Chapter 12
MAYBE THE KING senses I’m hatching something, because Threnn appears at my door later that night with a message from His Majesty. “Wear this.” He pushes a box into my hands, a stern look on his face like he takes his king’s orders very seriously. “Be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
“Ready to leave? For—?”
Before I can finish the question, he’s returned to his post guarding my room.
My stomach flutters at the word “leave,” though. As in—to go home? Almost certainly not, yet I can’t help hoping.
The contents of the box give no hints. A set of warm clothes and fur-lined boots, which I change into quickly, one eye on the time.
The instant the clock ticks to ten minutes later, the king himself arrives.
He’s wearing black—shocking. Though he isn’t dressed nearly as warmly as I am, with just a shirt beneath the same long, fitted coat he wore the night he took me.
A pale sliver of flesh peeks out where the top buttons are undone.
I suppose he must be used to his kingdom’s temperature—it’s as cold as he is.
He casts a judgmental glance over me and makes a faint sound of acknowledgment before turning on his heel with the clipped order to “come.”
He joked about me being a hunting dog before. Maybe he means to treat me like one.
I grit my teeth and follow. This isn’t for long. I’ll do my best not to murder him. Although… If I do, that would surely mean I’m no longer obliged to stay here and marry him. Something to consider, if all else fails.
“What are you smirking about?” He peers at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh, nothing.” I smile back brightly, even though I know killing a fae is no easy feat—and considering this one is a demi-god, running from the Wild Hunt would probably be easier. Still, a woman needs her fantasies.
He guards his expression well, but I’m sure I catch the slightest thinning of his lips, and that keeps my smile in place all the way outside. Waiting for us at the same doors where the Wild Hunt delivered me mere days ago, are two horses.
At least I think they are. Since we ride sabercats in Albion, I’ve only ever seen them illustrated in books—aside from the Wild Hunt’s skeletal steeds.
One looks a lot like the drawings, though its white fur with brown flecks has a metallic sheen that seems…
unnatural. I’ve never seen an animal or a pelt like that before.
And the other horse?
That’s what really gives me pause. A mare as pale as the king, her violet eyes glow with unearthly light. She paws the ground, and at first I think she’s just kicking up snow, but as she prances with impatience, I realize it’s vapor hazing around her bone-white hooves.
“In case you’re tempted to try another performance like the other day, I’ve decided to take your education into my own hands.
” The king approaches the mare, who settles.
“You will see why we have these walls and why you should be grateful for them.” He mounts in an instant, elegant, efficient, then jerks his chin toward the other horse.
I stare. He expects me to ride it. I’ve never even ridden a sabercat before. I’m not sure where to start. What if it runs away while I’m trying to get on its back?
This harsh sound comes from the king, irritation clear in its serrated edges. “You can’t ride.” His voice is flat. “Of course you can’t.”
I don’t see him give any signal, but his horse walks toward me and before I can back away, the king grabs the scruff of my coat and hauls me on to the saddle before him.
At least he doesn’t throw me over it like the Wild Hunt did.
I’m sitting upright across the saddle, one leg dangling awkwardly, the other one even more awkwardly caught on his thigh.
“Uh.” Trying to rectify that, I shift, slip on the smooth leather saddle, yelp and am caught by an unsmiling king all in one graceless movement. How did he make it look so damn easy?
“Put your leg over the horse,” he bites out, right in my ear.
Grimacing as I discover muscles that still ache from my attempt to run away, I obey and swing my leg up and forward over the horse’s neck. Thankfully, the creature lowers her head, so I avoid kicking her—barely.
Again, I don’t catch the signal, but the horse sets off, apparently unbothered by the extra passenger, and we leave the other mount behind.
I slip again as we follow the path around a bend, and with a tut the king fastens his arm around my waist, clamping me to him. I try not to find relief in the way that, despite his demeanor, he is warm against my back.
His body hums with tension—the same irritation I heard in his voice—which also travels through his unyielding grip.
Reaching the fortress gates is a welcome distraction.
I haven’t left the walls since my arrival.
I’m sure he intends for this to be a punishment—no doubt I’ll see something horrible in the kingdom beyond—but I can’t help my curiosity.
What creatures live down here? Will we see some of those wandering dead I spotted from the tower?
Are there pockets of life and growing plants among the snow, too small to detect from a distance?
First, we face the cold, dark shadow of the wall. It’s thicker than I realized—fifteen feet at least—and by the time we emerge into the moonlight, I’m chilled to the bone.
Ahead, a narrow causeway leads from the gates, its dark surface cleared of snow. By the time we reach the ground, I’m getting used to the sway as the horse walks, working out how to absorb that with my hips, and that’s when we go.
The horse surges forward. Wind whistles in my ears. That swaying is but a distant memory as my bones are jolted almost out of their sockets. I cling to the first thing I find—the poor horse’s icy mane. The king’s hold around my waist tightens, merciless. His fingers bite into my hip.
I can’t tell what’s my heartbeat and what’s the pounding of hooves eating up the ground as we hurtle across the plane. My eyes water so much I can’t make out much of our surroundings, and my focus is on trying to slow my breaths in a desperate attempt to stop my heart speeding any further.
“You’re not going to fall,” he mutters in my ear. “Stop fighting and lean into me.”
That’s when I realize I’m bouncing with every stride, knees drawn up and halfway into a ball.
I count to six on my inhale, forcing it slower, steadier, but the next bump blasts out my exhale.
It’s unnatural to try to relax while moving at such speed, but I’ll try anything to make this less miserable for all involved.
Much as I don’t care about Drystan’s misery, I’m sure carrying a jolting, panicked human isn’t fun for the horse.
Gradually, I manage to loosen my taut muscles.
My thighs lower, finding his right behind them.
I sit a little more upright, back pressing into his chest. He curls around me, a framework, and as I lean into him, I feel the way he moves with the horse’s gait—something akin to the earlier movement of my hips, but more rolling.
I don’t find the rhythm perfectly, but I’m certainly being jolted around less and can control my breathing.
I even dare to look up.
What I thought was a flat plane is actually gentle hills, so low they disappear from the tower’s height.
Snow smothers everything. The trees show no sign of life. I don’t see a single living thing. Not even a paw print.
The mare slows, and I think I catch a slight shift in his hand on the reins this time.
“There.” He gestures and turns us.
Not to see a living thing. No. Not in the Underworld.
Just ahead, the dead walk.
“We’re glamoured,” the king murmurs in my ear, hot in this icy air. “They can’t see us. They can hear though, so keep quiet.”
Swallowing, I nod.
Some amble along, lips moving like they’re muttering or maybe even singing to themselves—a chant to keep going.
Their gestures are normal. Their faces like mine or every other person I’ve met upon the surface.
They glance at their surroundings, but it’s like they see straight through us as their eyes sweep right past.
Most walk onward, hollow gazes fixed ahead.
Then there are those who pause and peer at us in faint interest as though they sense the glamour, even if they can’t see through it. Others narrow their eyes and start in our direction.
We don’t stop for long, riding on as soon as they approach.
What he told me on the tower is right, though: they don’t look anything like the corporeal dead he raised to attack our home. These just look like normal people, albeit with half the color leached out.
His grip around my waist has loosened, though I don’t realize until his chest presses into my back as though he’s drawn in a quick breath. “Quiet,” he breathes in my ear as he draws the mare to a halt.
His voice tickles, but it’s his tone that makes me shiver.
He holds utterly still behind me, mouth at my ear, every muscle held in perfect focus.
I hold my breath. Even the mare is frozen, attention straining ahead.
There stands something monstrous. Shambling.
Scraping at the snow. Its body is flat, stretched between six limbs that look more like tentacles than human legs.
At the front, its form peaks into a domed head with flat, gray eyes at the center of an otherwise featureless face.
Below spreads another pair of limbs, these two flattened like fins.
As it digs, long claws glint in the moonlight.
With a subtle nudge of the reins upon the mare’s neck, he signals for her to back away several strides.
“It searches for life,” the king murmurs once we’re further from the creature.
“It only knows the cold of death, but it has a terrible yearning. For warmth. For life. For the shadows of what it once knew.”
The sight of the thing has the cold of death eating into me. I try not to shiver, but it’s a doomed battle. “What is it?”
“Now? An abomination with no name. You’d be better asking what it once was. One of the dead, seeking the path through, just like those we’ve already seen. But one of my kin, like me and not, chanced upon it, a lost soul, and whispered in its ear that it was found. That it had been chosen.”
A tiny trickle of warmth runs through me at those words. Found. Chosen. Such powerful calls.
“It whispered words like we and us and promised the soul it would end its loneliness if only it would accept the unseelie’s gift.”
I swallow, throat tight with the horrible familiarity of the lost soul’s fears. Don’t leave me alone here. Although I hate the king, I would beg him—beg—not to be left to that fate. I nod with grim certainty. “It accepted.”
“It was a fool. It let the unseelie creature smother it, consume it, suck on its soul and memories. In doing that, the fae grew in strength yet lost itself. Now they walk the Underworld as an aberration, a mindless shambler with a yearning that cannot be satisfied.”
And I thought a lonely death was the worst that could happen. This is a fate far more bleak.
“If you had escaped the fortress walls, it would have found you and made the same offer. Would you have been able to say no to the promise of eternal companionship?”
I knew the answer before he asked the question. So did he.
The flaps between the creature’s limbs undulate, slapping into the snow. It looks so pitiful. And yet it’s so dangerous. To me, at least.
“It would be drawn to you. To your life. The only reason it hasn’t turned already is because it’s upwind.
If I’d taken us an inch closer, it would have felt you.
” His fingers squeeze my hips, the movement so slight, I’m not sure he intends it.
“You are a beacon out here. Do you want to be a beacon, Annon?”
My mouth is too dry to form words. I shake my head.
“Then you will not run again.” It isn’t a question.
Wordlessly, he turns us on the spot and we ride back to the fortress.
Waking, sleeping, the shambler haunts me.