CHAPTER 3
The next morning, the sound of the door opening wakes me. A woman stands in the doorway, her chafed skin hinting at long hours spent in the cold. She looks my age, her blue eyes meeting mine with curiosity before shifting away.
“I’m Abigail. Follow me, please,” she says, glancing at me before noticing Lilith, who is already awake and watching her warily.
We sit up quickly and head for the door. Peering into the hall, I see Abigail waiting at the end. She waves us forward, and we follow obligingly. She leads us to a large kitchen where people are busy preparing food and washing dishes.
One thing I notice is all their slaves are human or at least appear to be.
The room is huge and modern looking, different from the rest of the castle’s traditional look.
It has stainless steel appliances and black marble counter tops, a huge island sat in the middle with three women standing around it chopping different fruit and vegetables.
The moment we step inside, eyes snap to mine before quickly darting away—only to flick back again.
A woman in the middle nudges her friend, and her brown eyes widen as a huge grin spreads across her freckled face. Her wild red hair is untamed, matching the excitement in her voice.
“A Fae,” she whispers.
At her words, the entire room falls silent, all eyes shifting to Lilith and me.
Abigail clears her throat, her tone sharp. “Yes, the girl is a Fae. Now get back to work and stop gawking.”
The workers quickly drop their stares and resume their tasks. Abigail hands each of us an apple and motions for us to follow.
We eat as we trail behind her, stopping at a massive cupboard in the hall. She opens the doors, revealing shelves stocked with cleaning supplies, mops, brooms, and a cart. A cleaning cupboard.
“You will both be cleaning the library at the front of the castle, when you’re done with that, come and see me for more work” she tells me, pushing a cart with cleaning supplies toward me and pointing us in the direction of the library.
I creep down the stone corridors toward the front of the castle, stopping when we reach the room I noticed yesterday. Pushing the cart aside, I grab a cloth and polish, handing Lilith a duster.
“Do the blinds,” I tell her, then start tidying the desk, its oak surface dull beneath my rag. I move to the mantle, dusting and polishing in silence. So much wood, so many lamps—it feels endless.
Lilith finishes the blinds and starts wiping down the lamps while I tackle the bookshelves. Most of the books are diaries or volumes on the creatures roaming the earth.
When I reach the last shelf, I freeze. Every book is on Fae history.
Most records of our people and magic were destroyed after the war, yet here they were—hundreds of them. My grandmother had only one, always kept hidden. Yet here, they stood in plain sight.
My fingers skim over the leather-bound spines, a connection to a past long buried, when a throat clears behind me.
Turning around, I see Matitus standing behind me, making me jump, my backside brushing up against the bookshelf.
He is staring at the book my fingers were touching.
His eyes darken as they move back to mine which makes my heart rate pick up and a chill crawl up my spine making me fight the urge to shiver under his deadly gaze.
“What were you doing?” he asks. I want to shrink under his hardened gaze.
“I was just looking, I didn’t mean anything by it,” I say, my heart skipping a beat.
He nods and sits at the desk, his gaze never leaving me. Unmoving. Unrelenting.
As soon as I finish, Lilith and I hurry out in search of Abigail.
She escorts me upstairs while Lilith stays in the kitchen to help clean. When Abigail opens the door, I realize it’s the same room from yesterday. She hands me a basket of cleaning supplies, then retrieves fresh linen, placing it on the chaise.
“When you’re done here, you’re finished for the day. You can go back to your room,” she says, then turns and leaves without waiting for a response.
I strip the bed, dumping the used linen beside the basket, then remake it with fresh sheets. Moving to the adjoining bathroom, I take in its size—as big as the bedroom. Three sink basins line one wall, a massive shower on the other, with three showerheads spaced evenly.
The bathroom takes the longest. Too much stainless steel, too much glass. I’m wiping down the sink and mirror when I see Matitus in the reflection.
He leans against the doorframe, eyes locked on me. He doesn’t speak. Just watches.
When I am done, he saunters out and takes a seat at the chaise when I notice Dragus sitting on the edge of the bed. I gulp realizing I am in a room with two predators by myself. I suddenly wish Lilith was with me. Both of them are watching me.
Dragus sniffs the air slightly, a seductive grin forming.
“She is scared of us,” he tells Matitus, making him sniff the air in the room.
Dragus stands, strutting over to me and I take a step back only to bump into Matitus who had moved with blinding speed to stop me from running for the door.
I feel both their chests press into me, both overly warm.
I can smell the masculine scent on their skin, a fire and smokey scent like burnt sandalwood, strong but I also found it rather appealing. They were that close.
They smelled alike, with only slight differences between them—a reminder they were two different species.
Without thinking, I inhale their scent, leaning toward Dragus. A trance. A pull I don’t understand.
Heat radiates from his body, sinking into mine, my breath catching in my throat.
My eyes snap open. I jolt back, startled.
Fear grips me as my heart stutters. I almost touched him.
“You don’t need to fear us, little one,” Matitus says in my ear, his voice deep and gravelly as I feel his warm breath on my neck making me shiver. He inhales deeply, a groan leaving his lips.
“Doesn’t she smell divine, Dragus?” he says, lifting his head. I look at Dragus with what I know to be a gaze full of fear.
He leans in, pressing his lips to my neck, inhaling deeply. I freeze, every instinct screaming to run.
I squirm, trying to shake off the sensation crawling over my skin, settling too low. They’re both gorgeous—tall, dark, and dangerously built—that doesn’t ease the fear coiling in my gut. They could tear me apart in an instant, and I’d be powerless to stop them.
I try to slip between them, Matitus grips my hip, his fist tightening around my shirt. Dragus trails a finger down my neck, stopping just above my breast before circling my nipple over the fabric.
I go rigid. Panic surges through me.
He pinches it between his fingers, a sharp jolt of pain making me cry out.
“So responsive, and we’ve barely touched her,” he murmurs, his lips inches from mine. His voice is silk-wrapped sin.
I swallow hard. Matitus chuckles, stepping back, his warmth vanishing from my skin.
Heart pounding, I snatch up the basket and bolt from the room—away from their touch, away from their hungry eyes.
I take the basket back to the cleaning closet and walk fast to the kitchen, only to notice Lilith is no longer there. Walking over to the woman with red hair and freckles I ask her.
“The little girl who was with me. Where did she go?”
“The guards came and took her; her mother has been looking for her,” she tells me. I nod, relieved knowing she is safer out there than in here with these monsters.
I exit the kitchen and head to the small room where I slept last night. Walking in, I see a small, dark object sitting atop the bed. It is the book I was looking at earlier in the library. Matitus’s deep voice behind me makes me jump.
“If you want to read that you should also read this,” he says, holding another book out toward me as he steps in the room. I take the book from him and look at it. It’s a book on Dragons and mates. I stare up at him.
“Read them. I know Fae have their own stories of the past, what if they aren’t correct? What if your ancestors lied?” he says.
“Fae can’t lie,” I whisper, not understanding what he means.
“They can and did long ago. Your kind blames the Dragons for the wars and the blood spilled, yet what they took from us far outweighs anything we could have ever done to any of you,” he tells me, and I feel anger build up at his words bursting out of me.
“What have the Fae taken from us? You species killed my kind off,” I tell him incredulously. The nerve he has saying what we did was worse, when they killed every one of my kind.
“Your kind aren’t the only ones forced into extinction, Elora; my kind is nearly extinct as well because of what they did.”
“And what is that?” I dare to ask, not liking the way he talks about Fae.
“Read the books and you will find out,” he says, walking out, shutting the door behind him.
I stare at the closed door, when I see that he isn’t going to return, I relax slightly.
Picking up the book on Fae history, I sit back on the bed and start reading.
I can’t remember the last time I actually read a book.
Being constantly on the move meant I didn’t get much time to read and with moving, books would mean more things to carry.
After a few hours of reading, my back aches from being slumped over.
The book is pretty much the same as what my grandmother had already told me.
How the war started after a Dragon killed one of the Royal Fae and our kind sought out revenge.
If only they had known this world we currently live in would result from that war, maybe they wouldn’t have sought revenge.
I noticed halfway through that there were pages torn from the middle.
Sitting up, I head to the bathroom, stripping down and placing my clothes at the end of the bed to keep them dry. Grabbing the towel from the back of the chair, I take it with me and shut the door.