Once Upon a Time …
… a princess sat stiff-backed at a dining table littered with fine china plates, crystal goblets and silver cutlery while she stared down at her Papana?i, unable to stomach it.
This guest of Uncle’s was looking at her. No, more than just looking … it felt like his gaze was raking her body with sharp fingernails, burrowing under her skin and leaving cold tendrils there.
“She’s a beauty, Bogdan,” he said, his voice slick like oil. Under the table, Stefan took her hand. “She seems quite … docile.”
Chills ran down her spine at the way he said that word, like her tameness made her even more interesting to him. The little she’d managed to eat over the course of the evening surged its way up her throat, but she swallowed it back.
Her uncle, who was barely containing his fury at the princess’s earlier rebellion over her brother’s clothes, grunted in disgust. “Not nearly as docile as I’d like her to be.”
Uncle’s special guest chuckled. “Training them is ninety percent of the fun.”
Stefan squeezed her fingers.
“You’ve put on quite a spread for me tonight,” the guest said, his voice suddenly business-like. “Does that mean you’re willing to negotiate?”
The princess breathed a sigh of relief that they were no longer talking about her in that way that made her skin crawl.
“Later. When the children are gone.” Uncle’s voice was a warning and a dismissal all at once, and the princess could not escape the table fast enough.
“I look forward to seeing you again in a few years, Irina,” the guest murmured as she reached the door. She barely suppressed a shudder as she escaped.
“You know who that guy is, right?” Stefan asked as they made their way back to their wing of the palace.
The princess shook her head. “All I know is that he gives me the creeps.”
“And he should. He’s Clanuri too … but he doesn’t deal in substances, like Father.”
The princess looked up at her cousin, that cold feeling that had been making its way up her spine in the dining room marched out to her fingers and toes. “What does he deal in, then?”
“People.”
A storm hit the palace in the early hours of the morning. The princess hadn’t managed to sleep, her head full of thoughts of her uncle’s guest. He had been handsome, with his salt and pepper hair and his neatly trimmed beard. How did a face like that hide such evil?
A high-pitched wail came from down the hallway as lightning lit the princess’s room, followed by a boom of thunder so close it set her teeth on edge.
Her heart hammered. Had that been Andrei screaming?
Was he frightened by the storm? Was that sound his bare feet racing down the hall past her room, or just the lingering rumbles of thunder?
But then the too-familiar rhythmic thump, thump, thump of her uncle’s boots followed. The princess cowered in her bed, praying he wouldn’t come in, hadn’t decided to punish her tonight while he was full of ?uic?, which always made him extra violent.
The footsteps passed her door and continued, fading into nothingness as the storm raged.