Page 59 of The Beast King's Bride

15

ASH

Auria indicated a direction for me to follow to find the gardens, and I hurry that way, needing to be alone with my thoughts and fears for a moment. My long skirts rustle against marble floors of blue and gray tiles. Above me stretch blue ceilings like the skies in my world, and homesickness hits me hard.

Bowing my head, I run. I run until the light changes and I find myself passing under a series of arches, and I’m outside.

I stop and draw a deep, shuddering breath. The air is redolent with the scent of roses and other flowers I can’t place. The chirping of the birds is kind of off-key and the sky is that hideous pink, but at least I’m not trapped inside walls anymore.

The gardens are at the back of the palace, rolling on terraces on the hill, opening vistas of the plains and the more distant mountains—mountains that seem upside down, rising like mushrooms or flowers, narrow at the base, widening as they rise, and I think I see cities perched up there, on the huge plateaus, gleaming towers and spires that seemed to reach for the clouds.

Another world.

Focus on the familiar, I tell myself as panic threatens to close my throat again. Focus on the trees and flowers and the butterflies—though they appear to be huge and bat-like, their membranous wings full of colors, the trees swaying without a breeze, their leaves moving on the branches—

I stumble on a root and that’s when I realize I’ve been stepping backward, inching back the way I came.

Stop, I tell myself. It’s just a garden. Different from what you’re used to, true, but many things are different here. It doesn’t make them bad or evil. After all, the king or Jassin or Auria would have said something about the gardens if they were dangerous.

Taking another path, I stroll under white trees that look like willows, raining pink flowers on the path and on my hair.

Then those flowers take wing and I stop to watch as they spin and dive in the morning light. Blossoms or moths? Or something else entirely?

I’m smiling as I resume my walk. Golden lizards shoot across the path, chirping like birds, leaving behind them golden threads I step over. A tree with a canopy as large as the throne room is dripping red fruit around me as I hurry underneath, hands over my head, and when I have crossed its shade, I find my hands covered in ladybirds—which makes me yelp and drop them, and they fly away before the hit the ground, a red, shape-shifting spray of mist.

The path seems to be circling back toward the palace and I hum a tune under my breath as I follow it, thinking if to step off it, duck under a cluster of birch-like trees to look at the vistas some more, wishing I had any talent and skill with painting to capture that weird beauty of the landscape.

That’s when another smell hits me, a smell underneath that of the flowers and wet soil—a stench of rot.

I don’t think much of it—an animal must have died, a squirrel or a bird—do they have squirrels in the Faerie lands? I must ask Talen, maybe there are books with drawings and paintings to see what these strange trees and moths are, see what else is there, and excitement makes me grin widely for the first time since I arrived here. This could be fun, to wander the gardens and learn about nature here, and—

“Ash! Ash, RUN!” bellows a deep voice.

A rider is galloping through the gardens, the horse’s hooves trampling the roses underfoot, releasing their heady scent, a rider in black leathers, a horned helmet on his head. No, not a helmet, only a pair of curved horns and a long, dark braid lashing at the rider’s back.

It’s the king, followed by two of his guards, galloping toward me.

My blood freezes in my veins. I can’t see anything out of place, anything dangerous, what are they seeing that I’m not? In my belt, I have my small knife and I draw it, my hand trembling.

“What is it?” I call out. “What’s wrong?”

The king’s sword flashes and then it erupts out of the ground in a fountain of mud and flower petals, throwing me back in the air. I hit a tree trunk, the air knocked out of me, black spotting my vision as I slither to the ground.

“Ash!” he yells. “Ash, are you all right?”

No air to breathe or speak. My chest feels empty, compressed, my eyes are still full of blackness. I fumble on the ground by my side for my knife but it must have fallen further away. Air trickles through my throat and I cough, my vision brightening enough to show me a monster rising out of the ground, a giant snake or lizard. Its neck is like the trunk of a tree, its enormous scaly head crowned with straight horns, its cavernous mouth lined with dagger-like teeth. Its neck undulates, swings one way, then the other, blood-red eyes scanning the gardens.

I cough again—and it turns toward me, mouth opening wider, another roar starting, shaking the ground and the trees and the bones in my body.

“No!” the king shouts, “no, to me!” He rides straight for the creature, and as he does so, he lifts and throws his sword. It spins in the air, a burning star, burying itself in the creature’s neck.

The roar turns into a screech and the long neck swings around, the snake snapping at the king’s horse. Embar, the horse is Embar, and the stallion jumps impossibly high, the king vaulting off the saddle and onto the snake’s neck.

Gods below, keep him. He’s out of his sane mind.

In a panic, I scramble back but the tree trunk digs into my back. I cast about for my knife and finally see it, gleaming in the grass. Now I have it, I don’t know what I can do to help as the snake shakes its massive head, trying to throw the king off, but he clings to it stubbornly, trying to reach his sword that is sticking out of the scaly neck. His two guards have dismounted and are circling the monster, swords lifted, looking for a place to strike.

The king’s hands start to glow. Magic. The glow doesn’t last, though, and the monster twists its neck, maw opening to swallow the king.

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