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Opal
That violent roar, the one that arrived minutes after he’d left my rooms, echoed through the walls and sank deep into my bones, urging my fingers places they’d rarely ventured before.
I wouldn’t do it, refused to because of him.
Ignoring the desire, the ache that lived and breathed like a second entity inside me whenever he was near, was akin to dragging a knife over slippery flesh, hoping the blade didn’t slip or slice.
I couldn’t let it. Not after what he’d done, the magnitude of it all, and not when I now knew who he was.
My enemy, born and raised to be nothing but as the many rumors suggested.
To take him inside my body would not only cause shame but it could also cost me my life to let my guard down in such a way, regardless of whatever the stars had decided.
It was not the decision of fates so far removed from us to decide how our lives would unfold, not when handing our faith to them meant certain peril—more bloodshed and death.
Yet I could not leave. I could not step one foot outside that door with the intention of escape. He’d know. He’d follow. To flee home, though my heart bruised with longing to do just that, would be selfish.
I would bring darkness to our city gates, to our people, and they’d already seen and endured so much.
In an effort to stave off thoughts of cherry blossom trees, torn hearts, and wide, pleading eyes, I’d discovered the rooms were stocked and luxurious enough to suggest that maybe the king had indeed not intended to kill me. That maybe, he’d been waiting to steal me. That or they’d once belonged to his mother or one of his lovers.
I discarded thoughts of the latter with bristling a
For hours, meals delivered and left outside my door, I sat upon the irresistibly comfortable bed and paced each length of the room, thinking, regretting, worrying, trying to conjure a strategy that might end this madness.
But when madness was all we knew, all any of these savages knew, what hope was there to garner something else?
The answer came with the rising of the sun, its golden glow leaking between the thorn-knotted branches obscuring the two windows on either side of my bed and the view of the river in the not too far distance. Instead of acting upon it, I dragged my breakfast inside and savored each bite before deciding on sleep.
This was not the type of plan that could be pla
I had nothing else.
All I had was him.
The king of wolves. A savage monster that, for reasons I was only just begi
The door opened without any resistance as it had some hours ago when I’d retrieved my food.
It would seem the kitchenhands had been quick to take note of what I did and did not eat—providing me more fruit with breakfast and lunch and smaller portions of meals.
I half wondered if the king had requested that no one enter my rooms or if the staff merely did not wish to. Though I was willing to wager that when I returned, my bed, that I’d already made myself, would be remade and the tray consisting of a carafe of water and my mostly eaten di
The hall was silent, eerily so, as I gathered my hair, still damp from the quick bath I’d taken upon waking long after the sun, and walked toward the closed doors at the end of the hall.
Without needing to check, I knew whose rooms lay beyond the intimidating large wood. Engravings of thorns and vines twined throughout the enormous arched barriers, his scent, smoke and cedar, pungent inside his lair.
But he wasn’t in there. His rooms lay empty, yet I didn’t bother trying to turn the brass handles. They’d be locked, and even if they weren’t, I didn’t want to see what horrors lurked inside.
His scent alone was a trap, a tempting call to lure me into certain darkness. Already, I stood upon the precipice, readying myself to leap into the shadowed depths below, painfully aware that I might never return.
And though I was certain I could do it—certain that I had no other choice—I didn’t get the chance. I wound down the staircase, and the giant one after that, and came to a stop in the grand foyer, turning this way and that.
No one, not one single soul, had passed me by. No one stood at any of the alcoves and doorways. No staff, no guards, no king.
Instead of walking out through the main doors, where I knew sentries, as silent as they might be, were standing, I veered left across the foyer and rounded the back of the stairs to find a parlor at one corner—walls of bookshelves circling a chaise and a gleaming black piano—and then moved on to the pair of looming doors behind the staircase.
Roses, red and yellow, stained the oblong sections of cut-out glass, sunlight dripping through them and down the varnished wood beneath. They opened soundlessly when I willed them to, exposing a terrace beyond and two silent sentries who didn’t so much as turn to look my way. Stepping stones, circled by tufts of grass and tiny white flowers, paved the way from the stone terrace to the emerald-green lawn.
More roses, alive in reds and blacks, unfurled in rows of circular beds before a giant hedge. As I waded closer, my skirts gathered away from the dew lingering upon the grass, I discovered it was not a hedge but the entry point of a maze.
“A game,” said a deep voice from behind.
I whirled, my pulse skidding and my heartbeat pounding, to find a huge male with dark brown hair tucked behind his ears. His smile slowly spread to his near-black eyes as he chewed on a bone small enough to pick between teeth, his fingers tucked within the edging of his trousers.
I didn’t trust the feigned casual stance—that he wouldn’t be on me within a failed breath if he thought it necessary.
“If you dare,” he continued, raising a dark brow.
“I’m not fond of games,” I returned, glad my voice remained steady.
He noticed my glance at the guards some yards away on the terrace, his smile climbing higher into his cheeks, dimples popping. “Yet here you stand.”
Every muscle coiled, ready to spring into feather and flight. As if he could sense that, the male just laughed. “Fear not. I’ve been warned not to harm you, swan.”
“That’s… lovely,” I muttered.
“Indeed.” Those dark eyes slid over me, a slow perusal that raised every hair on my body. “Others have been given the same order, though I would not press your presence upon certain… people.”
I frowned, sure there was a clear message behind those words, one I couldn’t read, but I nodded. “Where is he?”
“The king?” he asked, knowing full well that was who I meant. “The royal cove.”
My stomach sank, and my half-formed plans withered. The gold, all that gold he’d helped me to weave, and he’d just… kill the merchants before they could so much as barter for it.
Boiling. My skin boiled with each tense breath, and I turned away from the tall, staring creature to collect myself momentarily before asking, “You did not wish to go with him…?”