Chapter 2
Penny had no idea where the servant was taking her.
The king's bite still burned.
The queen's eyes still haunted her.
The thought followed her through moonlit gardens and winding paths until she nearly walked into the older man waiting beneath an arch of white roses.
For the first time since stepping into the palace, Penny wanted to cry.
The servant shoved her forward and launched into another frantic stream of words.
The older man listened and sighed.
Then waved the servant away.
The servant didn't argue.
He practically fled.
And suddenly Penny was alone with the first living person she had seen since her capture.
The old man studied her for a moment.
Then he touched his chest.
"Gardener."
Penny blinked.
He repeated it. Slower.
"Gar-de-ner."
Understanding flickered.
"Gardener," Penny echoed.
His face brightened.
Then he pointed toward her. Waiting.
The gesture took her a moment to understand.
The old man waited anyway.
"Penny."
A smile touched his face.
"Penny," he repeated softly.
As though names mattered.
As though people did.
Then the gardener motioned for her to follow.
Penny did.
The garden unfolded around them in silver moonlight.
Crystal lanterns glowed among the trees.
Women laughed beside fountains.
Others painted beneath flowering gazebos.
Music drifted softly through the night from instruments being practiced.
The women here looked happy.
Nothing this beautiful should exist beside a throne room full of vampires.
The beauty of it unsettled her more than anything she had seen so far.
At last, the gardener stopped.
Before them stood what looked like a glass cottage grown from the earth itself.
Moonlight gleamed through crystal walls tangled with ivy and roses.
Inside, a bed fit for royalty awaited.
Penny stared.
The old man stepped behind her.
When his fingers touched the shackles, she flinched.
He murmured something softly.
Then the lock clicked.
The heavy iron slipped from her wrists.
And fell.
Penny stared.
For a moment, she couldn't move.
The iron was gone.
The old man stepped back.
Giving her space.
Giving her a choice.
Slowly, Penny lifted her hands.
The red, raw, marks of slavery were still there.
But she was free.
The realization lasted exactly one heartbeat.
Then Penny ran.
She fled the crystal cottage.
The garden, the music, the laughter of human prey,
And every beautiful thing in this terrible place.
Cold stone flashed beneath her bare feet.
Flowers of every color brushed her skirts as she hurried through the moonlit paths.
Something inside her froze.
Beneath an arch of white blossoms stood two men in dark military coats.
Between them was a woman.
Dressed in white silk.
The same white silk they had dressed Penny in.
The man lifted his face and his mouth was red.
The woman's throat was red.
And the woman was smiling.
Her fingers brushed the man's cheek to bring him back.
Her head tilted slightly.
As though these were kisses offered instead of a wound.
Penny couldn't look away.
The realization settled over her like ice water.
This was what the garden was for.
This was what they expected of her.
That one day she would smile like that.
Tilt her head like that.
Offer her throat and pretend it was affection.
The fountains whispered in the darkness.
Somewhere nearby, a woman laughed.
Penny's stomach turned.
She would never tilt her head to a vampire and smile.
Determined to get free before they indoctrinated her, too.
Behind her, the gardener called out sharply to someone.
Footsteps answered.
The kind of footsteps that already knew where every path led.
Penny ran.
The massive wooden doors loomed ahead.
Hope flared.
She threw herself against them.
Her hands searched frantically.
The doors were smooth from edge to edge.
No handle. No way out.
Penny stumbled back.
The woman beneath the arch flashed through her mind.
The willing tilt of her throat.
A sob rose in Penny's chest.
She swallowed it.
Then a hand settled gently on her shoulder.
Penny cried out in fear and spun.
He was a shadow given form, a being of night and mystery.
His dark hair fell in soft waves, framing skin as pale and smooth as marble.
He wore the same dark military coat as the men beneath the arch.
The uniform fit him too well, sharp across his shoulders and impossible to ignore.
And with unnatural stillness, she was beginning to recognize in all of the monsters here.
She knew she should be afraid.
But his smile complicated things.
It arrived first in his eyes. Warm and apologetic.
Entirely out of place in a palace full of monsters.
The soft smile made no sense.
Penny's pulse still hadn't slowed.
All she knew was that it felt deeply unfair for something dangerous to look this beautiful.
He spoke.
The strange language of the palace.
But softer than she had heard it before.
The way someone speaks to a frightened animal.
Penny didn't understand a word.
She understood the intention anyway.
His hand rested briefly against the door.
Then against her arm.
Slow enough that she could pull away if she wanted.
His fingers rose to her face.
And brushed away a tear.
As though it mattered.
Penny froze.
This was the part she knew.
The part she had been waiting for since the ship.
Since the throne room.
Since the moment the trader's hands closed around her arm on the shore.
The moment kindness ended, and her slavery began.
She braced herself.
He opened his arms instead.
Penny flinched backward.
She wanted no comfort from these creatures.
No gentle voice.
No careful hands.
No kindness wrapped around a trap.
Something flickered across his face.
Something dangerously close to an apology.
Penny hated it.
Because for one terrible second, she wanted to believe it.
Don't!
The thought came sharp and immediate.
His arms came around her anyway.
The ground vanished.
Penny made a startled sound as he lifted her effortlessly into the air.
White silk spilled over his dark coat.
Her face ended up far too close to his jaw.
His throat.
The unfair geometry of a face that had no business looking like that while committing kidnappings.
The garden blurred around them under the moonlight.
Cool night air tugged at her hair.
His arms never shifted.
Never slipped.
And that was the problem.
For one terrible, unguarded moment, Penny understood.
She understood why women might want to stay.
Why they smiled.
Why they tilted their heads beneath flowering arches and forgot they were prey.
If it was this one.
With his careful hands.
His quiet voice.
His impossible patience.
Penny shoved the thought down so hard it almost hurt.
No.
Absolutely not.
He is a monster she reprimanded herself.
When he finally set her down, she stumbled backward into an iron fence hidden beneath climbing roses.
A gate.
Hope hit so fast it stole her breath.
Penny lunged for it.
She pushed harder.
The iron didn't move.
Penny gripped the bars and stared.
Beyond the gate, the city glittered.
Golden windows.
Music drifting through the night.
Carriages rolling along narrow streets.
Life so close she could almost touch it.
Creatures like the ones in the palace wandered below in expensive clothes and jewels, moving through the lamplight as though the entire night belonged to them.
Penny tightened her grip.
Freedom was right there.
Just beyond the bars.
And she couldn't reach it.
She couldn't reach any of it.
A warm voice spoke behind her.
Penny turned.
The soldier was watching her.
And suddenly she understood.
He thought he was showing her something beautiful.
A gift.
He had carried her through the garden so she could see the city.
So she could enjoy it.
The realization landed like a stone.
He didn't understand.
He was showing her everything she couldn't have.
Everything she couldn't reach.
Penny looked back through the bars.
The lives, continuing without her.
Strong arms lifted her again before the grief could become something worse.
This time, Penny clung to him despite herself.
Her fingers caught the dark wool of his coat.
He was solid.
And right now, that was enough.
The garden blurred.
Then steadied.
They had stopped again.
Another gate stood before them, thick with moon flowers.
Beyond it waited another garden.
Another beautiful cage.
The lanterns glowed softly among the flowers.
Men wandered the paths in white silk.
The same white she wore.
Vampires drifted among them at an unhurried pace.
A touch here. A smile there.
The same way someone walks through an orchard, deciding which fruit to pick.
Penny felt something cold settle inside her.
She was a choice, just like them.
A preference.
A different flavor on a different night.
The realization hollowed her out.
She wasn't a prisoner.
She was inventory.
A flavor.
The realization settled into her like cold water.
One of the men looked up.
Sea-dark hair.
Young.
A sea prince.
Far older than the others seemed.
His eyes found hers through the gate.
For a moment, neither of them looked away.
No smile.
No greeting.
Just a brief, startled understanding.
He wore white silk.
And offered a smile.
Then the soldier shifted her in his arms.
The garden blurred.
The moment was gone.
Penny didn't look back.
She couldn't afford to.
Not when she was already carrying more fear than she knew what to do with.
She buried her face against the soldier's coat instead and tried not to think about white silk.
Or locked gates.
Or sea princes in cages.
Then the smell hit her.
Salt.
Deep water.
Home.
Her head snapped up.
Her breath caught.
And there it was.
Beyond the final gate, the sea stretched beneath the moon.
The sight struck her so hard it hurt.
For one aching moment she was home again.
Bare feet in the sand.
Moonlight on the waves.
The tide calling her name.
Her hand reached through the bars before she realized she was moving.
The water was impossibly far away.
She reached anyway.
The waves rolled toward shore in their ancient rhythm.
The first honest thing she had seen since her capture.
Her throat tightened.
Then she realized the soldier had gone still.
Completely still.
Penny looked back.
He wasn't watching the ocean.
He was watching her.
Watching the way she'd crossed the distance to the gate without thinking.
Watching the way her fingers strained toward the water.
Watching the way every part of her had turned toward the sea.
Like a flower turning toward sunlight.
Like something recognizing home.
Something shifted behind the soldier's eyes.
Like a tide changing direction.
And Penny knew he understood she didn't belong here.
The ocean said the rest.
Rolling dark and endless beyond the gate.
Calling to her in the only language it had ever needed.
The song rose before she could stop it.
The same lullaby her mother had sung beside moonlit water
When the tide came in high,
And the world felt larger than a little girl could understand.
Hear me, sea, carry this for me,
a message wrapped in salt and spray:
tell my mother where I've gone,
that I did not walk away.
Tell her I am someone's kept,
that my life is not my own,
But the love I hold for her
Is the one thing I've not lost.
And if the tide should take me whole,
If I do not see another dawn,
let her know my love stayed lit
long after I was gone.
The final note drifted out across the water.
Then vanished into the waves.
Penny lowered her hand.
Tears blurred the sea to silver.
Only then did she look at the soldier.
His eyes were fixed on her.
Not the way a man watches a woman.
The way a man watches lightning strike twice in the same place.
As though he had just witnessed something impossible.
And for the first time since meeting him, the careful smile was gone.
When he finally spoke, the words meant nothing.
But Penny listened beneath the words.
And what she heard was wonder.
Real wonder.
The kind that arrives only when something you believed impossible suddenly stands in front of you.
His arms came around her once more.
This time, she didn't fight.
She was exhausted.
Far from home.
The sea was on the other side of a gate that would never open.
And for the first time all night, she didn't have enough strength left to resist.
The soldier held her carefully.
As though she were something fragile.
As though she were something rare.
Penny closed her eyes.
She did not know yet that not all monsters were the same.
She did not know that this moment would change everything.
She did not know why the soldier was looking at her as though the world had shifted beneath his feet.
She only knew she had sung a song her mother had taught her.
And somehow
The monster had looked astonished.