Val must have noticed that Ashley was picking at her food, attempting to calm down the nervousness she was experiencing as she tried to make a good impression on the few men present, because he leaned over to her. “It’s a delicacy like this. Just about every shifter of note prefers their meat bloody.”
“Do they eat it like this in every kingdom?” Ashley asked, much to her brother’s surprise, and while he had no idea what she was currently thinking to herself, Val had the good common sense to look just slightly suspicious.
“If you’re asking if your potential mate will serve you food in such a way, I think that will really depend on the class of the kingdom and how much money they have. As I’ve said before, not many kingdoms are as wealthy as we are,” Val said, though Ashley hadn’t intended to ask that question. And she didn’t care how wealthy this kingdom was. She just wanted a steak that wasn’t bleeding out all over her plate.
o It didn’t matter how much wealth someone had. All that mattered was that they treated her kindly and with the same respect she’d give them. Which mainly meant they didn’t act like they were better than her and didn’t keep nasty secrets from her. But Ashley had a feeling that if she brought up such an idea to her brother, he would scoff at her, dismissing her concerns.
She’d had enough.
She didn’t really know why that was the last straw, but as she pushed away from the table, standing up in a single swift motion while holding her breath, she decided it was.
At first the men narrowed their eyes at her, but then they stared up at her in shock. As if they hadn’t just shown hera horrifying amount of disrespect while acting like the world’s biggest jackasses. As if her brother wasn’t treating her like a mushroom and keeping her in the dark about things she desperately needed to know.
Of course, that was when Val finally gave her his full attention, not surprised at all, or pretending not to be.
“And what, pray tell, is the problem, sister dearest?” Val asked, his voice flat and uninterested. How could he call her his dearest sister if he barely knew her at all?
On the verge of blowing a gasket and losing control of her anger, Ashley opened her mouth to say something but suddenly shut it, realizing that her brother didn’t care about what she said. She would rather be anywhere other than in this room and with these oafs he called friends. Ashley glared at him but didn’t give him an answer. Instead, she moved towards the doors, not caring or paying attention to what her brother said as she hurried from the dining room to the hallway.
Walking into an unfamiliar part of the castle, Ashley found herself confronted with long, narrow hallways.Even so, she was hardly bothered by the fact that everything was unfamiliar as she heard her brother huffing behind her, his voice carrying from the dining room as Ashley ran down the hallway. It didn’t matter where she was going, all that mattered was getting away from the nightmare he’d forced her to live out.
The castle was starting to feel more like a cage of secrets than anything else at that point. Ashley wanted to escape from it as she charged towards the door at the end of the hallway, trying her best not to freak out. She pulled it open only to find another large room staring at her—another one that she hadn’t been in before.
The castle tours were mostly inadequate, and Ashley bristled at that realization, wishing more than anything that she would’ve been allowed to explore it more. Unfortunately, thereshe was, wandering around blind and wishing she had some clue where she was going.
She approached a massive door at the end of the hall, with two torches burning beside it. She didn’t care that there was a freaky stone dragon skull on the door, or that the doorknob seemed to gleam with magical power. She wanted away from all of this, and this was the only door that opened when she turned the knob. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
What she saw stole her breath away.
Chapter
Fifteen
Ashley hoped to find an escape route through the door. What she found was a dingy room filled with carved dragons protruding from the walls, their eyes glowing red and menacing. They seemed to follow every move she moved deeper into the room.
The room reminded her of a video game, not something someone from a small town in Tennessee should actually experience. She unconsciously hit the door with her hip, closing it behind her staring at the room that looked like one massive altar. But to whom?
It was a dark, stone-lined room. One with walls that were far too tall, covered in dragon details that jutted out of just about every corner. The type of room that smelled heavily of smoke and some sort of incense, though Ashley wasn’t exactly sure what the smell was, nor why, the moment that her hips had knocked on the door, the sound in the room had dampened entirely. All she knew then was that she was truly alone and that that was the last thing she wanted to be in a room like this. Her heart raced, her blood pounding in her ears far too loud.
And yet, when she turned around to jerk open the door, she found that it was stuck. The knob wouldn’t turn far enough. Itwas latched on the other side. The sort of door that was only meant to be entered and never left. Fear clawed at her throat and Ashley wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or scream. Maybe both.
Fear threatened to overwhelm her, threatening to consume her in panic. She reached for the doorknob one more time but let her hand fall before she touched it. There was no point in that. “You have to stop freaking out, girl.”
Ashley’s words almost seemed to die before she spoke them, but at least she wasn’t so afraid. “There has to be a way out of here, Ash. Find it. Ned didn’t raise you to be the screaming white girl who dies because she’s too stupid to get out of her own way.”
There were no other options. All she could do was move forward. Because if she stayed in that room, the overpowering scent of the incense might smother her. Plus, Val might come through the door, and she didn’t want to be around him right now either. “Scary room that might kill me for the win.”
Ashley took a deep breath and charged toward the end of the room, willing herself to be brave. Even if that was the stupidest thing she could have done.
Ashley had learned early in life that you had to do things you were afraid of, even terrified of, because if you didn’t, things might not get done, or you might miss out on something that turned out to be amazing. At this moment, escaping her brother and his friends, even the whole nightmare she was living, meant that she had to forge onward, even if she was terrified of this room that seemed to throb with menace.
Each step she took made it feel like the room got darker and noticeably smaller. The word dungeon came to mind, but there were no skeletal prisoners chained to the walls, no torturers leering at her from behind black masks. The room seemed to suck up light, the deeper she went, and she didn’t realize that she was in a hallway at first. When her eyes adjusted to this new darkness, she realized she might be in a dungeon, after all.
“It’s 2023,” Ashley reminded herself, shaking her head vigorously. Regardless of whether or not the world had ended, and the rest of the shit that started when she woke up in this place, the idea of anyone keeping a dungeon was ridiculous. She had to remind herself that people had common sense in this world, and no one would want a true prison built inside their home. “Except my super-shitty brother. He would be just the type to want a torture chamber in his house. Or an altar.”
The last words came out the moment that she reached the end of the long hallway, her eyes falling on another giant dragon statue. This time the dragon held a bowl that was burning above what seemed to be an eternal flame, one that was meant to keep something within the bowl warm. Ashley frowned at the statue, standing on her tiptoes in a futile attempt to see whatever it was. She really hoped it wasn’t blood. That would be so fucking gross.
All she saw was a subtle, shimmering liquid within the bowl that looked like a black, inky substance. An oil of some sort? She wrinkled her nose, unsure which was worse, blood or whatever the fuck that was in the bowl.
