Chapter 14
Arms lift me. I’m freezing, on the edge of shivering.
“She’s okay,” the voice says. I lean into the warm body holding me.
All I can think about right now is being warm.
The person holding me places me on something soft and rests my head on what feels like a pillow.
A softness settles over me, covering me in the warmth of a blanket.
I settle into the pillows and close my eyes, exhausted.
Sleep is a welcome reprieve.
The first thing I feel when I wake up is the heavy duvet caressing my bare skin, followed immediately by a dull pounding in my head.
I crack my eyes open to find Elle and Cally sitting in the two oversized armchairs by my bedroom window.
Light filters in through the window, landing on Cally’s wild hair.
My gaze drifts to her face, only to find her staring silently at the bed. At me, now awake.
She hurriedly stands and comes to sit on the bed beside me. “Hey, you,” she says softly.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. My throat feels like it’s made of gravel, and my mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton.
“Elle thought you might want me here after what happened last night.” I replay her words in my head as I try to recall the night, but my head feels too groggy to function. “How do you feel?” she asks, interrupting my train of thought.
I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes. My hair is curly and matted against my head, still slightly damp from the night before. I swing my legs out of the bed, but Cally stops me.“What?” I ask.
She eyes me carefully. “Are you feeling okay?”
I look at her and say tersely, “I’m fine.” She raises an eyebrow at me. “I just need to get moving and get my day started. I’ve been in bed too long.”
“You have nothing to do, so if you wanted to stay in bed, you could,” she counters.
Elle quietly steps out of the room. Cally turns her head at the click of the door closing behind her, and I use the distraction to get up and head to the bathroom.
I grab a robe lying at the edge of the bed and put it on, the satin cool on my skin.
When I get to the bathroom, my immediate thought is that I look like a fucking mess.
My eyes are swollen, and a pink mark now mars my forehead. I press a tentative finger to it, and I can’t help the sharp inhale of breath that comes with the pain.
“You were hitting your head last night, and one of the healers had to tend to it. The mark will be gone by the end of the day,” Cally says quietly behind me.
Fuck.
The bathroom door cracks open, revealing a somber Elle.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” I say, looking at her reflection in the mirror.
She swallows hard and nods. “You did. You scared us all.”
Us all? “Who else was here? What even happened? I don’t remember much past crying on the floor.”
“You must have used a shield to keep me out. I didn’t even hear you crying,” Elle says.
“When you got in the shower, I turned away to give you some privacy. I finally realized something was wrong when I didn’t hear the shower anymore.
The room also felt…colder. When I looked over, you were on the floor of the shower, sobbing.
It looked like you were trying to tear your skin off.
I tried to get in the shower, but it was like there was an invisible wall, and I couldn’t get to you.
Then you started banging your head on the floor, and I panicked.
I ran to go find help. When I got back, you were still banging your head against the tiles, and your mouth was open like you were screaming, but we couldn’t hear anything with the shield.
” Her words come quickly as she recalls the night.
“We?” I ask.
“Prince Marik. He was able to break the shield, thank the Mother. By the time he got here, your head was bleeding. There was blood everywhere, Mae. I immediately sent for a healer. Your magic must have turned the shower water freezing, and you were shaking by the time we got to you.”
I stare at her, mouth slightly open. I remember crying in the shower and wanting it to stop.
I don’t remember hurting myself, though.
I have a history of self-harm, but it’s always been manageable.
It’s not something I ever talk about. The magic in my blood prevents scarring, so the damage I manage to inflict always heals quickly.
Cally and Willa are the only people I’ve opened up to about it.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t…I wasn’t trying to hurt myself like that.”
Cally wipes a fallen tear from her cheek. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Wait, you said Marik came in?” She nods, and I put my head in my hands, trying to stifle the rising embarrassment of Marik seeing me naked and vulnerable. “How did he even know? How was he able to break the shield?”
Elle shakes her head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t powerful enough, but I guess he was.” She pauses but then asks, “What happened?”
It’s my turn to shake my head. “I don’t know. I mean, I do, but I don’t. This happens sometimes.”
“What does? Busting your head open?”
“No. I call them my episodes. Sometimes, I get upset, or I’m triggered by something, and it’s like this snowball effect.
Something will happen, and then every little insecurity or thought attacks my brain at once, and it’s impossible to stop all the thoughts.
I turn to self-harm to distract myself from them and bring me out of it.
But it’s never… It’s never turned out like this. ”
Shame is a constant companion after I give in to the urge to self-harm. This is a secret that I keep hidden carefully. It’s a weakness, and I don’t want anyone to think less of me for giving in to what feels uncontrollable.
“Elle, I’m so sorry if I scared you,” I say, almost pleadingly.
She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize. You did, but you don’t owe me an apology.
Your magic is waking up, though, and you need to be careful the next time this happens.
Your magic won’t intentionally hurt you, but if it feels like you’re under attack or if you’re in danger, it will sometimes act on its own to protect you.
I think that’s what happened with that barrier.
It was trying to keep external threats out to protect you while you were weak,” she says. “Hey, what happened with Asmo?”
I groan again. “How did you know about that?”
“Marik might have mentioned it.”
Great. “He said that he doesn’t want to be here and that this ‘contest’ is being forced upon all of the princes.”
Elle rolls her eyes. “He’s an idiot. That’s not even true.
All the princes were invited to participate.
Nobody is being forced to be here, and he knows that.
That’s odd, though. He was the one who warned Marik that something was wrong.
They were both arguing with William to let them up here to help. ”
I furrow my brow. “That makes no sense,” I say. “He didn’t just leave after dinner?”
“No, as far as I’m aware, all of the princes are still here,” Elle says.
“No one else knows what’s going on. We’ve told them that we’ll let them know the plans for the remainder of the week shortly.
We were waiting on you to wake up and see how you were doing before we gave them anything definitive. ”
“What about Asmo and Marik? Do you think they’ll tell anyone?” I ask.
“Not if they want to be here anymore. I feel confident that they won’t tell the others. But even if they did, nobody would hold it against you.”
“What do you want to do, Mae?” Cally asks.
I hate the question. I don’t know what I want to do. Well, on second thought, all I want to do is go back to Bound and bury my head in a book. I want to go back to being ignorant of my lineage and spend the rest of my life among the pages of other peoples’ lives.
I turn the sink on and splash my face with cold water before finally saying, “Honestly, I just want to go for a run and clear my head. Can I give you guys an answer after that?”
Elle nods. “Of course.”
They mutter something about going to grab coffee.
Once they leave, I change into my running gear and bound out the door.
Running has always been the thing that has kept me sane.
Sometimes, I run to escape my thoughts, but I did enough of that last night.
It’s time to face them, so I use this run to think through everything instead.
I overestimated people’s grace and compassion. Naively, I assumed that everyone would welcome me as the queen because of who my father was. But clearly, I was seriously mistaken.
Even if the citizens of the kingdom have welcomed me, which seems to have been helped by the presence of the stag yesterday, the High Houses clearly have not.
It seems I’ll be proving myself to the princes as much as they’re trying to prove themselves to me.
If they can report back to their Houses that I’m worthy of the crown, then maybe that will help.
I have no idea, though. Politics has never been my strong suit.
I enjoy black and white, and it seems like the game we’re all playing is gray.
I need to spend individual time with each prince to get to know them. I am not interested in doing any more group activities, at least not for the time being.
Because Marik saved me last night, my gut is saying he should be the first prince I spend time with. He seemed so uninterested in me at dinner last night, at least in comparison to the other princes. He barely spoke other than to berate August and Koa.
Asmo said that he was friends with Etta. Just how friendly were they? Is it possible that he’s truly not interested in getting to know me because he was courting Etta? Is that why Asmo spoke out like that last night, speaking for his brother, not himself?
And how did Asmo know that something was wrong with me last night? Is it possible that he developed a conscious and felt guilty for the way he spoke to me last night and asked Marik to come check on me?