Page 28 of Royal Captive
I bit my tongue until I tasted blood, nodding curtly.
Feyanna grabbed my arm and started tugging me away, making sure we kept facing the king as we backed out. We’d nearly made it to the threshold as she turned me on my heel when the king spoke once more time.
“Oh, and Ellis? Call me Fennis. Since we’re family now, and all.”
Feyanna tugged me away before I could shoot fire at his ass, but that didn’t stop a few charred embers from falling to the ground, scorching holes in the red velvet carpet.
Ten
EVE
The next morning I woke with another pillow to my face.
“Up and at ‘em, Princess. You’re on toilet duty.”
The woman in front of me had strawberry blonde hair and a gleeful expression. It was like she’d been waiting a long time for this day and was ecstatic to finally have someone below her on the pecking order.
My eyes narrowed as I swung my legs out of the bed and onto the floor. If she thought I was a dainty little thing who’d faint at the sight of some shit, she had another thing coming.
Instead of the ridiculous garment I was still wearing, she had on a rough, brown dress and boots similar to what I’d been wearing when I got here.
She pointed. “Clothes are at the edge of your bed. Retrieved them from Cassus’s suite.” The begrudgingly impressed look on her face only lasted for a minute before it twisted again into gleeful spite.
That was likely to be the theme of my time here at the pleasure house.
After Annie and I got dressed with the rest of the girls in our room, we were split into chore groups. Two girls stripped our sheets and took them down into the basement for washing, along with all the clothes worn for the week. Two other girls went to the kitchens to help the cooks prepare for the week and another group scattered to go downstairs to the parlor, armed with brooms.
That left Annie, two other new girls, and me.
“Toilets. Out back. Stuff is out there.”
Miss Strawberry Blonde twirled around and sashayed out of the room, heading downstairs to the parlor.
I eyed the other two girls, gave Annie a shrug, and headed down. Through the parlor, girls were sweeping, cleaning windows, and dragging out the heavy rugs to beat out in the biting morning air.
And yet, the mood wasn’t downtrodden or heavy. It was … light. Joyful. Girls teased each other and took playful swats with the brooms, chasing each other around with dirty rags as they did their chores with smiles and laughter.
Annie and I led the charge out the back door behind the kitchens. The morning air was biting as I inhaled, my breath coming out in large, white puffs. My dress wasn’t enough for this weather. Overhead, the sky churned, threatening yet another storm. Thunder rumbled off in the distance.
“Maybe we’ll earn cloaks or something,” I muttered to no one.
Annie snorted next to me.
The urge to run seized my heart and clenched for a split second, but was gone just as easily. Where would I go? Nothing but harsh, strange woods surrounded us, and who knew what kind of wildlife existed in this world? Plus, it was far too cold. I’d freeze my bits off before the air heated for the day. Assuming one of the many storms didn’t take me out.
There were an awful lot of storms in the fae world.
One of the new girls pointed to a separate building just a few paces from the back porch. Her short, fuzzy hair flew around her face. “I guess it’s that?”
We cautiously entered the building, which was still bigger than most casual homes back in the northern realm. The smell hit us immediately—urine, vomit, and who knew what else.
I sighed and rolled up my sleeves.
“Let's go, ladies.”
We returned around midday to the manor, covered in questionable stains but with a clean outbuilding to show for it. One of the new girls who had brown hair and a slim form cried through most of our cleaning, gagging and sniveling as we cleaned up vomit and excrement. Another more squat girl did her part without any word of complaint.
I ignored her whimpering.
