CHAPTER 4 #2
Galiene became his slave. She did everything he asked, while he tortured her with glimpses of her daughter.
If she was good, she would get half an hour.
If she failed to please him, he would punish the child instead of her.
He broke that woman so completely, Hade, who had raised her since Galiene was fifteen, didn’t recognize her when she saw her on the street.
This went on for almost eight months. Even Hade, with all of her connections, could do nothing about it.
The Hreban Family was one of the Eight Great Families.
He had too much influence, too much money, and too many hired soldiers, while in the eyes of Kair Toren, Galiene was a commoner who worked in the sex trade.
They wouldn’t call her a “sex worker.” They called her a whore.
And when Hreban finally got the status he wanted, he decided that Galiene was beneath his new station in life. His bodyguards killed her daughter, stabbed Galiene, and set the house on fire. She died choking on smoke and cradling her child’s corpse.
Hreban turned away from the attendant, his expression flat, his mouth down-turned in an adult man–pout. Something had displeased him. The woman in the fairy dress hovered nearby, waiting for something.
I scrutinized his face. A slab of a jawline, wide mouth, hooded dark eyes. He was forty-two years old and looked his age.
I graduated with a degree in political science, and before I switched to that major, I studied criminal justice.
Both of my majors taught me that monsters in human skin didn’t look like monsters.
They looked bland and ordinary. I knew this, but some part of me, raised on Disney and anime villains, expected to see the inner brutality of Ulmar Hreban’s soul reflected in his face.
I subconsciously wanted him to look like a villain, because evil that violent and cold should have to come with some sort of warning label.
But no. Despite his finery, Hreban himself looked perfectly unremarkable, even mildly attractive in that particular way that resulted from a lifetime of wealth, good food, and expert grooming.
If you put him in a suit and trimmed his hair, he would pass for an aging tech bro about to give a TED talk on the power of AI and the miracles of angel investing.
By the end of the second book, he had spilled so much blood, it could fill a lake, but if I had run into him in a grocery store, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance.
“A gilded toad,” a male voice said next to me.
I almost jumped.
A man leaned on the column on the other side of the rail, barely a foot away. His pale gray cloak hid him from top to bottom, but he had left his hood down. Tall, around thirty, light skin with a hint of a tan, longish brown hair, defined jaw, strong eyebrows, a regal nose . . .
Handsome. Like should-be-on-a-poster-somewhere handsome.
His tired old cloak and his face seemed mismatched.
Like bumping into a stranger on a crowded street and catching a glimpse of an elven prince under the hood of a worn-out sweatshirt.
His eyes were striking, a rich golden hazel.
I had no idea who he was, but he had just called Hreban a toad in public and didn’t seem concerned about it.
The man leaned forward slightly, shortening the distance between us. Suddenly I was uneasy. The ornate wooden rail barely came up to my waist. It didn’t feel like enough of a barrier.
“Do you think the toad knows he is a toad?” he asked.
He was referencing a folktale from the second book.
The story said that three centuries ago Mad King Eble lost his mind and thought that a toad he found in the garden was talking to him and giving him sage advice.
He’d commissioned golden vestments for the toad and forced his counselors to give their reports to it.
One of the counselors was renowned for his honesty, and when the king asked him directly if the toad would want even grander clothes, the minister replied, “Your Majesty, no matter how you gild it, a toad knows it’s just a toad.
” The king crushed the toad with his fist and then chopped the minister’s head off.
The man was looking at me. I had to say something.
Don’t say the wrong thing, don’t say the wrong thing . . .
I kept my voice quiet. “It isn’t wise to disparage the head of a Great Family.”
“For you, perhaps.”
He wasn’t afraid of Hreban. Who the hell was he? Brown hair, hazel eyes, beautiful face . . . Beauty was subjective. No crest, no scars, no unique facial features. Without something specific, I could think of a dozen characters that would loosely fit the bill.
“If you recall, that story didn’t end well for the counselor,” I said.
“Ah, but I wouldn’t be the counselor.”
“Who would you be?”
“The king, of course.”
“Then let’s hope you’re less mad than Eble.”
His lips curved.
An attendant ran up to the fairy queen hostess. The hostess bowed to Hreban and said something. He nodded, and he and his bodyguard followed her to the side. There would be a staircase there, just out of sight, leading to the second floor.
“There he goes, hopping off. Good riddance.” The man looked back at me. “You and I have something in common.”
We had nothing in common. “And what would that be?”
“We’re both in a place we shouldn’t be, pretending to be someone we are not.”
What did that mean?
His eyes narrowed. His mouth was still smiling, but the way he looked at me made me want to take off like a rocket.
“Who are you? I mean, who are you really?”
Panic squirmed through me. “Nobody worth noticing.”
“Too late for that.”
He put one hand on the rail about to hop over it to my side.
“My lord,” Galiene called out.
The man let go of the rail.
Galiene approached us, a female attendant behind her. Klemena chose this moment to pop out of some side door on the left and almost ran into Galiene. The queen of the Garden arched an eyebrow, and Klemena bowed her head and fell in step with the other attendant.
The three of them reached us. Galiene looked at the man, her expression flawlessly polite. “You seem to have mistaken one of our guests for an attendant, my lord.”
The man smiled back at her, looking unrepentant, like a cat who’d been caught seconds before he was about to steal steak off the counter.
“My apologies.” He didn’t sound particularly apologetic either.
“Your room is ready, and your companion is eager to meet you.”
The man gave me a mock sigh. “Alas, one shouldn’t keep such a rare beauty waiting.”
“Very considerate of you, my lord.” Galiene’s tone had just a touch of dryness to it.
He glanced at me. “We’ll meet again.”
“I doubt it.” Why did I just say that? Talk about tempting fate.
“This way, my lady,” Klemena said.
They parted us like tugboats pulling two ships in the night. Klemena led me to the right, while Galiene walked him to the left. I followed my guide up a different staircase to the third floor.
Asking about the identity of the man in the cloak was pointless. They would never tell me. Whoever he was, he could pay premium rates. The rare beauties of the Garden didn’t come cheap.
Klemena led me to a door and pushed it open.
A small bedroom greeted me, lit by two lanterns.
Their light fell on a large bed with a blue blanket and plush blue pillows.
There was a brown and white rug on the floor, another door that probably led to the bathroom, and a window on the right, but all I saw was the bed. I was suddenly so tired.
“Sleep well, my lady.”
Klemena bowed, exited the room, and shut the door. I heard a bolt slide into place. She had locked me in.
The door had a sturdy bar on my side. I lowered it, dropped my cloak, untied the strings cinching my dress, pulled it over my head, kicked off my shoes, fell onto the bed, and passed out.
PLANTER 7
A knock echoed through the room. “My lady?”
I opened my eyes. Morning light filtered through the window on my left. We were on the third floor, and the window had no bars. I could see a chunk of a beautiful morning sky and ghosts of three moons slowly fading into it.
I was still in Rellas. I had half expected that a night of decent sleep would send me home. After all, that was how I got here, going to sleep in my own bed. But no luck.
“My lady?”
They wouldn’t let me sleep in. Right. Galiene had fulfilled her hospitality obligations, and now it was time to prod me on.
“Yes?”
“Your breakfast is served. I will take you to it when you are ready.”
Wood slid, followed by the quiet creaking of the old floorboards. Klemena must’ve unbarred the door and walked away. The footsteps retreated but not far. She was waiting for me to get up. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
I sat up. The soreness was still there, but it was muted now. Amazing what food, drink, and a full night of sleep could do. I got up and dragged myself to the bathroom. It was the same setup as downstairs: a toilet with a wooden seat and a small sink.
No toothbrush. Bummer. No faucet either, but there was a ewer of water and soap. I made do.
Klemena took me down to the second-floor balcony. I sat at a solid wooden table right by the balcony rail. Below, the Garden’s attendants cleaned the first floor, wiping the tables, heaving chairs up onto them, and then sweeping the tile.