Page 20 of The Beast King's Bride

6

ASH

We ride and ride, down a road winding among hills—mostly unmoving ones, mostly bald, bare of houses and cities—along forests and streams that sometimes run blue and sometimes yellow. Flocks of birds fly overhead, but once, when they pass close, I see that they’re flying lizards with membranous wings.

The feeling of isolation intensifies. It’s a feeling of loneliness even though I’m not alone, the sense of being in a world that is so different nothing is as I expect it to be. Nothing can be taken for granted. Nothing is as it seems.

It’s driving me crazy.

“How far?” I ask when I think I’ll start screaming from the strangeness of it, and I swear I saw some trees move, too, and oh Gods, am I losing my mind?

“Not far,” he says and that’s it, we ride and ride some more down this endless snake of a road, around a vast lake and then along another river until a city appears on a hill dominating the plain, surrounded by five more hills, houses and towers of pink spreading over it.

“A pink city?” I whisper.

He chuckles. At least I think that’s what the sound is, deep and unexpectedly compelling. He doesn’t explain what he finds so funny and I’m too tired to ask for explanations, but it becomes clear soon enough as we approach.

The buildings are built of a glass-like stone that reflects the other buildings and the plain, but the roofs only reflect the sky that turns the city a rosy pink.

But the stone itself is a midnight blue, so dark it’s almost black, and as the light starts to fade, the city dims, the palace at the top of the hill fading into the night.

“What is this place called?” Embar trots up what looks like the main street of the city, heading uphill, and it’s quiet. Too quiet. “Where are the people?”

“This is Lindar, the blue city,” he says, his voice startling me, so close to my ear. “It’s evening and the dark brings danger.”

“So they’ve locked themselves up? Danger from what? Wild animals?”

“Yes,” he says, an answer I have to accept for all my questions because he says nothing more after that, not even when I ask what sort of animals attack at night and if we’ll be safe in the palace.

A palace. I hadn’t spent any thought on where I’d be staying when he took me, when all my thoughts were of escape. I don’t know what I thought he’d do with me. Kill me, probably. Make me sick. Eat me.

The legends about the Fae are not clear as to their appetites and what happens to humans taken to Faerieland. Bad things, though. Definitely bad things.

Now, as we ride up to this blue glass palace that seems to have dissipated into the dark of the evening, I give the idea of escaping another go. Turn it over in my mind, push it through the layers of weariness that blanket the insides of my head.

If I avoid stepping foot inside that dark palace, I could maybe ask and find the way back to the gate. Find the pool, jump inside. Return home.

Funny how hope grips you and won’t let go even when things are worsening instead of improving. It’s as if the worse it gets, the more you need that spark of hope to keep yourself sane.

That’s how I explain the fact that as we approach the palace gates and they slowly, ponderously open, I twist in the saddle and manage to slacken his hold on me, then slide down the side of the horse to the ground.

I hit the packed snow hard with my shoulder and I hiss in pain but scramble to my feet and start down the hill, slipping and sliding on the patches of ice.

Sadly, what feels like a single moment, a single breath later, his hand clamps on my shoulder and spins me around to face him.

“Will you stop running from me, human?” he growls.

“Only if you let me go free.”

“No. And you will not catch me by surprise again.” To my shock, he hooks a finger in the bracelet around my wrist and snaps the red thread and the iron filament, letting them fall to the floor. “Now come inside the palace before you freeze to death. I didn’t go into all the trouble of bringing you here to have you die in the snow.”

With no more energy to draw upon, I let him steer me toward the open gates. Embar is waiting there.

Alone.

“Where are your stableboys? Your guards? Your servants?”

“I can take care of my own damn horse.”

---