his face, to try and pull him down from where he was chained, to do something to help him when I was likely the reason he was in this position.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine.” He gave me a weak smile, beautiful and sad. “She’ll have her way and then let me go. She has to, or no one can pass through the gate.”
He was right. As the Gatekeeper he was necessary. It was his magic that brought people back and forth from the Unseelie Court to the human world. Without his shadows she would have to find someone else who could accomplish the task.
“I can’t leave you like this.”
“You can, and you must,” he said with so much anguish in his voice. “Please. I’ve accepted this to stop her from...” He hung his head in defeat. “I won’t be able to help you, if she finds you here.”
He’d told me not to touch him, but I reached for his chin cradling his face in my hand. He didn’t pull away, instead he relaxed into my palm, the warmth of his face drawing me in.
“Why does she do this to you?”
He swallowed, squeezing his eyes closed. “Because I was a different person once. I did things I shouldn’t have done to get what I wanted. I was cruel to her and this is my punishment.”
I don’t know what possessed me. Some half-hidden piece of my heart insisted it knew him from a life before this one. It was a craving so deeply rooted in my soul, burrowing into my chest. I couldn’t stop myself. I stepped closer.
