8. Let’s just blame it on the cold #2
“You know, I’d say my mouth is one of my more redeeming qualities,” I said as I shucked my loose prisoner shirt and tossed it right at Maksym’s feet.
He tensed and kicked it to the side with the toe of his boot. “I’d rather not hear anything about your past conquests, Miss Wynn.”
A burst of laughter clawed its way out of my lungs as I tugged on the maroon blouse set out on my cot. Its wide, ruffled collar was just big enough to hang off my shoulders, and its hem brushed the tops of my thighs.
“I mean, I’m always happy to trade stories, but who said anything about conquests?
” My threadbare pants were next to go, replaced by a black, flowy skirt that sat high on my waist and was a little shorter in the front than the back.
“I’ll have you know, I have an astounding repertoire of jokes, Your Majesty, and I’ve never met a tavern tune I couldn’t master in a night. ”
Maksym’s broad shoulders sagged. “Wonderful.”
“It is.”
Tugging on the ankle boots came next before I pulled on the vest, made of supple black suede, and spent a moment fighting with its hook-and-tie closure.
Not a single bit of the outfit actually fit properly, but it was a stark improvement from the clothes that were about to grow if I spent another day stewing in them.
“There.” I gave myself a quick smooth-down. “Where are you taking me?”
Maksym turned and gave me an appraising glance with his amber-black eyes before he exited my cell. He raised his hand in the air and beckoned back towards me, leaving me to scramble after him like a hunting hound.
This would be the man who positioned marriage to him like it were a positive.
We headed in the same direction as the night before, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Maksym was planning on taking me back to see the charred bodies of my friends, really drive home my situation.
But just as we approached the stairwell, the king yanked open a metal door so dark and tarnished, it blended right in with the stone.
The stairs beyond it went up.
The fresh scars on my calf were uncomfortably tight as I trailed up the steps behind my silent guide, but I assumed I had that slimy concoction to thank for the noticeable improvement over the night before. Same with how my flushed skin had cooled dramatically.
We had plenty of magic-fortified medicines back in Odessa, seeing as we bordered both the high fae kingdom of Elysiel and the alchemist-populated Wastes, but I was hard-pressed to believe we had such a well-rounded cure-all.
Ahead of me, Maksym hadn’t cast a single glance back as he scaled the steps with deft silence unbefitting his stature.
Not that the dark fae king was an overly broad or bulky man.
He was as tall as he was lithe, yet he seemed to float up the steps with only the tips of his boots grazing each stone lip.
I, on the other hand, took thudding footsteps the entire way behind him.
When we crested a landing after a brief eternity up the winding steps, Maksym finally turned back to look at me. “Try not to draw too much attention to yourself, will you?” he said just before he tossed open another metal door, and a blast of daylight assaulted me.
My hand flew up to cover my eyes as I cursed and backed up, but Maksym grabbed my elbow and yanked me out with him.
Outside.
A cool and humid breeze rushed past my body, sending ripples of gooseflesh up and down my limbs in the most magnificent of ways. When my eyes finally stopped their squinted protest, and I took in a watery rendition of my surroundings, my jaw slackened. “Is this…?”
Beside me, the king huffed an annoyed laugh. “You do remember you’re in Grimm’s Keep, right? Or did you conveniently forget that part of our conversation last night?”
“No, I… Of course I remember.” I shook my head to dispel some of the maelstrom of thoughts circling in my mind.
Stone pathways rolled out around us in a neat network, connecting large plots of unfamiliar plants to outbuildings galore and a behemoth, black stone wall.
It wrapped around and out of sight, tipped with a spired watchtower at the corner down the path from us.
Umbrite dark fae ambled about in all directions, dressed in everything from military-styled garb to casual tunics and pants, women wearing softly flowing layers.
Eventually, my roving gaze landed on Maksym, and, goddess, he looked pleased with himself.
“The Keep proper.” He gestured to his left, to where a wide central pathway rolled up to an expansive building that was so much and so little like home, an ache rattled in my chest.
Where Caenleigh Fortress was a work of airy art—carved and constructed from warm, cream-colored stone and framed by delicate swooped arches and bell domes—Grimm’s keep was its antithesis in elegant brutality.
Every measure of stone was black as pitch, each carved and set angle harsh, and glinting sharp spires tipped its sprawling towers.
“I thought,” Maksym drawled as he clasped his hands behind his back and leaned into a step, “that it would be in bad faith for me to not allow you to make a fully informed decision whilst weighing your options. The Keep would be your home, after all. You should have the chance to see what it offers.”
I fell into step beside him and scoffed. “It sounds like you’re being awfully presumptuous,” I said. “What if I’ve already made my decision? And what if it doesn’t involve staying here?”
He cast a sidelong glance down at me, and his lips curved into an amused—and infuriating—smile.
“Considering you did little other than purge or have terrors last night, I doubt you’ve given my offer much thought.
But—” He stopped and gestured at an adjacent pathway.
“We can head straight to Embervale if you’d like.
Little early for a hanging, but I reckon we could still stir up a crowd for you. ”
I rolled my eyes and kept on our original path.
Was Maksym entirely right? Yes. Yes, he was, and I hated that.
I hadn’t given his offer a lick of thought yet and planned on putting it off for as long as I bloody well could.
Maybe I should have given the matter of my life or death a more thorough work through, but I’d be damned if it was goddess-damned Grimmoria that had me changing my standard mode of operation.
Blissfully, Maksym was silent until we crested the steps into the Keep.
“I realize this looks little like Caenleigh,” he commented with a nod to a pair of sentries, geared in full plate, who pulled open a set of doors towering two stories tall.
“But they were actually built during the same period. Our original keep was farther northwest, in what is now the Wilds, but was destroyed during our years of ongoing conflict with the high fae. One of my ancestors had a lick of forward thinking and rebuilt us at a greater distance from all our neighbors.”
Maybe it was the sudden shift in the king’s demeanor between the cellblock and the courtyard that had me feeling put off, or that he talked about history like it should be of any importance to me, but I didn’t like it.
The inside of Grimm’s Keep did little to help that feeling.
Beyond the looming steel and wooden doors, the foyer sprawled out before us in a way that reminded me too much of home.
A generous, bronze-spindled staircase swept up from either side of the entrance, flanked by networks of halls that sprang off in every direction.
Despite the endless sharp angles of dark stone and accents of rich wood and bronze, an abundance of light poured into the space from double-stacked, deep-set windows lining many of the walls.
Some were even fitted with stained glass depictions that filtered in streams of iridescent colors.
I’d never have expected the dark fae stronghold to carry such an air of refinement.
The Keep was busy, too, buzzing with activity coming and going everywhere. Most notably, though, was how little of that activity gravitated towards Maksym as we traveled through the foyer. Nods, smiles, and waves came, even a couple of curtsies from women who must have been staff, but that was it.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Maksym had lied about his station.
After all, my father—and, unfortunately, my brother—couldn’t set foot outside a chamber or council room without being mobbed by subjects, fawned over by folks who had little genuine interest other than how they might gain favor.
“Thoughts?” Maksym asked, and my traveling vision settled on him.
“It’s…” I pursed my lips. “Quaint.”
His dark eyebrows climbed, and he coughed. “Quaint?”
“Mm. I’ve seen bigger. Far more impressive.”
Slowly, Maksym nodded, but clearly not in agreement. “We’ll see about that, Miss Wynn.”
He strode towards the staircase to our left and took it with the same graceful fluidity he’d flitted up the dungeon steps with, leaving me again to trail after him with one leg that didn’t enjoy such a motion.
At the top of the steps, where a railed landing overlooked the foyer below, Maksym stopped and gestured at the wide-open space. “Does this angle do it any better?”
What a strange, strange man.
I followed him to that railing, though, and took a glance out below. “Afraid not.”
“Shame,” he shrugged. “Must be the cold.”
Before I’d fully processed that the King of Grimmoria was making cock jokes with me, his fucking prisoner, his long legs had already carried him a dozen paces away, down an expansive hallway into the depths of the second floor.
There were fewer windows here than in the foyer, mostly small circular ones dotted along the hall’s length. Little change in the light, though, courtesy of sizeable nytefire lanterns strung up on nearly every dark wood rafter and stone ballast above us.
Perhaps most strangely, though, was how the dull buzz of noise from the atrium followed behind us, even though there was no traffic in this upper hall aside from a handful of posted sentries.
But when I’d turned to look over my shoulder twice, there was nothing but an empty hall behind us.