“Quiet, traitorous filth,” a female spat from beside the lust-gazed male she clung to.
I ignored her and looked at Avrin, only to find him finally staring at me.
His jaw was fixed. Gold eyes unreadable.
This was insane. Avrin had come for me. He and many others had been sent to retrieve me, and we all knew I wasn’t yet married…
My stomach curdled, my hand clapping over my mouth. I closed my eyes as the realization threatened to make me sick again.
The contract.
Florian’s inability to tell me when we would be wed.
“The winter king has requested the return of his wife,” Molkan went on. “This spawn of mine that he stole with the intention of humiliating me.”
I glared through wet lashes.
Florian was not the type to make requests.
“So tell me…” Molkan’s voice echoed, utter silence trembling within the cavernous room. His eyes met mine again, a gleam within, before he said with smug amusement, “Who’s humiliated now?”
Laughter crashed against the walls of the room in unending waves.
My heart splintered, cracked wide open and filled with the sound and the stares and the vulgar gestures and my own endless stupidity.
The king of Baneberry said nothing more. He stepped back with stone features and lowered onto his golden throne.
Avrin stood beside him, clean-shaven chin high and staring beyond me.
Behind my enclosure, a small group of violinists stood in gold and brown formal wear. The whine of their instruments returned, and conversation rose with it. Now that the explanation for my presence had been delivered, no matter how false, many had seemingly lost interest in me, dancing and drifting throughout the room.
But some only moved closer.
Groping hands snatched my arms and even attempted to slip beneath me to pinch my rear. I gave up on trying to move when there was nowhere to go. I kept my arms over my breasts, my legs tucked and crossed. The bars of the cage slowly closed in. My ears rang with the howl of my heartbeat.
I closed my eyes tight and folded over with my head upon my knees.
How could this have happened?
All this time, I’d been married while assuming I was not. All this time, I’d thought I’d known who the enemy was, and I was wrong.
There wasn’t just one. I was trapped between two evils.
I could scream like the hawk that soared low past the row of arched windows flanking the side of the throne room. I could plead with the goddess and those around me to stop, and to believe me as I explained that I hadn’t known.
None of it would matter.
Florian had wanted me thoroughly ruined and humiliated before he killed me.
And this father I’d stupidly thought would shelter me from him…
His conversation with Avrin in the springs spun through my violent thoughts. If Molkan couldn’t wed me to his precious adviser because I was already married, then I was of no use to him. I was only as he’d claimed—just a weapon for Florian to use against him.
Both kingdoms were intent on being my doom.
And I had no one to blame but myself for ever daring to believe that a home might be found for someone like me within these treacherous lands of Faerie. Gane had warned me. Even Hal, with his stolen jewels and missing digits, had warned me.
Yet I knew the entire population of Crustle could have warned me, and still, I would have ignored them all.
I still would have wanted to know.
Now I knew, and regret spiked like thorns around my pulsing heart. Each shallow breath grew tighter, and my knees soaked in tears, as the touching ceased but the insults and probing gazes assaulted in never-ending torrents.
I recited my letters faster than ever before, the volume rising to a scream trapped within my mind each time I finished and started again. But I could only get away with pretending to ignore what was happening for so long.
My hair was pulled, and I lurched to the side. A hand wrapped around my throat.
I snarled, attempting to tug it free.
The male with orange-flecked brown eyes laughed, a tobacco stem hanging from wine-red lips. His laughter ended with unexpected swiftness as his fingers uncoiled and he backhanded me across the face.
I met the bars again, the room twirling as I contemplated giving in entirely. As I fought the temptation to just lay there and let them all do as they wished.
I saw her then.
A row of portraits hung at the back of the room, half covered in shadow, but I was only interested in one.
A portrait of a queen with a tiny silver crown and large hazel eyes. Her cheeks were rounded and high just like my own. Though cropped to her shoulders in voluminous curls, her near-white hair was just like mine, too. Her nude-lipped smile was guarded grace.
My mother.
An onslaught of flapping wings and birdsong dragged my wet eyes to the ceiling.
I was asleep—surely.
Flocks of birds, many dark, many white and gold, and many an assortment of colors and sizes, entered the glassless arched windows.
Molkan’s guests cursed and waved their arms as the birds circled the throne room twice before leaving the way they’d come. As more cursing and laughter echoed in their wake, I watched them fly away and wondered if they would be the last thing I’d see.
The puffy-faced male with bulbous eyes who studied me while he drank looked to his left before stalking into the thick crowd.
A screech sounded. A hand clasped my ankle.
Instinct pushed me up, my hands slapping blindly at whoever had been so daring as to pull me from the cage.
Avrin’s gold eyes were visible through the tears in my own.
He stood there and waited until I calmed, but I couldn’t calm. I doubted I’d ever feel calm again, and that was if I somehow survived this place and its people.
A brown cloak fringed in forest green was tossed over me.
I didn’t hesitate. My hands shook as I rushed to cover myself as best I could with the soft material.
Avrin extended his hand.
I glared at it, then at all the guests still sneering and staring at me, and swallowed. Ignoring his offer, I slid to the edge of the cage, forgetting it had been placed on a podium and nearly falling to the floor as my legs failed me.
Avrin caught me beneath the arm before my knees hit the hard ground. He guided me through the slow-to-part onlookers toward an arched doorway filled with shadows in the back corner of the grand room.
I was taken down a hall and then another, then down a spiraling set of stone stairs carved from the earth into near darkness. Two sconces lit an entryway to a dungeon. A sour-faced guard stood waiting between them.
“Avrin,” I said as the guard stepped aside, but my voice broke. “Avrin, wait.” I knew if I was placed in a cell, I would likely not leave until it was time to meet my end.
He ignored me and led me past the twin rows of empty cells.
“This is all a mistake. I’m not a spy, and I’m not Florian’s wife. Whoever told you that is lying.”
He stopped at the last cell, then opened the iron bars and released me into the dank space that housed nothing but a rotting cot.
Avrin didn’t speak until the grate was closed, and I was trapped behind it. “You heard what the king said.”
“But none of it was true.” I reached for the bars and hissed when they singed the tips of my fingers.
“Florian has requested your return,” Avrin said, toneless. His golden gaze roamed over me, and I clutched the cloak tighter.