I didn’t want to think about him.
I never wanted to see him again.
Then hide, before he finds you.
Walking as fast as I could, I headed toward a pavilion in the distance.
* * * * *
Stepping through the round hole in the whitewashed wall, I eyed up yet another pavilion. I’d searched all night. I’d fallen twice thanks to dizziness and wedged a fist in my snarling belly as hunger became unbearable. But no matter how far I’d travelled, each place had been already taken by the twenty-nine—wait...twenty-seven—other women who’d fled into Cinderkeep and vanished.
A few pavilions I’d stumbled into hadn’t had lights on but as I’d hauled myself to the front door and stepped gratefully over the threshold, a vase or curse had been thrown at my head, proving it already had an inhabitant.
I’d almost given up hope.
I’d travelled so far, I couldn’t see the main palace this far across the meadow, but...I might’ve finally gotten lucky.
Sneaking inside the walled courtyard, I cut through the pretty garden with a babbling stream. A covered patio protected a table and chairs, and the roofline of the pavilion swept toward the stars with wing-shaped eaves.
No one shouted at me for trespassing.
No porcelain was thrown my way.
Cracking open the carved door, I hesitantly stepped inside. “Hello?”
And nothing.
Blessedly, thankfully nothing.
My relief almost sent me crashing against the wall.
I’d had dreams of taking a hot bath. Of raiding the cupboards for food. Of drowning my worries in wine. But the exhaustion I’d been fighting ever since my headache first appeared barely gave me enough time to bounce my way off the walls and into the large open-plan suite.
No walls separated the bedroom from the living room. Oriental embroidered cushions littered the floor by the huge window, and the bed was piled high with white fluffy blankets.
With a sob, I staggered across the carpet and crashed face-first onto the mattress.
Pain snatched my broken consciousness, hurling me into sleep just as my fingers went lax.
The tin box with its strange pill tumbled from my grasp and clattered to the floor—
Chapter Eleven
TWO DAYS PASSED.
I spent most of it asleep and healing.
Occasionally, a shrill scream would sound on the breeze, sending my stomach churning. Was thathimslaughtering another woman? Was it his panther picking its new favourite snack?
If I was a better person, a stronger person, I might’ve ventured out and tried to help the other captives hiding in their own places of refuge. But...apart from the four or five other girls who were like me—dragged into this unfortunate place by sheer accident—the rest seemed to have come herewillingly.
They knew this man.
They knew enough to want to kill him.
That group, I could understand. I didn’t condone it, but I understood it. It was the others who wanted to sleep with him and have his illegitimate child that I didn’t get.
Who was this man who invoked such attempts? And why did I keep remembering the way he’d shuddered as I’d crashed against him? The way he’d groaned with pain as he’d bellowed for everyone to scram.
