Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Briar
When tears pricked my eyes, I rested my hand over my heart. The woman knocked it away. “Don’t cover your breasts. I’m working.”
I scowled at her. I hadn’t been covering my breasts, but trying to shield my heart from the anguish it had endured all these many years. I loved Seth with everything I was, and he’d suffered because of me. He was still suffering.
My mother intended for me to enter the harem and unleash my coming hunger on everyone trapped within. She was ashamed of me, and even before she caught me with Seth, she’d never loved or liked me, but she was determined that I wouldn’t embarrass her again and would become a dark sorceress.
I was as determined to flee the harem with Seth.
I didn’t know how I’d get him out of the harem, and she’d hunt me until the day she died, but she would not control me anymore. I wouldn’t be like any night or day casters.
I had no idea how I was going to withstand the extreme lust that would awaken with my Needing. They’d told me it was an irresistible compulsion that propelled all casters to the edge of depravity. Some of them gladly walked over that edge to embrace being a night caster.
For the first time in years, my mother couldn’t control my life. While I was certain she’d gladly keep me locked away here, every sorcerer and sorceress must enter the harem. They had no choice in the matter.
Not even she, the queen of Nightshade, could stop it. I dreaded entering the harem, but I rejoiced in her impotence to stop it. I was her biggest disappointment, and she worried I’d become a bride of Sol, the sun god.
I’d already humiliated her once, but my downfall with Seth would be nothing compared to her daughter choosing to walk in the light. Except, I didn’t intend to bind myself to any of the gods; I planned to be gone before they came looking for me.
My mother would scour the kingdom in search of her wayward child, but she’d have my sister to calm her down. Rosalie was the perfect daughter, the golden child who hadn’t fallen in love with a shifter. She’d already bound herself to Mond and was entirely dutiful in her adoration of our mother.
We were nothing alike, and my mother had decided at my birth that we never would be. I was the child she never wanted, the thorn in her side since the day of my conception, as she once told me, and she never let me forget it… with my name.
My mother named my sister after her favorite flower, the rose. She named me after the one thing she disliked about that flower, the thorns.
The woman finished adjusting the train of my wedding dress, rose, and turned away.
She’d barely spoken to me throughout all our fittings, and it was never with kindness, but I was used to that in this kingdom.
No one talked to me unless necessary, and then it was always with as few words as possible.
I didn’t acknowledge the woman as she threw her needles and thread into her basket before closing the lid. Hooking the basket over her arm, she stalked away with a slight limp.
She was an esteemed tailor everyone in the kingdom sought to hire, but when she messed up one of my mother’s orders, my mother had all the toes on her right foot cut off.
Not surprisingly, the woman hadn’t been as excited to work for my mother again. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice. She may have screwed up one of my mother’s orders, but she was still the best seamstress in the kingdom, and my mother would only accept the best.
I glanced at my reflection in the full-length mirror. Though I’d been dressed in white all these years, it was still a shock to see myself in what was to be my sacrificial dress.
I’d enter the harem wearing it and emerge nude after either screwing everyone in the harem multiple times like the night casters, or having endured the Needing without using another, like the day casters.
It was supposed to be incredibly difficult to withstand the overwhelming lust that would soon awaken in me and signify my reaching maturity and ability to have children. Like every caster who entered the harem, they’d given me a potion to ensure I didn’t get pregnant during this time.
It wasn’t unthinkable for the night casters to have sex with those in the harem, but it was inconceivable for them to become impregnated by one of the “lesser beings,” as my mother called them. The casters all made me sick.
Now I had to enter that repulsive building and try to save the only eternal who meant anything to me. And I had to do it while trying to withstand something that would supposedly drive me to the brink of madness, but if the day casters could do it, then so could I.
And I’ll have Seth there to focus on.
Throwing my shoulders back, I lifted my chin while I studied the dress. The sheer material over my breasts revealed my nipples.
A white cloth down the middle of my chest covered the valley between my breasts and that part of my belly.
It hooked over my shoulders and knotted behind my neck, expertly covering the marks Seth left when he claimed me as his mate.
The skirt was entirely see-through, except for the embroidered moons and suns decorating it.
In all my twenty-seven years, it was the most revealing thing I’d ever worn, yet I was supposed to be the virginal sacrifice who would enter the harem and either spill my blood there or walk away intact. Because of my earlier choices and Seth, I wouldn’t be doing either.
The door had almost closed behind the woman when a hand clasped the edge of it. My mother’s rose scent preceded her entrance into the room.
I’d grown to hate her overwhelming aroma over the years, but my mother loved it so much she added rose perfume to her already inherent rose scent. Not only that, but she always wore a rose in her hair and usually one somewhere else on her; today, it was bound to the inside of her wrist.
When she drifted into the room, the bottom of her black dress created a small swishing noise against the stone floor. I would recognize that sound anywhere and could hear it more clearly, and from farther away, than a scream.
I’d become so attuned to it over the years that any time I heard it, if I still had time and a way to escape, I ran.
I’d hide in the shadows, in rooms, and behind anything that would shelter me.
Outside the castle, I couldn’t evade the guards, but inside, I had a little more freedom, even if I couldn’t walk outside without an entourage.
However, there was no running now as she glided toward me. She moved with such grace that her feet didn’t seem to touch the ground.
The numerous braids woven through her brunette hair were knotted into a bun that emphasized her high cheekbones and ice-blue eyes. Those eyes chilled my flesh with one glance as she stopped beside me.
While I loathed being basically half naked in front of her, I didn’t try to cover myself.
She didn’t speak, and neither did I; I stopped having anything to say to her when I was still a child.
I was ashamed to acknowledge how many years it took me to realize that no matter how hard I tried, or what I did, this woman would never love me.
For years, I strove to be perfect for her. I was certain that if I were everything she wanted, then she would have to hug me or kiss me or just smile at me like she did with Rosalie, but she never did.
And then, one day, I decided to try getting her attention another way and snuck off to No Man’s Land.
Maybe she’d pay attention to me if I disappeared for a while.
She never noticed I was gone, but then I met Seth and was determined not to get caught, as I couldn’t lose my new friend or the freedom I found in that desert wasteland.
It was still another year before I gave up entirely on trying to earn her love and slunk into the shadows like she’d always wanted me to.
Thanks to Seth, I didn’t feel as battered by this retreat and acknowledgement of my mother’s inability to love me.
I could forget about all of it while I was with him.
When my mother rested her hand on my bare shoulder, it wasn’t in a gesture of comfort. I winced as the rose on her wrist burned into my skin. The scent of my flesh filled the air, and smoke briefly coiled high before she released me.
Every day, she cast a spell over the rose she chose to wear to preserve it before dipping it in acid and casting a protective spell over herself to keep it from searing her skin. It wasn’t the first time her rose burnt me, but it would be the last… she just didn’t know that yet.
My jaw locked as I met her icy blue eyes in the mirror. “Don’t disappoint me again,” she told me.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Mother.”
But we both knew I loathed her and that today, for the first time in ten years, I’d be somewhere beyond her control.