Chapter Thirteen
When we return to the castle I head straight for my room and slam the door. There’s a soft knock sometime later, and I open
the door a crack, longing to see Emmett, but it’s just Eloree with a tray of food. I have no patience for her after the trick
with the corset this morning.
I’m sure it was Bram’s doing, but she was party to it.
“Will you go to the revel, miss?” Eloree asks. “I can dress your hair.”
“No, thank you,” I say emphatically.
I instruct her to leave the tray, and then I break every rule of every fairy tale I’ve ever read, and eat ravenously. The
food is richer with flavor than any I’ve ever had and I shovel it into my mouth so quickly I fear I’m going to make myself
sick, but it’s been so long since I’ve eaten and this is the only thing that’s come close to soothing the ache inside of me.
Once I’m finished, I dress in a black gown made of a gauzy material, one of the simplest in my wardrobe, and slip down the main staircase.
I’m underdressed among the revelers who race across the hall, the dark wine in their goblets sloshing over their sleeves and onto the floor.
They pay me no mind as I take the stairs to the lowest level, where the earth is damp and dark.
As I descend farther into the castle, I hear the rhythmic drip of water and the low snore of a guard, asleep in a tipped-back
chair at the base of the stairs. I snatch his ring of keys from its hook on the wall, careful not to let the heavy metal clang
together.
On tiptoes, I sneak past him and into the rabbit warren of the dungeons. The cells look as if they were dug out by hand. The
walls are jagged, the ceilings too low for someone as tall as Emmett to stand completely upright.
I follow the serpentine halls with only a few mounted torches to light my way.
“Marion?” I hiss. “Faith?”
“Ivy?” It’s a weak voice in the darkness, but unmistakably my name.
“Marion!” I exclaim.
I turn the corner and see the two of them piled into a single cell, their familiar faces coated with tear-streaked grime.
Their dresses are torn and splotchy with dried blood. They’re both leaning against the back wall, Marion with her chin propped
up in her hands, Faith tending to her swollen eye.
“I’m so sorry.” I sink to my knees in front of the bars and slide a key into the lock. It doesn’t fit, so I try the next.
Faith clambers toward me and gestures. “There—try the thinnest one.” There’s a little resistance as I slide the key in, but
I press harder. The lock slides open with a thunk and I swing the door open.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, pulling Marion into a tight hug.
She looks like she needs it the most. Faith’s eyes gleam with a murderous rage.
Hugging her would be like trying to hug a porcupine.
I touch her elbow instead. “I’m going to kill him,” she says.
I don’t know if she means Bram or Rhion, but I nod in agreement.
“Let’s go.” I gesture down the dark hallway, but Marion hesitates.
“Before we do that, we have something to show you.”
“Show me?”
“Did you think we were just down here twiddling our thumbs? Give us more credit than that, Your Majesty.”
She says my title like a fond little nickname but it still makes me wince.
I follow them deeper into the darkness, down to the very end of the hall, where the prison ends in a jagged dirt wall. Cold
groundwater seeps into the soles of my slippers and a fat drop of condensation lands on the top of my head.
There’s a figure huddled in the last cell. A flicker of torchlight illuminates my face as I step forward, and then I hear
her laugh.
“Always a pleasure,” I greet Queen Mor.
“Oh, there’s no need to lie. I find it so distasteful.” Her voice is as cool and regal as it was when we were in her Kensington
Palace throne room.
“He brought you here?” I ask.
She stands, straightening to her full height. Even in a simple white shift dress, she’s so inhumanly beautiful that the sight
of her causes my heart to leap into my throat. “I told you, my son loves me.”
I gesture to her cell, the rusted bars, the water dripping from the crumbling earth above her. “Is this what it means to be
loved by him?” I ask the question as much for her as for myself and Lydia.
“He wants me here.”
“But he doesn’t trust you.”
Her perfect face betrays no emotion. “He’s a wise and careful leader.”
“He’s a monster. Help me, please. Both your kingdoms depend on it, surely you see that.”
She cared enough for humans once upon a time that she staked her whole throne—her whole life—upon it. Has she changed that profoundly in the years living among us?
“You want this brutality to stop. I know you do.”
She retreats into the cell and sits down against the wall. With an exaggerated yawn she says, “Come back and see me when you’re
less boring, Ivy Benton.”
I’m already walking away, but I pause and whip around to face her. “It’s Her Majesty, Queen Ivy, now.”
I can’t be sure, but I think I hear a low chuckle as we walk out of the dungeons.
I take Faith and Marion directly up to my room and dress them in the gowns from my closet. Faith’s is a pale blue the color
of her eyes. Marion is in a deep purple gown with ribbons for sleeves. Together, we do our best to scrub the dirt from their
faces and dress their hair with the variety of creams and brushes and combs we find in the drawers of my vanity.
“Where are the others?” I ask once we are alone.
“Safe, I think . . . I hope,” Marion answers. “Faith and I bought them time to run. We believe they all fled north. That was
the plan, at least.”
I stay in my simple black gown, but at the last moment, I snag a diamond tiara from my wardrobe and place it on my tangled
curls.
I lead them down the stairs to the ballroom. We pause at the double doors and take a deep breath. The three of us have survived
in Bram’s English faerie court—all of it was training for this moment.
The doors crack open and the music of the faerie revel pours around us like a tide, sweeping us into the undercurrent.
The ballroom is packed with bodies, and I suspect Bram’s return may have something to do with it. Vines with dark, ripe fruit
have been hung in garlands across the rafters. Golden orbs of enchanted faerielight cast the room in long shadows.
We cut across the writhing dance floor to the dais where Bram sits on his throne. His handsome face is vacant, his head propped
up on his elbow.
He perks up as soon as he sees us, righting himself and grinning.
“Hey, I know you,” he slurs as we approach. “You’re all very pretty. Very pretty and very mean.” His full bottom lip juts out in a pout. “Not you, Marion. You’re too sweet for your own good. One day someone is going
to eat you up.”
I shift slightly, pulling them behind me. “I thought I’d show the other girls what a true faerie revel is like.”
Bram claps his hands together. “Capital idea!”
“They are your guests, are they not?”
“I suppose.”
I climb the steps to the dais and plop down in his lap.
From across the ballroom, my eyes meet Emmett’s. He’s leaning against the far wall, a goblet in one hand, girls surrounding
him like flowers tilting toward the sun. Emmett’s hazel eyes are glazed over, his full mouth half-open, his chest rising and
falling like he’s out of breath. One of the girls, the same dark-haired one from last night, trails her finger down his neck,
into the hollow of his throat, which is exposed by his half-open doublet.
I mirror the gesture on Bram, trailing my pinkie down the line of his neck, keeping my eyes locked on Emmett while the party spins in a blur around us.
The girl presses her lips against Emmett’s collarbone, the one that healed all wrong when he broke it jumping horses as a
child, and the force of my jealousy is dizzying.
I do the same to Bram, savoring the awful way he shudders against me, then trail my mouth back up.
“Can’t we be done with this dungeon business?” I whisper into the hollow space right behind his ear. Bram hesitates. The faerie
music thrums down my spine and it’s as if I can feel this place making me someone else. I close my teeth around his earlobe
and pull down slightly. Bram arches slightly against me. His breath hitches. “Please?” I purr. “It’s beneath you.”
Across the ballroom, Emmett’s eyes drop closed, and he’s too far from me to hear but I know what he sounds like when he moans,
how it starts low in the back of his throat.
Bram sighs against his throne. “But you did not win. That was not our deal.”
I rake my nails over his thigh, right above his knee. “Don’t you want to make me happy?”
The corners of his mouth turn down. “Not particularly.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Don’t you want me to be grateful to you? Only you can give this to me.”
This time it works. His face relaxes. “Fine. Go, be merry!” Then he gestures lazily to a footman and mutters something about
having extra guest rooms made up.
I bound down from the dais and shoulder my way past the other girls, ignoring Faith asking “What the hell was that?” and Marion’s
disgusted laughter.
By the time I look up again, Emmett is gone.