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.”
He stood in the first cage to my left. One of his eyes was so badly beaten, it was black and swollen shut. He lurched forward to grip the bars with those same hands I’d glimpsed yesterday, hissing as the iron burned his skin.
He released the bars and blinked. “It’s you, isn’t it? He found you after all.”
“Who?” I asked, only to be met with a heavy furrow of his soiled brows. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
His frown intensified. “Tullia.” Then he cursed and stepped back to bow deeply. “Forgive me, Princess. The manners were obviously beaten out of me upon being found in this damned kingdom.”
Princess?
I laughed nervously while retreating a step. “I fear you are mistaken. I am to be queen, yes, but I am not a princess.”
“No.” The male straightened and tilted his head, studying me a moment. “No,” he said again, squinting with his other bruised yet functioning green eye. “It is you. You have her hair and his majesty’s eyes.” He shrugged. “A little soulless, if you don’t mind me saying so, but the same nonetheless.”
Fear and unease slithered through my chest, hitching my breath and my voice. “Who?” I said, dizzied, then sharper, “Tell me who you are.”
“I am Frensroth, Princess. One of many who’ve been sent to retrieve you.”
I stumbled back into the iron bars of the cell behind me.
Frensroth’s bruised eye tracked me, a look of contemplation pulling at his split lips.
I barely felt the burn of the iron, numb to my toes, but I straightened when Frensroth said, “Smoldering skies, you do not even know who you are, do you?” A shocked laugh made him cough. He spat a glob of blood to the dirt while I grappled for my next breath. “Not your fault. That king is a cold and crafty beast indeed.”
I squeezed the rusted handle of the lantern. “I am a changeling.” It was all I could seem to mutter, and so low I was surprised he heard me. “A changeling from the middle lands.”
Another choked laugh before his features settled grimly. “Not anymore. Listen…” He looked at the sunlight sprinkling down the stairs into the darkness, then back to me. “You are a princess of Baneberry, and you are being used—” His eye flared wide.
Then dropped to the dagger embedded in his chest.
I didn’t need to look to know who stood at the bottom of the stairs. His presence cloaked like the energy before a storm.
I stared at the blood spreading over Frensroth’s stained tunic, my heart still and each heaved breath shorter than the last.
The lantern fell from my slack hand to the dirt.
Frensroth stumbled and gripped the blade as though he’d pull it from his heart. Between gritted teeth, he rasped, “You are a plague upon this land, Florian, just as your sister was—” A dagger to his eye ended his frantic words.
And his life.
I screamed, but no sound was made as the prisoner crumpled to the ground. My knees quaked with my stomach.
Florian didn’t move.
The damp dungeon became suffocating as the walls closed in. I couldn’t draw enough breath as blood pooled beneath Frensroth’s body and seeped into the next cell.
You are a princess of Baneberry.
It couldn’t be true, yet…
Like a well-crafted poison that was now spreading to kill, everything locked into place.
The king’s interest in me. The order not to meet with anyone but him during his visits to the Lair of Lust. The contract I could never hope to escape. The careful silence of this estate and the unkind looks cast my way.
Florian’s maddeningly inconsistent fascination with me. The restraint when he would finally surrender and touch me.
I tore my eyes from the blood and looked at the male watching me with unreadable features. “Why?” I croaked, though asking such a thing was futile when I already knew. When he’d already told me.
You’ve been punishing Baneberry.
I have been warning them of what’s to come, yes.
Florian merely stepped back and gestured for me to walk ahead of him up the stairs.
I didn’t move. “I asked you a question.”
“Without enough context for me to answer,” he said coldly, then took two slow steps closer. “Why did I want you? Well,” his tone softened, “I think you’ve discovered the answer to that already.”
I tripped back, almost meeting the iron bars of the cell behind me again.
“Why did I kill him?” A smirk brightened his eyes. “That is obvious.” His gaze dropped to my heaving chest, his brows lowering. “Regardless, he surrendered his life the moment he found the audacity to step foot in my kingdom with the intention of taking you from me.”
“He was trying to save me.” Sweat gathered across my nape, the narrow dungeon closing in further. I swallowed and whispered, “From you.”
Florian smiled at that, beautiful and cruel. His eyes darkened upon my own. “Do you believe you are in need of saving, butterfly?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“The name Tullia derives from a species of butterfly.” He closed the space between us, his scent venomous and his giant form blocking all light. Taking a lock of my hair, he studied it thoughtfully within his palm. “Did you know that, sweet creature?”