Chapter 16 The Time Has Come
SIXTEEN
THE TIME HAS COME
When I return to the safe haven of their bedroom, there’s a long white gown hanging near the bath. It’s thin and sheer like my one from home, made of more lace than fabric, but black glittering diamonds are gleaming along the hem of the sleeves, the hood, and the base of the dress.
It’s a gift. Just like he said he had a gift for me.
I hate how much it looks like a mating gown.
I ran away from one of those already.
At least that ceremony wasn’t going to end in my death.
What if he knows why I was truly brought here? What if he knows about my affiliation with the exiled witch? What if he kills me before I kill him?
“You’re going to be his bride!” Zilo says happily with a big clap of his hands as he walks in behind me followed by two more less than excited hellhounds.
“You should tell her the plan,” Avian says suddenly.
The smile shining in his friend’s eyes drains away rather quickly.
“No. It’ll put her in danger.” Zilo skims past me and takes a seat on the settee, making it seem tiny beneath his enormous frame.
His legs spread wide as he makes himself comfortable, but he doesn’t look at all comfy really.
It occurs to me that I doubt Zilo has ever been really at ease a single day in his entire life.
He’s tense. The hard lines of his shoulders and chest are deep cutting.
But I can’t focus on any of them.
“I know the plan,” I whisper.
Roman’s dark eyebrows slowly rise, but he says nothing. No one does. They’re too afraid of repeating their plans, and I’m too exhausted to even have this conversation. There’s a weight on my shoulders that’s grown incredibly real over the last several minutes.
I came here for a reason. And now the time has come.
“I have to get ready,” I tell them, and the tragic emptiness in Avian’s eyes sinks into me then. It’s like he wants to steal me away from all the things he’s thrown me into.
But it’s too late for that.
“Yeah,” Zilo agrees with an uncertain nod of his head. He might be uncertain, but I know he’ll fake his confidence until the day he dies. “Yeah. And…take another bath. I could smell you all the way down the hall.”
Great.
Good talk, Zilo.
Roman and Avian are still staring at me, and it isn’t until Zilo nudges them one after the other that they follow him out. A sort of aching pain pulses through my heart with the sound of the door clicking closed behind them.
I stand in a daze long after they’re gone. My body goes through the motions of a life worth living. Of a future Princess in the making.
I bathe. I comb my long blonde hair. I slide into the sleek dress my Prince gifted me. My slight curves fill out the lace nicely. It’s delicate against my fingertips. I glance only once at the beautiful, blue-eyed woman staring at me in the reflection of the inky bathwater.
And then I know I’m ready.
I’m going to kill my future mate.
The dinner that evening is finer than I’ve seen in this hell ridden realm.
I’m seated high above it all and I can’t help but take it in slowly piece by piece.
A sleek black table runner flows down the length of each long table.
Like golden starlight, flamed candles dance here and there in the dark.
A chorus of murmuring words circle the cave like walls.
The meat on the plates is tender and seasoned, and some of the patrons even have the decency to use utensils from time to time.
I spy Zilo and Avian holding the food in their hands, and a small smile almost pulls at my lips.
I suppose you can’t always teach old dogs new tricks.
The Prince’s hold on my hip tightens, and when I gaze up at him, he’s watching me closely. I’m seated on his lap as his legs dangle over the ledge of his favorite little perch. We’re sitting high above hundreds of tables. A quiet chatter of his people enjoying a delicious meal scuttles below us.
And he’s watching me with piercing dark eyes.
“What are you looking at, my lovely?” he asks, wafting hot air against my ear in a clammy, uncomfortable sensation.
“Nothing,” I whisper along his neck, teasing his flesh while distracting his mind.
If he thinks too hard on the way I look at his High Hell, would he kill them?
Would he kill me?
A clatter of fine china clinks against the table set behind us, and from over Ravar’s shoulder, I lock eyes with the pale irises of the next heir to the throne.
He stands next to a small round table with a set of two plates balancing at the edge where he’s dropped them.
Two glasses are placed more neatly at the center.
His heavy attention holds mine. The memory of how he sounded when he was buried deep inside me flickers through my mind.
And now it seems I’ve forgotten entirely how to breathe.
“Thank you, brother,” the Prince drones, snapping me out of my trance and pulling my attention back to him at once. “Leave us.”
A single heartbeat passes by before his voice raises and startles a gasp from my lungs.
“I said, get! I took the honor of your braids the last time you lingered too long with a bride of mine. Don’t make me take the honor of your manhood next,” Ravar grumbles as he gazes with a cold empty look out at the crowd.
My mouth can’t seem to close.
He took…he took away his brother’s most prideful possession? He took away his honor?
Why?
Roman’s attention never leaves me, and there’s a desperate look in his pretty gaze. Very distinctly, his index finger lingers on the glass to the right. His brow lifts.
Ever so subtly, I nod.
Leave. Just go before the Prince’s maliciousness creeps out again.
Roman turns with his scarred back lined with tension. And my attention finally falls to the wine glass.
Poison. That’s the best they can do?
Rather unclever really.
But what is my alternative?
Shoving this man to his death right here, right now?
No. He’s quick. He’d land on his feet like a vengeful cat filled with grace and toxic entitlement.
I can do better.
My mind circles as I think it all through, and as I do, I notice how close the hell fae are seated tonight. They don’t dine in a class of their own nearest the High Hell as they usually do. The several hundred of the dark horned creatures are directly below us.
None of them say a word.
My gaze shifts from one table to the next, and everyone seems alight with happiness as they chew merrily and drink heartily to the special occasion. Except for those deadly dark eyes that peer up at myself and the Prince every few seconds that pass by.
It’s a chill of anticipation to have them watch me when I already feel so watched by the man holding me tightly.
“The Night Witch has broken our wards,” he says to me on an empty whisper.
His face is vacant, but there’s so much thought behind his inky eyes.
“The Night Witch?” I ask with as much confusion as I can muster.
He nods.
“Why do we hate her, my Prince?” I force my fingers to remain steady as I push back the silky black locks from his face.
“I don’t,” he tells me with an exhale that carries oh so much weight with it. “I love her,” he rasps on a broken whisper.
Now the confusion is real.
“She was my soulmate. She was my one and only. I married into the crown. She was queen of this realm. But the magic here can be consuming. It’s too much for some people.
” My heart pounds in rhythm to the heaviness of his every word.
“It turned her into beautiful madness. She was pretty like you.” He glances my way, and I can’t even fathom how the darkness of the Night Witch and myself could ever be compared.
“This morning after you left my rooms, a guard told me he spotted Creatchin in the halls for the first time in centuries. The cursed magic in her blood seems to have tainted her physically, but my man said he’d recognize her anywhere. He saw her. He saw her talking to you.”
My stomach drops.
My fingers dig into his shoulder instinctively, and it suddenly isn’t a question of whether I could shove this man from his ledge but…if he’d do the same to me.
“That was the Night Witch?” I ask in an even tone as I bite back every urge to look for Zilo.
His searching gaze picks apart every detail I give him. And fuck, I hope I give him what he wants to see.
The hold he has against my hip loosens little by little. Seconds slip by. My heart counts each and every moment that it continues to give me life.
“My Prince,” Zilo says from somewhere behind Ravar.
I don’t dare look away. If I glance away for a single second, it could cost me my life.
“My Prince, the gift you ordered has just arrived,” Zilo’s words are pointed and, if I’m not mistaken, a little worrisome.
Worried indeed. I too feel that fear cracking open inside myself.
My beast rumbles to life, but I swallow that reckless feeling right back down.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything—
“Cersia?” A delicate, familiar voice says.
Her tone washes over my name like a river that’s worn down a stone for years. In this moment, she’s a gentle current of water caught up in a brooding, deadly storm.
Because my sister is the kind one.
And she shouldn’t be here in the kingdom of hell.
“Nyra.” I turn in his arms until her heart-shaped face fills my vision.
She’s there just behind the small table, and she’s looking at me with so much distress in her pretty brown eyes.
She looks small here. Fragile. Breakable.
“Why are you here?” I turn to the man I was so afraid of just seconds ago. “Why is she here?” I growl out.
“She is your gift, my lovely,” he says with a stabbing hint of viciousness. “Do you want to keep your gift?”
Oh no. No. No. No.
“Of course,” I whisper, barely choking the words out.
I have to kill this man. Right now.