A chill ran down my spine like frozen tendrils clawing at my skin. “How…how? What? I mean…I…”
“All your saddest and happiest moments, I watched from deep inside the dark corners of your life. I sacrificed everything I could—all my feelings—took every heartache I could stand, to have you not come back here and find out what we were.”
I pulled the blankets up tighter around my shoulders and pulled my knees to my chest shoving my hands in between them to find warmth, and still I could not stop the shivers that overcame me.
“My father looked for you. Searched and searched for years trying to find the one human girl that could make him feel the absence of his pain and loss.”
“And you never told him you knew where I was?”
“How could I? How could I let you help him? He was going to use you and use you like he does with every other human, just worse with you.” He shifted closer to me, sliding his arms around me and pulling me into his chest.
Waves of fluttering butterfly wings erupted through my chest and low, deep in my stomach.
“I couldn’t let him have you. I didn’t want him to destroy something so beautiful. Someone so pure and perfect.”
He tilted his head as if he heard a noise, and his body tensed, his fingertips pressing into my skin. “Raine, I need you to promise me one thing.”
“What?” I whispered, feeling the small hairs along my neck and arms shift and stand straight up.
“Promise me you’ll trust me, whatever happens. Even if I can’t explain things right away or if I ask you to do something unthinkable. Promise me you will trust in me, unconditionally.”
Well, that was a tall order. Yet, wrapped up in his arms all I could think to do was smile against his cool chest and nod.
“Okay,” I whispered.
The flames around the room flickered wildly, stretching tall, snapping and popping and throwing sparks across the room. Mathias’s eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, but before I could ask what was wrong, I heard something.
Footsteps.
A ton of footsteps. Slapping and pounding quickly, ascending from some unknown place.
His arms froze around me, too still, too bitter cold.
Suddenly shapes appeared from the shadows, tall and looming, rushing in toward us.
“Here, my Lord. In here!”
Bain’s face was the first to materialize from the darkness, his smile a twisted line of arrogance and pure shit.
Rage and fury boiled up in my chest. I hated him just as much as Hemlock. He was the one who lured me here,the woodcutter to Snow White.
Rose and Madden’s faces came next, from emptiness to forms and figures in a matter of moments.
Roses expression was one of sheer joy, “Yes, my lord. We found them. Both of them!” Her eyes darted to Bain’s quickly, and her tongue licked out a bit at the corner of her mouth like a dog desperate for a bone.
It was Madden that looked ashen between the both of them. He stood tall and accusatory, shaking his head and running toward the bed with anger in his eyes. “How foolish are you both?” His words hissed and snapped like a whip. “Does love make you this stupid?”
Mathias spun off the bed, yanking his arms out from underneath me. I bolted up and tumbled right off the edge of the bed, dropping hard to the floor. We were like two teens caught hooking up when we were supposed to be in school. Shame and guilt, hot and wet, flushed over me in sweat and chills. I was no teenager and this was insane.
Madden was at my side instantly, pulling me up with his long gloved arms. “I’m sorry, Rainey…I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them—”
Thenhewas there.
King Hemlock.
Taking up the entirety of the room with his broad shoulders heavy with a cape of leather and steel. His crown weighted down with thorns and skulls and sharp serrated spikes.
Fear ran its frigid fingers down my spine and pinched hard along the base of my neck. The king stormed in, towering over everyone and everything in the room. The torches sizzled along the walls, each blaring a white so hot and blinding I had to squint my eyes to see. I shielded my eyes with my hands and stumbled forward, still tangled in the sheets of the bed. The light burned at my eyes, fiery and sharp, yet no one else seemed affected by the illumination.
