Page 25 of The Beast King's Bride

First things first, though: I need warm clothes and shoes for the frozen wasteland that is Faerie. The dress and dainty shoes Jassin has laid out for me on a chair may be good for a palace, but not for tracking outdoors.

Across from the bed, though, there is an ornate closet, so no harm in looking, right?

The door sticks but I yank it open and stare at the rows of gowns hanging there in all the hues of the rainbow. Some, when I half-pull them out, seem moth-eaten and stained from humidity, but others are fine. Fine silks and lace sift through my fingers. Shoes line the floor of the closet.

Wait, whose clothes and shoes are these?

A horrible thought strikes me. Does he often kidnap and bring women here? And what happens to them? Maybe their bodies are in the cellar like in that tale the cook likes to tell. Or buried in the garden.

Panic strikes me. I push the fine gowns aside, looking for a more practical garment, and find a thicker dress. It feels like fine wool. I pull it out, and with it a cape.

This will do.

There are stockings and a pair of low boots as well. Trying not to entertain any more horrible ideas as to what happened to the owner of the clothes and shoes, I sit on the bed to pull them on. Forget about washing, about prettifying myself for this awful king of the Fae who doesn’t think ripping me away from my home is a crime.

You forget how badly you wanted to escape that life, I think, you forget how unhappy you were.

Well, this isn’t the solution I had in mind. Dying here, in a foreign world at the hand of a Fae who thought naught of demanding a girl as tithe, a person, a life, for his own dark means.

The stockings I choose are also woolen, the weave so fine that they mold on my legs. The dress is long but a belt does the trick of lifting it just enough. I shove my feet into the boots, pull the cape over me, and exit my room.

The quiet is the first thing that hits me. It was never quiet at the palace in Kyrene, not for one moment, nowhere, in the quarters of the servants or the royals. Where are the bustling servants, the strolling aristocrats, the dogs and cats living inside these walls?

A chill runs over my flesh.

Tying the cape at the front, pulling the hood over my head, I choose a random direction and start down the wide corridor. Maybe quiet is good, maybe everyone is in the throne room holding an audience with the king, maybe this wing of the palace is abandoned so nobody will get in my way to freedom.

A horse. I need to find the stables. I think of Embar and shiver. A smaller horse. A pony, probably. I don’t even know how to saddle a horse, how to ride it. But it can’t be that hard, right? He seemed to obey the Fae king with such ease, seemed to know the way here.

Then he must know the way back.

The thought is stuck in my head as I wander the empty corridors, starting to panic when I can’t seem to find a door leading to the outside. Find the stables, I tell myself. Find Embar. Hurry, before someone discovers I’m gone, before the king comes knocking on my door.

Not that he’d knock. Probably open it, enter the room as he did with my life, and take what he wants from me.

The thought galvanizes me, has me walking faster. Every door I try is locked, and I find myself running. Have to get out, get out.

The next door opens and I find myself in a gallery. I stop and look up at the tall, vaulted ceilings, at the portraits lining the walls. It feels like such a human place that I stop to catch my breath. There was such a gallery in the palace in Kyrene that I remember from when I was a child, covered in portraits of past royals.

These portraits are weird, though—not so much because of the fact that these royals are clearly Fae, from their pointed ears and haughty expressions to their filigree crowns and odd-shaped collars, but because their eyes seem to follow me.

“What do you want?” I mutter, the feeling of familiarity and calm quickly vanishing. Gathering my cape closer around me, I cross the gallery. “Mind your own business.”

The door at the other end mercifully opens so I rush out of there and close the door behind me, panting. This place is playing tricks on my mind. They couldn’t be really watching me, could they? Impossible.

Just as impossible as a town built on the back of a tortoise or a pink sky.

More endless corridors face me, and panic grips me again. What is with this empty palace and its eerie quiet? If nothing else, somewhere must be kitchens and pantries and courtyards. I will find them. I will find the way out.

When did my goal change from leaving unnoticed to finding people? I think the silence is getting to me, this feeling of being entombed alive.

I run and run, down corridors, under arched doorways, choosing random directions when the corridors cross, on and on, until I throw one last door open and I step outside.

Only to find the king astride Embar’s back across from me, a few more riders behind him.

“Princess Elayne,” he says and frowns, a strong hand on Embar’s mane, keeping the horse in check. “Good morning.”

So he does have a royal guard, I think, as the Fae dismount one by one and then stable boys emerge from a door to lead the horses away.

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