Page 108 of How Does It Feel?

I couldn’t do this.

Yes, I could. I had family and friends I missed dearly—that I would do anything to be with again.

I sat in a rickety-looking wood chair and held my head in my palms.

Nothing in the Unseelie court was like I had initially thought. Even the weather. This morning I had been unable to sleep and rose extra early. My door was locked, so I tried the balcony. It was locked as well, but when I pulled back the heavy velvet curtains, I was able to see a bit of sun for the first time since being here. It seemed filtered and somehow more gray than what I was used to, but my skin sang at not having seen it in so long. The distant village looked . . . almost like a normal village. I could see shops and vendors, and they all looked shockingly normal.

The maids and the people I had met that hadn’t tried to kill me had all been surprisingly kind and sweet. Sure many of them seemed to favor a bit of darkness, but that wasn’t so different from the humans. The only ones that seemed to really hate humans were the queen and the army controlled by the queen. Even Mendax wasn’t the evil brute I had been told he was. Maybe—

I stood up and shook myself out of it just in time to hear a roar of something large and horrible a short distance away. The sound sent a shiver up my spine.

The beast.

If I chose the door with the beast behind it, I was as good as dead. I would have no weapons, no reaction time, and no advantage.

Mendax wouldn’t let me die, right? He wouldn’t.

I could see it in his eyes. He truly thought he loved me. Not just a faint dribble of love either. An all-consuming, soul-drowning love. I huffed, suddenly feeling trapped and frustrated.

He didn’t even know me.

But it felt like he did. I wanted to hide in his giant menacing arms until this entire thing no longer existed. But of course, I couldn’t do that.

I also couldn’t go in there blind. I needed a plan.

I had no other options. I had to hope Mendax wouldn’t choose the beast, still hoping to kill me. I wasn’t so sure though. He had tried to kill me multiple times before. Whether or not it was because he was fighting his urge for me or not, he still very much had wanted me dead and hadn’t succeeded. What better way than to lure me into a false sense of security? Could I be so sure now that he wouldn’t rather me dead than leave him? He definitely seemed the type that would rather kill even his bonded love instead of setting her free.

No, he would never set me free. I could see that in his beautiful eyes when he watched me. He would die before he’d let me go home.

A loud roar and applause from a crowd in the distance, somewhere past my confines, elicited a string of curses from my mouth. It was almost time.

He was arrogant. He would be confident in thinking he could stop me before I was actually set free.

He would tell me the door with my freedom and then stop me before I could leave.

Right?

A knock at the door sounded, and my chest leaped with the hope that it was Mendax. I told myself it was simply to find out what door to choose, but I knew better.

A short man with a brown bowl cut motioned for the guards to collect me.

It was time.

I wiped away the tear that fell from my eye. My legs shook like a branch in a rainstorm as the guards led me out of the small room and guided me to a giant iron door clad with large bolts and a humongous circular knob. It took two men to open it and one to shove me in.

I took a few steps and gasped at the giant colosseum surrounding me. It was huge. Rows and rows of stands all filled with excited, shouting Fae.

My feet faltered as I walked on the rusty-brown dirt toward the center of the arena. I felt like a tiny ant in the center of the vast structure. The crowd shouted and cheered loudly at my entrance, and I spun to take in the scene that surrounded me as it blurred.

Like an electric shock to the back of my head, I felt his eyes on me. I spun to the right to see the queen and prince in their ornate black thrones sitting on the lowest level above the arena’s stands. Our eyes snagged each other’s like barbed hooks as we silently communicated in a way only those with an unspoken connection could.

I’m so scared.

I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe.

The queen looked a little perplexed herself, but I couldn’t understand why. Would she take pity on me because her son loved me? No . . . no, I knew she wanted me dead. She wouldn’t risk having a human in her bloodline, even though that would never happen. At least not by me.

She rose from her throne, and the crowd silenced with eerie quickness.