Page 16 of The Beast King's Bride

5

ASH

The night closes around me like an icy fist as we gallop under the stars. The air cuts like knives and though the Fae king’s arm is solid around my waist—as solid as a shackle—I still have this feeling of freefalling.

Maybe it’s my mind that feels like it’s dropping off a cliff, with rope and no handholds. How did I go from the dim kitchens to the bright ballroom and then to this wild flight through the night toward a frightening, hidden future? Riding with the silent, hulking presence of the Fae at my back, his chest a wall of warmth, the only thing that keeps my teeth from chattering out of my mouth and my limbs from shaking loose from the cold. This dress is pretty but not made for riding on winter nights, especially not on a horse that runs like the wind. It’s held together by lace and light and yet all the gems have now dimmed, matching the black sky above.

We fly, fly over the plain, distant lights and shapes blurring—or maybe it’s the wind and tears in my eyes. I’ve never traveled so far, so fast, never sliced the night on the back of a beast with a different beast behind me, holding me on the saddle. I’m too scared to cry out, too stunned to let my tears fall—and the wind dries them on my lashes anyway. It’s terrifying and exhilarating at once. If I lift my arms, I may be carried away like a leaf to distant lands, with no thoughts, no worries, no regrets.

But I’m not a leaf. I’m a girl carried away by a stranger, a magical Fae with fury in his eyes.

When the sundering of our worlds happened, the Fae realm sank into the earth. The tales of the scant few travelers who made it there and back tell of a whole world spreading underneath ours, their mountains under our mountains, their rivers under our rivers. A mirrored world—similar but not the same, just as the Fae who inhabit it.

A reversed world.

I think of that as we cross the Fae battlefields of the Last War, glints of metal and bone peeking out of the ground. I knew they weren’t all that far from Kyrene. Humans have scavenged, of course, and still some daring souls attempt it, but it is said that all those who dare disturb the ground get sick and die quickly.

I never thought I’d get to see the place in all its gruesome glory.

The Sundering decided the Last War. The humans say they won, and maybe they’re right. It is certain that the Fae lost much of their power and magic in the aftermath, but nobody really knows why. We don’t deal with the Fae. When we find them in our world, we avoid them if we can. We guard the gates, keeping watch, not to let them come through.

And I’m heading straight for one of these gates.

When the horse slows down what feels like ages later, my face is burned from the cold and my ears feel stoppered. I shake my head to clear them, rub at my itchy eyes with ice-cold hands. It’s a place of rocks and trickling water, moss and a few scraggly trees growing in the cracks. It’s higher than the valley, and in the distance, I think I see lights. Is it the city, the palace I left behind?

The horse’s hooves thunder over rocky ground and the sound echoes in my bones.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask as we ride through a grove of whispering trees growing on the rock. “Let me go.”

“Stop asking me to let you go,” he says, his mouth so close to my ear a shudder racks me. “I told you that I cannot. As for where we’re going… to my home.”

“Night Court,” I whisper.

“One of them. Isria, the Sapphire Court, is where we are heading.”

I close my eyes and press my lips together. A weight is pressing on my chest. If I go to the land under the hill, the land of Faerie, I’m never coming back.

I have to escape now, the first chance I get.

The horse picks its way confidently among the black rocks, snorting white clouds in the crisp air. Now that the race is over, that the constant slapping of the wind and the ache of the horse’s canter under my legs has stopped, my senses are returning—and with them, that of touch. I’m suddenly, unequivocally aware of his hard, muscular body pressed to my back, the strength in this arm around me, the way his legs press against mine with every rolling step of the horse.

Despite everything, warmth seeps into my neck. I’ve never been so close to a man, Fae or human, never had a man’s chest pressed to my back, his legs to mine and… this strange way my body quivers and heats up from the inside places another layer of fear over the previous ones. What is he doing to me?

We enter another grove, perhaps aspens, and it’s pitch black here. The horse doesn’t stop and I hold my breath, expecting to fall in a crag or run into a trunk, when the Fae lifts his hand—the one not pressed to my middle—and a white light springs out from his fingers.

Like a blazing moon, I think, blinded for a moment, dazed, the light so milky and sparkly.

So pretty.

The horse stops in front of a cave. No, not just a cave, I think. Something more than that, greater than that. Part nature and part deliberate construction, it opens into the wall of rock, tall and vaulted, white pillars supporting either side, crowned with living ivy and vines. The ivy has spread over walls of white stone, carved in places with symbols, inset with pale crystals that catch the light from the Fae’s hand, gleaming in shades of green and mauve.

This is an old place, a magical place. Power seems to pulse from the stones and the rock itself. I swear I can feel it reverberate in my bones, inside my head.

I need to leave, now.

But the Fae’s hold around my waist is still tight. Shouldn’t we dismount? What is he waiting for? Or isn’t this our destination?

“You’re cold,” he says.

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