Chapter Five
ELYSSARA
I edge towards the black dress hanging in the wardrobe. A bony, impossibly small bodice and sheer skirts stare back at me. He wants me on display.
A costume. A show. And I’m the main act.
Bile rises in my throat.
“You’ll need to wear it, miss,” Fern interjects, voice hushed.
“And if I don’t?” I snark.
“That is…,” she swallows thickly, “not an option.”
She reaches for the bathrobe at my shoulders, and whispers, “Wear the dress, miss. Suffer the humiliation, and cast it from your mind. It will be a far kinder fate than anything that would come from refusing…” She trails off, and I think she’s done before she adds, “For all of us.”
Her hands are shaking, and the other maids look at me, pleading. Although they serve King Maldrak, I can see the goodness in their eyes—their unwillingness to further my shame. I have always been a fool for birds with broken wings. Ronyn. Seren. Tess. Now these three.
“Fine,” I acquiesce.
The maid removes my robe, revealing my bare body. Broken, bruised, scarred. But not defeated.
The other maids hold the dress open so I can step into it, and I wince as my ribs press together with the movement.
The maids shimmy the dress up over my thighs and hips, and position the bodice around my breasts, before pulling it taut at the back.
“Fuck,” I curse, as the bodice squeezes my splintered ribs.
“Forgive me, miss. His Majesty will accept nothing less than perfection,” Tura apologizes.
“Just do it,” I grit out between my teeth.
The women pull and tighten until my breasts are pressed firmly in the onyx-bejeweled bodice, a deep V dipping through the center to reveal more cleavage than is decent—and I’m not one for propriety.
I stand as tall as I can manage, and pin my shoulder blades together—the only dignity I can give myself.
I limp to the ornate standing mirror in the corner of the wardrobe to behold myself, and my breath hitches in my throat.
A high slit cuts through the translucent black skirts, revealing my long, slender thigh.
My breasts are displayed so seductively that I barely recognize the woman staring back at me.
The Heart of Ashara still hangs from my neck—the crimson jewel dangling between my breasts like a beacon to lure the eyes.
No one can touch it. They’ve tried—using their hands, their weapons, their servants—but the Heart of Ashara knows they are not of my blood, and so on me it stays.
A safe harbor when I start drowning in fear.
The only thing that can remind me who I am when all of Kryntar Castle begs me to forget.
“These need to go on, too,” Hilda reminds, lace gloves draped over her palms.
I nod and take them from her, delicately fitting them to my fingers and rolling them up my skin. The lace snakes almost entirely up my arms, stopping at my biceps—the same place I used to wear my mother’s cuff.
I close my eyes for a moment—wishing away images of my mother, and taking a breath to remind myself of her sacrifice.
I swallow my pain, pushing it down into the pit of my stomach, burying the past with my fear, and bringing only the future to my mind’s eye.
My throne. To reclaim my throne and take down everyone who erased it, everyone who sought to take it from me, everyone who sullies my parents’ sacrifice, I need to get through this dinner. This charade.
Hilda gestures for me to sit, and pulls out thin-strapped shoes with a platform for my heel. I feel naked enough without my weapons, but wearing something so impractical feels like sacrilege.
The maid pulls them on, fastening them at my ankle, just beneath the lillath ankle cuff that cages my magic.
I gaze at myself—auburn hair coiled into a crown of braids, face painted into a mask of seduction, body wrapped like a fucking present.
I take another look at the freckles that race across my nose—the ones Kael traced with his fingers, kissed with his lying mouth. I hate that I can still see them. If the cosmetics should do anything for me, it is to temporarily erase the parts of me I wish to forget.
I fight the urge to scrub and claw at my own skin, and instead, I turn to the maids. “I’m ready.”
“I assure you, miss—you’re not,” Fern says, fear heavy in her eyes and breaking through the cracks in her voice.
I swallow thickly, skin breaking out in gooseflesh at the thought of what lies ahead.
The maids lead me out of the wardrobe and back into the main bedroom. The guards at the door respond instantly to my presence, their eyes raking over my body in a way that makes me want to recoil in disgust.
But I steel myself. This is only the beginning.
“No wonder the Shadow Prince had his way with her,” one guard jeers.
“She’s got good tits on her—I’ll give her that,” the other guard responds, and my instinct to run a knife through his ribs flares sharp and hot.
“Come anywhere near me and I’ll rip the smirk off your face with my fucking teeth,” I snap back, desperately trying to leash the fury in my veins.
The guard steps closer until I can feel his acrid breath on my face. “I love a woman who bites. If His Majesty didn’t give us strict orders to leave you be, I’d find out just how dirty that sweet little mouth of yours could be.”
I take myself away again. Detach from the part of me that has to tolerate this. My chest tightens, and my breath quickens. My mind races with panic as the urge to lash out becomes stronger with every heartbeat. I can’t do this. I can’t stand here and take it. I fucking can’t.
But just as I begin to lose control, Revryn’s voice cuts through my mind again.
Tell me something you can smell, see and feel, little one.
I ignore the guard, looking beyond him to anchor myself here in the present.
With every observation, my breath slows, and through my panic, I swear I can hear the other guard say something about me being a madwoman. I push past it.
My breathing comes back under control, and I relax my shoulders and unclench my jaw.
“Are you taking me to Maldrak or not? I grow tired of your taunts,” I state coolly, though my tone is at odds with the swirling mess of chaos inside me.
The men lead me down the long, dark halls of the castle, and it gives me a moment to calm my nerves and find a modicum of composure in my frayed mental state.
We climb stairs, turn corners, and pass door after door, before we finally stop in front of domineering double oak doors guarded by almost a dozen men.
“The Lightborne bitch for His Majesty,” one of the guards that escorted me sneers.
The guards at the threshold nod, and swing the decadent doors open into a grand dining room.
An obscenely long white marble table with veins of black curving beneath its surface cuts through the center of the room.
It reminds me of the shadowed veins that stretch out from the necks of Marked soldiers.
The table is surrounded by thick black chairs with intricate etchings of gold along the top—a warm invitation. A lie.
Onyx drapes shut out the sun half-blotted out behind the ripped Decay, and instead, the room is dimly lit with candles flickering through the middle of the table.
My eyes dart around looking for escape routes, the number of guards, possible weapons.
“Sit, Elyssara,” a voice echoes off the high ceilings.
“I’m delighted you could join me,” King Maldrak lilts as he glides towards me.
I’d recognize him anywhere—his callous eyes haunt my dreams. I don’t know if they haunt me because they are a mirror image of Kael’s or because he’s taken my freedom.
Or both. “You look ravishing, of course. Kael has always had an eye for beauty,” he croons. “You’ve met Jax, of course.”
He’s toying with me.
I know he’s fucking with me, and yet my heart lurches at the mention of Kael and Jax.
I snarl my disgust at him, but no words form.
He’s playing on my weaknesses. Pressing on my wounds.
He lets out a soft chuckle, “I see the Dawnmere temper runs in the blood, Elyssara.”
Dawnmere?
I’ve never known my family name.
My father always said it was easier to be no one on the streets. He’d tuck my hair behind my ear with gentleness, but his words were always sharp. People with names, belongings and coin are easy targets, he’d say.
The name steals the air from my lungs, and my chest rises and falls too quickly, unable to keep my composure.
Maldrak’s eyes rove my body, though not in the same way as the guards. No, Maldrak is calculating. Analyzing. Measuring me up.
His eyes are just like Kael’s—ocean blue and penetrating. He’s tall and broad like Kael, too, and the similarities are unsettling. I take a small step back from him—emotion winning out over my mind that demands I don’t back down.
“Elyssara, please. Take a seat,” he pulls out the chair to the right of the head of the table. Next to his chair. “It may surprise you, but I don’t wish to hurt you. I wish to have a conversation about our mutual goals. Or at the very least, how our interests may align in some cases.”
“I share nothing in common with you!” I spit at him, stumbling back on my platformed shoes.
Unfazed by my outburst, Maldrak raises his hands in surrender. “I know you think you know the truth, Elyssara, but you only know one side. You don’t have to believe me, but I was hoping that we could have a civilized conversation that may give you answers to questions you don’t even know to ask.”
“You’ve locked me in the fucking dungeons, bound my magic and paraded me in front of the entire castle in your Kingdom’s dress—what part of that is civilized? You’re trying to play tricks of the mind, Maldrak, and I’m not fucking playing!” I scream, my voice already hoarse.
“That’s the thing, Elyssara—you are already playing, you just don’t know it yet,” he teases, and gestures again at the chair.
“Funny—your nephew said the same thing when he was trying to convince me to help him. I suppose deception runs in your blood.”