Retracting his hand, Clove took wary inventory of his body.
He felt no telling pain between his legs.No obvious sense of violation.He was naked still, but in a way that was more reassuring than if he had found himself dressed, and thusknownsomeone had touched him.
As he surveyed himself, his eyes adjusted, and he realized that things were nottrulydark.
There was light.
But the light lay on the other side of something gauzy, something that hung around him on all sides.
Clove rolled over and reached out, reached up, until his grasping fingers found the curtain and pulled it aside.
He blinked out at the strangest of chambers.
Wonder temporarily silenced his guardedness.
Beyond the comfort of a huge canopy bed, whose semi-sheer curtains were tied low to each bedpost, drooping playfully down to offer the illusion of privacy, Clove observed a room large enough to fit an entire house.No, more than a house—big enough to fit a small inn, with room enough for two levels, and space enough to fit even a chimney, he thought.
He couldn’t have said for certain, because the full extent of the room was lost to darkness.Its edges dripped with shadow.
What he could see was what lay near him: twin tables on either side of the bed, their surfaces strewn with both desiccated flowers and lush greenery.An army of pillar candles of all different sizes cast their flames from atop the tables.Some squat, others tall, they burned dutifully, sweating wax.Observing the length of their drippings, Clove calculated that they must have been lit at the same time, and not very long ago.
Whoever had lit those candles could not have been long gone.
Clove’s skin crawled anew.
Brought back to the reality of his situation, his hands flew to his body, seeking further evidence that he had or had not been robbed of his secret jewel.
His hands found no reason for alarm at his ankles, up his legs, between his legs, up over his stomach.They kept going, searching.Probing.
They stopped short at his neck.
There, his fingers found a cool band of metal.It encircled his throat fully; there was no apparent clasp or fastening, and it was not loose enough to have been slipped on over his head.He could only conclude that it had been forged as a single piece and magicked onto him.Slavers’ magic.
He had beencollared.
Clove sat there for a boiling moment, stunned, then began to tug furiously at the metal band.
Outraged, sickened, his mind buzzed with questions.Who had placed the collar on him, and why?What was the collar capable of?It had to be enchanted, but for what purpose?To hurt him?To force his compliance?To keep him from running away?
With sinking dread, it occurred to him that he had not, after all, beenboundto the bed.There was nothing obvious preventing his escape.
And of course not.Why bother?Why waste time with bindings when magic could do the job instead?
Despite his best efforts, the collar did not give.Not even a little.
Not that the obvious and insurmountable was going to stop Clove.
He sent the bed rocking with his efforts, forgetting his surroundings while he rolled and yanked at the metal, sweat beginning to dew up on his brow.The sheets slithered to the floor with a sulky rustle, as if offended by his carelessness and disregard.
The sheets were not the only thing that moved.
As the bed rocked, there came a new rustling from overhead, and a petal fell from above and landed on Clove’s exposed knee.
He recoiled instantly from the touch.Head jerking up, he froze in his squirmings, and stared open-mouthed at the four-poster’s ceiling.
Up above him, flowering vines had wrapped themselves so thickly along the upper beams of the canopy that there were no more beams left to see.Flowers fat with petals, reminiscent of peonies, gazed down upon him, their weight causing them to droop and peek boldly through the surrounding leaves, winking in the candlelight.Senses sharpened in the dark, Clove recognized the floral scent that had subdued him, and shuddered.
This startling detail was followed by a second.
