Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (48)

Nothing but clothing, books, ink, and empty pads of parchment.

I had little to no experience with socializing. Therefore, I didn’t know what most might keep in their private quarters. Yet I knew there was nothing personal about my betrothed’s rooms.

Perhaps he had hidden chambers elsewhere, filled with his secrets and desires and plans for vengeance. I nearly snorted because although there was so much I still didn’t know, I knew right down to my bones that just wasn’t so.

Either Florian Hellebore was as cold as the winter magic running through his veins, or he’d gone to great lengths to make sure no one would find anything that could ever be used against him.

There was no weakness when one held no heart.

“An engraved hairbrush still wouldn’t hurt,” I muttered to the necklace and carefully closed the drawer. “Skies, even a bookmark.” Something to let me know this male contained a sliver of soul.

I looked down at his rumpled gray bedding, tempted to fall asleep in his scent and await his unpredictable return.

Annoyance danced with my growing doubt. Both feelings overpowered the temptation in his absence, and I returned to my rooms for another night of restless sleep.





Florian wasn’t at breakfast the following morning.

Considering the only meal he’d eaten with me had been in a hidden restaurant underground, I wasn’t surprised, and I hadn’t expected him.

Snow stood in thick piles, shoveled from the pebbled path encircling the manor by the groundskeepers. I smiled at the few who looked my way.

None smiled in return. They merely stared or glared. A burly male with cold-bitten cheeks even sneered.

I held the plate of raw beef that’d been delivered to the dining room with my breakfast tighter, unsure what I’d done to arouse such a lack of respect from almost everyone on this estate. It wasn’t because they were Fae, who were known to be unwelcoming to outsiders, but perhaps because they knew I was from Crustle.

A place of which both lands of human and faerie despised.

Henron was in the paddocks with the horses. But I would have liked to think he would have waved in greeting had he seen me do the same to him.

Snow stirred awake from her nest of blankets in the corner of her stall, tail swishing. “Hello, my beautiful,” I crooned, crouching to pet her chin.

She allowed it for a moment, then grew impatient for the meat to be set upon the ground. I watched her eat, marveling at how well her leg had already healed and how much she’d grown in just a handful of days.

Snow’s ears pricked, her head rising. A low snarl peeled her lips back over tiny yet sharp teeth. “What is it?” I asked, and rose to look over the stall door.

She growled in earnest when I heard it—a faint hollering from outside.

I slipped out of the stall, the little wolf attempting to join me before I gently pushed her back inside and latched the door.

I followed the sound when I heard it again, taking the seldom used and rotting rear door of the stables into a small and abandoned field. I stood there a moment, looking at the greenhouse and the woods in the distance.

There was nothing but silence and branches, most bare and others laden with snow. It piled around tree trunks and drowned every dirt-worn pathway. So much so, I almost missed it.

A faded white hut, no bigger than an outhouse, stood just inside the tree line beyond the paddocks.

I peered around. But there was only Henron, whose back was to me as he worked with a giant and seemingly defiant black stallion.

Another shout echoed across the wintry landscape.

Henron didn’t seem to hear. That, or he didn’t care to know who was making such a noise.

Lifting my skirts high, I crossed the field. Snow neared the tops of my boots and threatened to pull them from my feet. The shouting increased in volume, and I pushed forward to discover the hut was not an outhouse.

It was an entry point. The door opened to crumbling dirt steps that led to some type of cellar hidden deep below ground.

“Back already, huh?” a voice called.

This close, the harsh echo startled. I raced back up the few stairs I’d descended and paused outside, my heart racing.

No one followed. Feeling my heart slow beneath my palm, my eyes fell to the lantern upon the ground by the door I’d left open.

I grabbed it and flicked the glass. Glowbeetles awoke, casting the soil stairwell in a golden gloom when I walked back inside.

“Who’s there?” The voice came again. A male’s voice, hoarse from yelling. “I’ll peel your skin from your flesh, I will. Just try to fucking touch me again.”

My nose wrinkled, and I knew I should simply leave.

But whoever was down there couldn’t hurt me, or he would have already. He was stuck. Perhaps bound. Remembering the bloodstained hands in the wagon window, my curiosity and desire to find out what Florian was up to got the better of me.

Halfway down the stairs, I slipped on the flowing skirts of my crimson gown. Dirt crumbled beneath my feet. I smacked a hand against the wall to steady myself. When the male muttered something that sounded like, “Mother, save me,” I seized my skirts and finished descending into the dark.

It was not an outhouse or a cellar.

It was a dungeon.

Iron cells, three on each side, lined the metal and soil constructed space.

“Skies,” the prisoner whispered. “It can’t be.”