Page 68 of The Beast King's Bride

I know the Empress has felt the discontent and the displeasure already, the doubt and the suspicions and the already circulating rumors. She knows that the girl I brought over to lift the curse isn’t interested in attending the ball with me, in helping me.

She wouldn’t be wrong—though I could swear I have felt… more from Ash than she chooses to show these days. I could swear she didn’t hate me before. I wish I knew what happened to make her change her mind. The riddle says she cannot be forced and the Empress will know if she comes against her will, but above all…

Above all I wanted her to change her mind and come to me. I wanted her to want me, to care enough to walk inside. To smile at me.

Maab, I have lost my mind.

More and more guests arrive, more jewels and rich clothes on display, more sugary smiles and hard looks directed my way. It numbs the mind. It makes my own smile sharper, wider, to counteract the effects, to show them that I don’t give a damn about what they think.

It’s a lie. I do care but like I said, I’m tired of fighting for so long to right this wrong with no victory to show for it. It isn’t as if they’ve ever reached out and offered to help, either.

I shouldn’t be angry with my own people, and I’m not. It’s only these rich, arrogant aristocrats that annoy me—maybe more so because I know deep inside that they used to be me. I was that bratty, egotistical prick who demanded without giving.

Music begins to play at some point. The musicians—commanded to come from near the frontiers of the kingdom, persuaded through promises of the last of our gold and the threat of the Empress—stroll inside, their magical instruments carried by fawns, playing without a touch.

The guests stir, forming pairs and trios to dance. Some dance alone, slowly turning on their own. The ballroom is turning into a palette of swirling colors and flashes of gold and gems.

And still no Ash.

I drum my fingers on the armrest—heavy with only the royal seal ring flashing on my hand, heavy enough as it is with all the responsibility it carries—and send my senses out, checking for any danger, any monster emerging from the shadows. Time flies and I have until the moon rises—in Fae lands it rises when the stars light up—before the curse strikes me like every night.

The Empress knows it.

She’s late. By design. Always by design. She planned the downfall of this entire world long in advance, probably long before I was even born.

The guests dance and dance, and my headache grows. Every wound, old and new, aches and I don’t know if it’s from the angry magic swirling in the room with the dancers or from the approach of the Empress. I shift on the throne, leaning back, half-closing my eyes. The wound from the iron knife in my side has not healed fully yet. It burns.

Where is Ash?

Everything burns. My side, my eyes. My heart.

It’s a jolt to realize that her absence hurts me. The void of her beside me is a wound in itself. How did I get used to having her with me so quickly? To having her gentle hands on my face, her soft body pressed to mine, her soft voice asking if I was okay.

So thoughtless of me.

This curse will never be lifted. I haven’t changed after all this time, still thinking of myself first.

And then the great brass horns outside blare, one after another, and the crowd quietens, parting, moving away from the center. We all know what the horns mean. They only sound when a royal is arriving and unless another king or queen has decided to join us uninvited and unannounced…

The Empress is here.

The first sign that the Empress is near—apart from the skin-crawling touch of her magic and the aches it awakes in my body—is the night creatures preceding her. Insects crawl into the ballroom, beetles and roaches, scorpions and spiders, and black moths fly.

There’s no yelp or scream from the gathered guests. Their whispers cease, though, the silence turning frozen and leaden.

The insects turn into black mist before they reach the thrones and vanish, just as bigger animals follow—night lynxes and mountain hyenas, followed by harpy eagles and death vultures. They fly right at me, and I fight a scowl—does she think this is funny?—before they, too, vanish into nothingness.

The whispers around me resume, at this show of magic, subtle and teasing and nasty.

Then the real show begins.

Sparkling fireflies swarm into the room, forming shapes and symbols, as Lesser Faeries, favored by the Empress, walk or ride inside straddling wolves and foxes.

We’re amused by and also abhor Lesser Faeries. They show us who we really are. Each Fae has something twisted and borrowed in him or her—an animal part, an animal gift—that we have done all we could to hide and not manifest, selectively marrying and culling children to do so over the millennia. We think we have evolved, us Greater Fae, and so we have—outwardly. We have more powerful magic and with it, we suppress the animal, the alien in us, only betrayed by our ears, our fangs, our magic.

We tried to be more human-like. Is it not absurd? We lived alongside the humans for so long that we worshipped them in the same way they worshipped us—or rather in a reverse way: they are in awe of us because we’re so powerful, and we’re jealous of them because they’re so… new. They dread us and we want to be like them.

It’s sick.

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