Page 66 of Wolf Caged
Her eyes went as round as full moons and just as bright. She blinked at me. “They don’t?”
I shook my head. “It is all them, I am afraid, and they would be offended to hear you speak of them in such a manner. Lich are sensitive, a fault born of centuries of persecution by the crueller fae of this world, who treat them as if they are an abomination. When I ascended the throne, I took great pains to win them over, because what many see as monsters, I see as powerful allies. The ones you saw today are the royal necromancers of my court.”
“Royal necromancers,” she murmured and met my gaze again. “What do they do?”
“They question the dead for me.”
Rather than looking horrified as I had expected, she looked fascinated by that, leaning forward a little as if she ached to know more.
Curious little creature.
Just how fearless was this lamb dressed in wolf’s clothing?
Fearless enough to face me in my true form?
Chapter 15
SAPHIRA
Iwas bored.
After my dinner with the fae king, I had been assigned new guards, and these ones dogged my every step, and refused to let me leave the castle grounds. My one and only attempt to near the main gate when I had wanted to visit the town had ended with them taking hold of one arm each and forcibly turning me around, albeit rather gently. When I had asked whether I was confined to the castle, they had nodded.
It might not have been so bad if my shadows had been talkative, but neither of them had spoken a word in all the times I had tried to strike up a conversation.
Neither of them would tell me where their king had gone.
He wasn’t in the castle, I knew that much. The pressure of his presence had disappeared the morning after our dinner, soon after several boxes had appeared on my bed during breakfast, each one containing one of the gowns I had admired in the seamstress’s window. He had given me presents I knew he wanted to see me wearing and then he had disappeared on me.
Confusing king.
I strolled around the garden, keeping to myself, studying the beautiful blooms and the wildlife. Every visit to the garden had me finding something new and different. Yesterday, I had wandered to the orchard side of it and had found a stunning tree with white bark and blood-red leaves.
The air cooled as I neared the ponds. Each was more beautiful than the last, but my favourite had a broad lip just high enough to comfortably sit on and a small waterfall that tumbled into it from the higher level of the garden, filling the quiet with its soothing melody. I picked up the path that took me to that wilder area of the garden, where plants grew where they wanted and a brook glittered over crystalline pebbles.
This was my favourite spot in the garden.
This slice of wilderness that felt like a paradise, an oasis of calm and beauty that sank warmth deep into my bones and eased my mind and my body. I could feel nature here, as if her presence was a tangible thing I could reach out and touch in the air, and could draw into me.
A peacock called, the sound echoing around the stunning gardens, so familiar to me. The colourful birds were definitely the same species I had seen back in my world, at a zoo my parents had taken me to when I had been a pup, one of the rare times they had taken me somewhere before they had begun travelling less and had grown determined to keep me close to Harper pack lands.
I smiled fondly as I recalled my visit to that zoo, and how excited I had been to see all the birds and animals. As a child, it had been enthralling. Now? I knew what it was like to be put in a cage and stared at, and to long for freedom and returning to my home where I belonged.
My shadows closed in as I stooped to run my fingers through the brook, startling the colourful fish that called it home and watching them dart away.
I glanced at the two males, both dressed in fine tunics similar to the one Riordan had worn, with fitted trousers and knee-high boots. Both armed with a sword. Neither looked at me, their eyes fixed straight ahead. My gaze drifted to the woods just a few hundred feet away from me, where the trees grew denser and the shadows thickened, and then back to the guards.
What would they do if I shifted and ran?
Would it surprise them enough that they would lose precious seconds in pursuing me and I could slip their grasp?
The thought I could run for a while made me want to do it, had me itching to shift and feel the wind in my face, but the repercussions of these men losing me kept me firmly in place and in my human form. Kaeleron would punish them if he discovered I had escaped their watchful gazes. It was clear they had been assigned to me to keep me safe, and I only had myself to blame for the increase in security.
If I hadn’t told Kaeleron about what had happened in the garden that day with the unseelie females he wouldn’t have changed my guards and locked me in the castle grounds.
He also wouldn’t have cleared the garden of nobles.
Now I didn’t even have the highborn to watch when I was bored. I hadn’t seen a single one in all my visits to the garden and I was beginning to suspect they had been banished from the castle, or at the very least they were removed the moment I made it clear I wanted to leave my room and go for a walk. There had been a few milling around when I had been on my balcony this morning, enjoying the warmth of the twilight-sun and the view of the town.
