I take another bite of the stew, so hungry now, I can’t spoon it in fast enough. “I wasn’t aware that fate had anything to do with it,” I say around the spoon. “It wasn’t fate who fought an animated pile of bones to get here.”
She tsks. “I’m disappointed. You still don’t believe that there’s a force for good in the universe, a guiding hand that’s driving us toward an ultimate victory over evil.”
I swallow another bite. I have to remind myself to chew because my instincts are urging me to ingest as much as possible, as fast as possible. That poison blade did a number on me. “If there is, I have some questions for this guide. The first of which is why it was necessary to kill off my family and allow my spineless brother the power to sign a disaster of a peace accord and to ascend to the throne of a kingdom he’s not fit to rule.”
She sits up straighter. “Is that what you think happened?”
I stop eating, my spoon paused over the almost-empty wooden bowl. “My family was murdered. All but Brahm. That is what I know.”
She nods. “Murdered, yes. By Brahm. By the very spineless fool who you lament is now running the kingdom.”
My stomach drops, my mind flashing back to Eloise’s anguished face as she said, Your father’s throat was slashed. I’d suspected Nevina. “Tell me everything. What happened to Stygarde while I was gone?”
She stands and takes the now-empty bowl from my hands. “Let me refill that for you.”
“You’re dodging my question. What aren’t you telling me?” She disappears into the kitchen in a huff. Pots and spoons clang together, and she returns with a second heaping bowl full. My stomach growls appreciatively when she thrusts it back into my eager hands. Our gazes catch. “Well?”
A knock reverberates through the room from the door.
“That will be the answer you’ve been waiting for,” Catarina says, leaving my side to go open it.
“Catarina? Tell me what is going on.”
Darkness bleeds into the room. I drop my bowl of stew on the table with a resounding clank, unable to stop my hands from trembling or my breath from catching in my throat.
Two shades coalesce in front of the fire—Nyxadora Hymir, my mother and true Queen of Stygarde, and beside her, my sister, Princess Karyl.
31
Pet
ELOISE
I’ve sat on the small step at Adril’s feet for so long that I must have fallen asleep. I wake to my head being snapped back by him yanking my braid. “Time for bed, pet.”
Confused, I look around the ballroom to find the few remaining guests are gathering their things and striding toward the exits. Through the enormous window overlooking the twisting forest beyond, I see the first light of moonrise on the horizon. A raven watches me from a coiling branch near the window. The bird’s eyes are so intelligent, I can’t help but stare. It turns its head and winks at me, then flaps its wings and takes off toward the moon.
I stumble to my feet, feeling disoriented. But then, who wouldn’t when someone is actively trying to drag you somewhere by the neck. I hurry after the king, thinking he’ll take me back to my cell in the dungeon. But I have no such luck. He guides me down a hallway, two guards flanking us.
Goddess, please don’t let him take me to his bedroom, as Ferida suggested he would. If he attempts to touch me in any way, I will kill him. I will tear out his pointy-eared heart with my bare hands before I’ll ever have sex with him.
Adril unlocks a door with a gold key and ushers me into a room brightly lit by hundreds of candles. And I realize my mistake. Adril isn’t taking me to bed; he’s taking me somewhere far, far worse. This isn’t a bedroom, it’s a torture chamber. Shelves of canes and whips line the walls, and at the center awaits an archway, the ornately carved wood the type of thing you might find at the entrance to an old church or cemetery. Leather cuffs are bolted at regular intervals to the inside of the arch.
My skin crawls and I lurch away from Adril, struggling for the door. But two guards enter the room and wrestle me toward the arch.
“No!” I turn into a wildcat, fighting with all my strength. Only, that strength falls short. I’m hit with a strange vertigo, the same dizzying feeling I felt when I stood from my seat in the ballroom. Instantly, I regret eating the food. I thought it was safe because Adril wanted me alive, but the way I fell asleep almost instantly when I was done? The way I can barely stand up now? My plate was drugged. It had to be.
The guards cuff me, spread-eagled at the center of the room, and leave me at the mercy of Adril. Once they’re gone, his steps fall heavy behind me. I hear rather than see him toying with his choice of cane, the bamboo-like rods clattering together with his inspection.
“I see that what my daughter said about you is true. You are not a shade. A shade would have shifted into shadow and been out of those cuffs by now.”
“Let me go, Adril,” I warn in my most threatening voice. “Let me go, or I swear to the goddess Thanesia herself that I will kill you.”
He laughs, low and breathy, almost sensual, and I hear the wood-on-wood scrape of a cane being pulled from the rack. “How will you kill me, pet? Tell me. Don’t leave out any detail.”
Fuck. A chill crawls along my spine. I remember the way he stared at me and gave me that sinister smile during Nevina’s meeting. He wants me to threaten him. He gets off on it. Hell if I’m going to supply this creepy asshole with any fantasies.
I hang my head and say nothing.
