Chapter 10 #2
No mention of last night. No acknowledgment that he'd spent hours in her room, guarding her sleep. The casual dismissal stung more than it should have.
Briar took the seat across from him, noting the fresh stack of books waiting. "More contracts?"
"Court etiquette. You nearly caused three separate incidents yesterday through ignorance." He finally looked up, expression neutral. "Kneeling when you should have stood. Meeting Lady Sarelle's eyes directly. Speaking when not addressed."
"You told me to kneel."
"I told you to kneel beside my throne. The position matters. The context matters." He pushed a leather-bound volume toward her. "Everything here has meaning. Every gesture, every word, every breath you take in the wrong moment could be seen as a challenge or an insult under the wrong conditions."
She opened the book to find diagrams of hand positions, body postures, acceptable distances between various ranks. Her head swam looking at it.
"This is insane," she muttered.
"It's survival. Unless you prefer what almost happened in the garden?" His tone was cutting, but when she glanced up, she caught him watching her with an expression that vanished too quickly to read.
They worked in tense silence. He corrected her posture with sharp precision, made her practice bows and curtseys until her legs ached.
But sometimes, when she struggled with particularly complex movements, he'd demonstrate himself.
Not touching her. Just moving through the forms with a grace that made her chest tight.
"You're thinking too much again," he said after her fifth failed attempt at something called the Twilight Reverence. "Your body knows how to move here. Let it."
"My body knows how to move like a human."
"Does it?" He moved closer, circling her slowly. "The way you walked in my hall yesterday after the binding. The way you move when that warmth guides you. That's not human grace."
The thorn patterns pulsed at his words, sending heat through her veins. She pressed her hand against her throat, trying to calm them.
His eyes tracked the movement. "Do they hurt?"
The question surprised her. "Not... not anymore. They're just warm."
"Warm." He stopped in front of her, and she caught that same tension from before. "Show me."
"They're fine."
"Show me."
She lowered her hand slowly. The collar hid most of the marks, but one delicate line curved up toward her jaw, visible against her pale skin. He studied it with an intensity that made her pulse quicken.
"The patterns are... unusual," he said finally. "They shouldn't be warm. My marks typically run cool, like forest shade."
"Maybe I'm just special," she said, aiming for levity.
"Maybe you are." The words were quiet, almost to himself. Then he stepped back, the moment lost. "Again. The Twilight Reverence. And this time, stop thinking about each movement."
She tried again, and this time when she stopped overthinking, something did guide her. The warmth in her chest spread through her limbs, demonstrating how to sink into the bow, how to hold the position with steady grace.
"Better," he admitted grudgingly. "Now the Forest Greeting. Arms like this." He demonstrated, and she copied. "No, your wrist is wrong."
He moved behind her, adjusting her arm position with careful touches. His chest nearly brushed her back, his breath stirring her hair. The thorn patterns flared with heat.
"There," he said, but didn't immediately step away. "Hold that position."
She held it, hyperaware of him standing just behind her, of the way the marks pulsed with his proximity. Finally, he moved back.
"Adequate. We'll continue tomorrow. Memorize the first three chapters."
"What if I can't?"
"Then you'll learn through other methods." His smile was sharp. "Pain tends to improve retention."
She gathered her things, muscles aching from the unfamiliar positions. At the door, she paused, working up courage.
"Thank you again," she said without turning. "For last night."
Silence stretched long enough that she thought he wouldn't respond. Then, quietly: "I told you. Your nightmares were disruptive. Typical human."
"Still." She glanced back to find him watching her with that unreadable expression again. "Thank you."
Something flickered across his face—annoyance, maybe, or something more complex. "Go. Before I decide you need additional lessons in gratitude."
She fled down the corridor, the weight of his gaze following her until she turned the corner. Her legs shook from more than just the exercises. The thorn patterns still pulsed with residual heat from his proximity, and that warmth in her chest whispered questions she didn't want to answer.
Days passed in a blur of parchment and pain.
The books Eliam assigned seemed to shift when she wasn't looking.
Rules that made sense in morning light became gibberish by afternoon.
Never eat red fruit on the third day of the moon cycle.
But another text claimed red fruit was required for certain rituals.
Iron burns the fae. Except when it didn't. Except when they wore it as jewelry to prove their power.
Her head ached constantly.
Between studying, she wandered the castle under the pretense of stretching her legs. Really, she was mapping. Learning which corridors led to dead ends, which stairs descended to locked doors, which windows opened to drops that would kill and which she could survive.
The castle seemed to sense her intent, hallways rearranging themselves when she tried to retrace her steps.
A door that led to the kitchens in the morning opened onto a room full of mirrors by afternoon.
The servants' stairs she'd discovered simply vanished, leaving a blank wall where she'd sworn an opening had been.
Still, she persisted. There had to be a pattern. A weakness. Some way out that didn't involve dying or completing an impossible bargain.
Briar had also discovered that the castle had moods.
Today it felt hungry. She'd started carrying breadcrumbs from breakfast, leaving trails that vanished within minutes but at least gave her the illusion of control.
The walls seemed to pulse sometimes, as if digesting something just out of sight.
Doors would creak open as she passed, revealing glimpses of rooms that shouldn't exist, like a chamber where gravity worked sideways and a hallway that stretched infinitely in both directions.
She avoided these invitations. Whatever the castle wanted to show her, she doubted it was freedom.
The other residents watched her when they thought she wasn't looking. Servants scurried away when she approached. Courtiers whispered behind raised hands. Even the bark-skinned woman who brought her meals wouldn't meet her eyes anymore.
She was a plague carrier. Untouchable except by the one who'd claimed her.
During one particularly desperate evening she discovered a balcony that overlooked the forest. For a wild moment, she considered jumping.
The trees below looked almost soft from this height.
But as she leaned over the railing, vines grew from the stone, wrapping around her wrists with gentle insistence.
Not restraining, not really, but rather a warning.
The message was clear: even death wasn't an escape he'd be inclined to permit, at least not until it suited him to do so.
She returned to her books with shaking hands, trying to lose herself in contradictory rules and impossible etiquette. But her mind kept circling back to the truth that became clearer each day:
There was no way out.
Only through.
The mark had spread past her elbow now, thorned vines creeping toward her shoulder with patient inevitability. Each morning brought new tendrils, new thorns.
She tried not to think about what happened then.
The days were unbearably long, but the nights?
The nights were worse. When exhaustion finally drove her to the bed that embraced too eagerly, and silence cradled her, that’s when the tears came.
Silent, bitter things that soaked into pillows that probably reported back to him.
She missed Allegra's laugh and her mother's distracted humming.
The simple pleasure of making coffee for strangers who didn't want to own her.
A week had come and gone, at least she thought it had been a week. She sat at the vanity and studied her reflection in the water-mirror. The face looking back was hers but different. It was sharper somehow, as though the forest had already begun to change her, carving away the soft human edges.
A knock interrupted her brooding. Not the timid tap of servants or Thaine's aggressive pounding. This was precise and measured.
"Come in," she called, too tired to move.
The door opened to reveal a creature she hadn't seen before. It stood unnaturally still, its frame lean and its proportions slightly wrong—arms too long, fingers too many joints. Pale skin bore dark striations, and when it blinked, amber sap-colored eyes reflected the firelight.
"From his lordship," the creature said. "For tonight."
"What's tonight?"
"You are commanded to dine with him. Privately." The creature's expression might have been sympathy or hunger. It was hard to tell with the fae. "Eight bells. The Winter Dining Hall."
It laid the garment on her bed with reverent care and then glided toward the door.
"Wait," Briar called. "Which one is the Winter Dining Hall? This place is a maze."
"Follow the silver flowers," the creature said. "They bloom only for invited guests."
Then it was gone, leaving her alone with whatever Eliam had sent.
Wariness crept through her as she approached the bed. The fabric looked innocent enough, deep red silk that seemed to hold its own light. But when she lifted it, her stomach dropped.
It was a gown, technically. In the way that cobwebs were technically clothing if you arranged them right.
The bodice was structured but sheer, with strategic embroidery providing the only real coverage.
The skirt fell in layers that would move and shift with every step, with slits that climbed dangerously high.
There were no undergarments provided.
"Absolutely not," she said to the empty room.
The mark pulsed warm on her arm.
A reminder.
She held the dress up to the mirror, watching how it caught the light. It was beautiful in an obscene way. The kind of thing meant to display rather than cover. To make clear she was a decoration and something to be shown off.
The kind of thing that would make her feel naked even fully dressed.
She set it aside and returned to her books, trying to focus on etiquette involving what to do if confronted with two fae of similar ranking but from different courts, one a stranger and the other one you knew well.
The red silk, however, seemed to pulse in her peripheral vision, patient as everything else in this cursed place.