Olwen
The great hall was full of monsters.
They lined the long tables in their finery: silks, velvets, and furs trimmed with silver thread, jewels glinting at throats and wrists and woven through elaborate braids of ink-black hair.
Goblets rose and fell in endless toasts, dark wine sloshing over rims, staining the white tablecloths like old blood.
The roar of conversation filled the vaulted space, bouncing off stone walls hung with tapestries depicting ravens in flight, ravens in battle, ravens picking clean the bones of fallen enemies.
I stood at the entrance to the hall and counted my enemies.
The elders at the high table, watching me with eyes that missed nothing. The young warriors clustered near the fire, their laughter too loud, their glances too sharp.
The women in their gorgeous gowns, diamonds dripping from their ears, their smiles showing just a few too many teeth when they looked my way.
Raven shifters. All of them.
I could tell by the black of their hair, the sharp angles of their faces, the way they moved, fluid and predatory, even when reaching for a bread roll.
Their eyes caught the torchlight and reflected it back like polished obsidian, and when they turned those eyes on me, I saw what they saw.
Human. Weak. Wrong.
The whispers had already started. I’d heard them in the corridors, in the kitchens, in the rustle of servants’ voices when they thought I couldn’t hear.
The human bride. The strange one. The girl who had cracked the mirror in the entrance hall, who never ate, who walked the corridors at night like a restless spirit searching for a grave it couldn’t find.
The girl whose reflection had shattered.
I smoothed my hands down the new black velvet gown with silver embroidery crawling up the bodice like frost on a window.
The Raven King had been watching me closely all day, ever since finding me with Lowen in the tower, and that scrutiny felt heavier than the dress.
A servant had laced the corset tight, arranging the heavy skirts. Another had attempted to warm my cheeks with rouge, then wiped it away. Too bright. Too stark.
“The elders are not pleased with my choice.”
He spoke near my ear. I hadn’t heard him approach, hadn’t felt him, hadn’t sensed anything. He moved like smoke, a shadow given form and purpose.
I turned.
The King stood close enough that I could see the silver thread in his coat.
He was dressed in black, as always. His dark hair swept back from his face, his eyes fixed on the crowd beyond my shoulder.
“They think I should have chosen a shifter bride,” he continued. “Someone with proper bloodlines. Someone who could give them heirs that would strengthen the clan rather than dilute it.”
His gaze slid to mine. “Someone with warmth.”
“And what do you think, my lord?”
The title came out mocking. I hadn’t meant it to. Or perhaps I had. I still didn’t know what he wanted from me, why he’d bought me, what game we were playing.
His lips curved. Not quite a smile. “Warmth is overrated.”
His gaze traveled down my body, slow and deliberate, lingering on the low cut of the neckline, the pale column of my throat. “I think cold has its own appeal.”
I should have felt something. A flutter. A catch. The racing pulse of a woman being looked at like that by a man like this.
But there was nothing in my chest to race, nothing to flutter.
I needed the petal.
I’d been rationing them. Hoarding the few that remained like a miser hoards gold coins against the coming winter.
But tonight was absolutely necessary.
Surrounded by monsters who could smell weakness. Watched by elders who already suspected something was wrong. Expected to eat, to drink, to dance. To perform all the functions of a living woman while the void in my chest gaped wider with every passing hour.
I’d thought I’d be able to fake it, like I did last night. But I couldn’t afford to be cold tonight. Couldn’t afford to be still and silent.
“Excuse me,” I murmured. “I need a moment.”
I slipped away before he could respond and wove through the crowd, ducking between clusters of laughing shifters, avoiding the grabbing hands of a drunk warrior who tried to pull me into a toast.
I found an alcove behind a pillar, half-hidden by a heavy velvet curtain, shadowed and private.
My fingers shook as I opened my pouch, slid out the thin bone box.
Four petals left after this.
I placed the dried flower on my tongue and let it dissolve.
The effect was immediate.
Violent.
Counterfeit warmth filled my veins. It was not the searing pain of true fire, but a manageable simmer.
My heart kicked against my ribs, sudden and brutal.
Blood rushed to places that had been cold and gray, flushing my skin with color, my fingers with feeling. Energy surged through limbs that had been heavy and still, flooding my muscles. I needed to move.
Almost like life.
Colors sharpened. The red of the wine became crimson. The gold of the candlelight became blinding.
Sounds amplified. The roar of conversation broke apart into individual voices: a woman complaining about her daughter-in-law, a man boasting about a hunt, two elders whispering about the human bride and her strange, cold ways.
The smells were sudden and overwhelming. Roasted meat and fresh bread and spilled wine and a hundred different perfumes, all of them cloying, all of them overwhelming.
My dead, useless stomach clenched with something that might have been hunger, might have been nausea, might have been both.
I stepped out from behind the curtain.
The world was too bright. Too loud. Too much.
The petal’s effects always hit like this: a rush of stolen sensation that bordered on overwhelming, a high that made me feel alive and terrified in equal measure.
My body didn’t know what to do with so much input. My mind couldn’t process it all.
I needed to move.
Needed to burn off this manic energy before it made me do something stupid.
The King still stood where I’d left him, a dark pillar skirting the crowd. He watched the room, cataloguing threats, perhaps, or simply observing his subjects.
His posture was relaxed, but I knew better now. Nothing about him was ever relaxed.
He turned when I approached.
His expression shifted. Surprise, maybe. Confusion.
His gaze swept over me, taking in details I couldn’t see, the flush in my cheeks, the brightness in my eyes, the way my chest was rising and falling with real breath now instead of the shallow pantomime I usually performed.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“Have I?”
“Your cheeks are pink. Your eyes are bright.”
He reached out, touched my bare arm. His fingers were warm, or maybe I was finally warm enough to feel them properly.
“You’re flushed. Almost feverish.”
“It’s hot in here. All these bodies, the fire…”
“It’s freezing. The hall is always cold. The servants complain about it constantly.”
I laughed.
The sound came out too loud, too sharp, too wild, the laugh of a woman leaning out over the precipice, daring gravity to do its worst.
The petal was surging in my blood, screaming at me to move, to dance, to run, to do anything except stand still.
“Then I must be burning from the inside out.”
I grabbed his hand. His fingers were long, strong, calloused in places that spoke of sword work. “Dance with me, husband.”
I pulled him toward the center of the hall before he could respond.
The crowd unsurprisingly parted for us. He was their king, and I was the strange human bride everyone was whispering about. Let them whisper. Let them watch.
The petal was burning through me, and I didn’t care about their gossip, their suspicion, their sharp raven eyes.
The musicians sat on a raised platform at the far end of the hall, strings and drums and a strange instrument that looked like a harp made of bones.
They played a haunting melody, mournful and lovely, a waltz for the dead.
I pulled him onto the floor. Pressed my body against his, my flushed cheek against the fine wool of his coat.
His arm wrapped around my waist. The heat of him was overwhelming. On the ride to the castle it had been agony, but here, with the music pounding, it felt like power. It felt like fuel.
Intoxicating.
I moved closer.
We began to move. Slow circles at first, finding the rhythm. His hand rested against the small of my back, warm even through the velvet, and I could feel each of his fingers like brands against my spine.
Every point of contact was sensation. Every touch was life.
I wanted more.
I leaned in. Stole his warmth through the fabric of his coat, through the velvet of my gown. The petal was screaming at me to take more, feel more, be more.
I was a starving thing at a banquet, and he was the only dish that could satisfy.
“Dance with me,” I said again, though we were already dancing. “Make me spin until I’m dizzy. Make me forget.”
I stopped. I’d almost said too much.
His arm tightened around my waist. “Forget what?”
“Everything.” The word came out breathless. Hungry. “Make me forget everything.”
We spun through the crowd. Other dancers parted for us, the king and his strange bride, the center of every whispered conversation.
All I cared about was the heat of his body, the strength of his arms, the way his hand rested on the small of my back like he was claiming me.
Like I was his.
Maybe I was. For tonight, at least. For as long as the petal lasted.
The song ended. Another began. We didn’t stop.
“You’re trembling,” he said against my hair.
“I’m excited.”
“You’re shaking.”
His hand slid up my back, rested against my racing pulse. “Your heart is beating frantically. What happened in the last ten minutes to change you so completely?”
I looked up at him. Met his gaze.
“Take me somewhere private,” I said. “Please.”