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I flick my gaze up to the roof of the arcade. Behind it, there looms a cluster of four circular towers whose pointed tips graze the clouds. But it’s what I can see beyond them that I take a faint step closer to.
The glimpse of sharp, jagged cliffs looming up behind the castle captures me. The cliffs are wrapped in mists of icy air and snow, each speck glittering as though crafted from pulverised glass and caught in the right light. It’s a mesmerising scene, behind the valley, and it takes the heavy clang of a pot to tear my gaze away from it.
I look ahead as a slave across the courtyard replaces a vase of black flowers for white ones on a waist-tall pillar.
The slave is dressed in drab, a beige dress (not unlike my own) hanging off her bony body. From surviving so many hungry weeks in the village, I know starvation when I see it. The sight of her sunken collarbone and gaunt face thickens my stomach with a blanket of unease.
BeforeI can dwell on the glimpse of my future for too long, a group of four slaves come out from the clear archway. As soon as they step their beige-boots in the courtyard, they veer off to my right, form a stiff line and bow their heads.
It’s not until their submissive gestures that I remember who—and what—is behind me. A dark fae prince.
My muscles jump beneath my skin and, quickly, I spin around to face him, my mud-brown eyes wild with questions. I can’t speak, not allowed to, so I can’t ask him what I’m meant to do with myself.
He doesn’t give me an answer right away, either. For a tense heartbeat, he watches me from beneath his long lashes then lets a dark smirk crawl over his pink lips.
Lifting a gloved hand, he clicks his fingers in the air and one of the slaves rips away from the group.
She rushes over to me, her head still bowed and her hands clasped behind her back. Strands of dull brown hair curtain her narrow face, pieces fallen out from the braid that ropes down her back.
As she comes to a stop beside me, I get a better look at her downcast face. Unweathered by age, not a mark or a blemish in sight, scarless. Not exactly pretty, but presentable. And then I cast a glance around at the other slaves still in line. They are much the same.Presentable.
I recognise it from home. My sisters on show before myself, with their more desired shapes and faces, and their lack of sickness that I carry myself.
Not that it matters any.
The slave cuts her head to the side, gesturing to the line of others awaiting me. And I know they are waiting for me since they each shoot an impatient glance my way.
Shadowing the girl back to the other slaves, I resist the urge to look back at the prince and see what he is doing. Likely, he’s lost all interest in his bounty now, and goes on about other matters. Faintly, I do hear a soft murmur behind me, the low hum of a man’s voice.
It’s only when I reach the other slaves and they start to turn towards the archway that I do risk a look back at the prince.
My heart plummets to my writhing gut.
Another dokkalf talks to him, reading from what appears to be a scroll of parchment. But the prince’s crystalline eyes are on me, watching me from beneath his long lashes. And the glimmer of light from the candles flickers over him, catching on the dark lines of ink that peek out from his high collar.
A shudder grips me and I turn back to the slaves.
Feeling his gaze searing into me like an ice-burn, I follow the others out of the courtyard and into the castle.
The wonder of the castle is lost on me as I wander the main atrium with the slaves towards a door tucked beneath one of the wall-length, curving staircases. As I go, Iseegolden paint threaded onto the cracks of the ivory and marble walls, but I don’tfeelthem the way I felt the awe of this place when I arrived in the courtyard.
Beneath my boots, silver paint runs through lines on the floor like rows of crushed crystals. Along the walls, greenery climbs up to the balcony above—and yet none of it sinks into my heart with a flurry of wonder.
I feel empty, suddenly. Cold and without my decrepit, beloved home.
I can only pray—funnily enough, to the dark fae who rule my kind—that I survive these brittle months in this alien world.
7
Turns out, the wooden door beneath the staircase leads to the slaves’ staircase, and that spears all over the castle in a winding labyrinth.
I’m studying the magical map of the castle’s layout now. It’s quite a wonder—a black dot for each of the guards who are roaming the corridors, white dots for all the humans tucked away in the shadows, and a glaring red dot for the prince himself. He sits in his parlour room right now with only one yellow dot that joins him.
I touch my finger to the yellow speck on the spiralling map spread out across the damp wall at the rear of the bustling kitchen.
“And this?” I ask the girl beside me.
Her name is Sira, and she’s been assigned to help me get an understanding of the castle and my duties around it. She told me she was once a ‘house slave’, whatever that means, but that once she got that ghastly scar that warps her mouth, she was changed to a ‘backroom slave’. All I understand of that is that now, she can’t serve the prince or his guests, she can’t be seen in the main atriums or courtyard, and she spends most of her days cleaning.
