Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Two weeks later
Magic mirror on the wall,
who is the fairest of them all?
The Witch Queen was staring at her reflection, as usual. She was a broken doll on repeat. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Winter never answered her. The queen had skin as smooth as porcelain, eyes so vivid they could be glass, and a mane sleeker than silk. She wasn’t pretty, she was disconcertingly perfect.
For two weeks, Winter had not been permitted to leave the queen’s private chamber—a black marble coffin, essentially. The room was decorated with hand-painted artwork, candelabras, leather seating, and an overly draped four-poster bed.
The guards had been given permission to bite her if she tried to run.
The same went for every time she asked about West. Winter had been bitten so many times, she’d finally stopped bothering.
And shifting was impossible. Upon arrival at the underground palace, they’d wrapped her in silver chains.
Most days were spent fixed to this iron chair—so thick and heavy she couldn’t move it.
“Fine,” the queen screeched, her dissatisfaction ringing off the stone walls. “You won’t answer a simple question. You won’t tell me where Kaden is. And you won’t tell me where Felix is. So, what will you tell me?”
Nothing.
Winter’s silence rippled through the room like an invisible toxin. This poison already had a name: Feminine Rage.
She refused to talk about her asshole ex anyway. She never killed Kaden. Unlike him and his evil twin, she had a remnant of a soul. How could she ever kill someone she once loved? She couldn’t. He was probably somewhere over a rainbow, fingering someone new.
The queen met her eyes in the mirror. “Straighten out your face before I do.”
No.
“Fine.” The queen strolled over, knelt down, and flicked Winter’s crotch with a long black fingernail. “If you don’t stop this behavior …” Her tone switched to unnaturally sweet, and she tilted her head. “I will hurt him again.”
Writhing against her restraints, Winter spoke for the first time in days.
“You bitch.” She’d been foolishly holding out hope that West’s treatment had been better than hers.
After all, she was the one being held in the queen’s bedchamber.
But how could she have forgotten so easily?
Down here, there was no hope to cling to.
“Now, now. Our ceremony is tonight. You’ll upset my court with all this fussing.
We wouldn’t want that, would we?” The queen popped up and slapped Winter across the cheek.
Her tone switched again, back to wicked.
“And stop calling me a bitch, bitch.” She fixed the cleavage falling out of her corset and added, “I’m a witch. ”
The irony of that conviction was not lost on Winter.
The queen walked back to her mirror, stood tall, and spoke through the glass. “If I allow Emrys to be your attendant this evening, will you be a little nicer to me?”
“Define nicer.”
“You could stop looking at me with those eyes.”
Winter glowered, filling the room with her venom. “These eyes?”
“Yes. I’m not heartless. I’m fair.” The queen struck the marble with her heel. “The fairest.” She stopped looking at Winter and tapped the mirror a few times. “Isn’t that right?”
The glass rippled.
Winter was hallucinating, she had to be. She couldn’t remember if they’d given her water today. Or yesterday. Her eyes were likely playing tricks on her, like a mirage. Nothing more seemed to happen.
The queen stomped her foot, striking the marble floor. “Worthless thing.”
Westley had remained in his wolf form for weeks, wrapped in silver chains and suspended from the ceiling by hooks.
His paws dangled above the floor and he could hardly breathe.
The only thing he could remember before waking up in this stone-lined cell was gouging out Fang’s eyeballs.
Westley wasn’t sure how he’d ended up underground, or if Fang was even dead.
He didn’t have the ability to ask his vampire guard, and he wasn’t allowed to converse with any of the wolves.
But Everett was alive—West could sense his presence through their blood oath.
Nothing more than that, though. Their bond was dependent on proximity and they were too far apart for emotion sensing.
He couldn’t sense Winter at all, but she was alive.
She had to be. And he refused to lose that shred of hope no matter how dark this prison cell got.
Everett would take care of her, likely better than he ever could.
That certainty was the only thing keeping him sane down here.
In hell. The vampires had been ordered to feed from his exposed legs anytime he so much as flashed his teeth, but Solene—his personal guard—did it when he exhaled incorrectly.
In the beginning, he’d snap at anyone who touched him.
Eventually, he’d passed out from all the blood loss.
This had happened for days on end. And every time, he’d wake up looking brand new.
The queen’s rotating crew of immortal servants had been cleaning, healing, and nourishing him magically ever since his arrival.
The small prison the queen had built was well-supplied and the irony of being held as her first captive weighed heavier on him than these chains.
Familiar sounds broke through his thoughts. After being trapped behind these silver bars for so long, he recognized the clack of her heels against stone, the swish of her gauzy gown, and the high-pitched huffs she made while walking down this jagged corridor.
“Leave us alone!” she shouted, her screechy voice stabbing his ears.
Westley whined loud enough to rattle his chains. One by one, each vampire would teleport away, except for Solene, who’d been ordered to remain in the cell with him all day and all night.
“Breathe quietly, or I bite again,” she snapped, then returned to filing her teeth.
He didn’t understand why she did that so often—her mouth looked like it belonged to a snapper fish. Her unnaturally blue hair puzzled him as well. Had she used blueberries to dye it, or had she truly jumped out of the ocean and directly into this forsaken fish bowl?
The queen turned the corner, scowling. She clutched the bars between them and screamed, “I said leave!”
Solene swiped her tongue over her fangs and stood. “Yes, your majesty.” She put her trinkets away, then bowed at the waist. In a heartbeat, she was beside the queen and kissing her cheek.
“Faster, Solene.”
“You know where to find me,” said the deadly water-like creature before vanishing.
Silence dripped between them, louder than the blood trickling down from Westley’s newest ankle bite. The queen always stared at him for a few minutes before speaking, tilting her head to one side like she was contemplating how else to destroy his life.
“Only one bite today? Hm. Why are you behaving? That’s not like you.”
Her questions had always been endless and useless, never giving him any information about what was happening.
She freed a key from her corset, jammed it into the lock, and opened his cell door. The creak of metal made his heart race. Her daily visits weren’t about bargaining; they were about torturing him.
And for what reason?
He hadn’t been told.
A snake flourished from her fingertip, hissed, then curled around her arm.
It slithered towards her face, its tongue flicking her ear as it nuzzled into the concave space above her collarbone.
“I’m growing tired, Westley. I have questions that have yet to be answered, and I’m afraid I might do something I’ll regret. ”
This was the first clue he’d been given since arriving, but she knew he couldn’t respond. He was under orders not to speak to her, and was in his wolf form anyway. Instead, he listened, breathing quietly. The way she liked.
She closed the distance, her dark blue eyes piercing into his soul.
“For now, this should make me feel better.” A serpent took shape and looped around his knee.
She twirled her finger, making it tighten.
Westley didn’t flinch—she delighted in that.
While it worked to cut off his circulation, he closed his eyes.
The pressure would soon worsen before the inevitable snap.
“I don’t wish to harm her. I quite like her, Westley.
But your letter was rather gauche. You wish to destroy my crown, for her?
” The serpent doubled its strength, popping a ligament as if it were no more than a twig.
“So I wish to remind you that I am your goddess, your queen, and your supreme. You’ll kneel to no one except me. ”
This was about the letter he’d written to her, threatening her crown. It was about Winter. He thrashed, desperate to break from his chains, needing to end this vile witch’s life.
She laughed and snapped his leg in half. “Settle, settle.”
Pain shuddered through him. No matter how many times she broke his leg, it would never get easier. Hanging by these chains kept him defenseless.
“That’s far too much movement, Westley.” She lifted her skirt, bunching it up to unsheathe the crooked dagger holstered to her thigh.
His body trembled with fear at the sight of her blade—the same one she’d used to maim him with time and time again. What would she carve into his skin today? He’d become her personal journal, and each day brought a new entry.
Set beneath him was a small platform stained with new and old blood. She stepped up with a cackle, and began carving into his underbelly. “Stay still or I won’t send the bone healer in until morning.”
“How do I know it’s really you?” Winter asked, soaking in a clawfoot tub in preparation for tonight’s celebration.
Emrys had been shampooing her hair in the queen’s private washroom—another coffin.
The black stone walls were so thick they were soundproof.
Bobbing firelight filled the dreary corners, dimming the space.
The bath, at least, was nice. Emrys had tossed in a heap of flowers from their mage garden.