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The ceilings are taller here, and cathedral style, in contrast to any of the other rooms I’ve seen. Thick wooden beams held in place by heavy bolts cross high above our heads, and a huge stone fireplace dominates the space. There are chairs and a couch, a coffee table, and some other furniture, all of it in heavy, dark wood. It’s beautiful, but a prison is still a prison, even if it looks like a minimalist interior designer built a Medieval Times restaurant.
“Hello, Ms. Dixon,” a chipper voice says behind me, and I turn to see another thrall, this one thankfully unarmed—as far as I can tell—and dressed like a normal person. She’s white, with a face that looks like what it feels like to get pinched, and peachy-blonde hair pulled back in a tight, low ponytail. “I’m Amanda. I’m here to help you in any way that I can.”
“How the fuck do you think you’re going to help me?” I blurt.
She blinks rapidly and throws her arm out toward a pointed arch doorway. “Your bedroom is this way.”
We climb a stone spiral staircase, small, rectangular stained-glass windows following our path up. We’re in one of the towers. I’m literally imprisoned in a tower.
At the top of the stairs, a half-circle bedroom decorated in the same modern-medieval style waits for me, complete with a huge bed with a wooden canopy, rose-colored curtains, and enough mattresses that it might actually be from the story about the princess and the pea. The thick ivory duvet matches the plush carpet and pillows in various shades of rose and gold take up easily half of the bed. There’s another fireplace here, smaller than the one downstairs, and unlit.
A door on the room’s lone flat wall stands open. “The bathroom and dressing room are through there, though there is, of course, a half-bath in your parlor,” Amanda says.
“For whom? All the guests I’m going to have?” Maybe I shouldn’t be taking my anger out on this poor thrall, but she’s the only person here to lash out at. Sorry about your luck, Amanda. “Does His Majesty sleep here?”
“No, ma’am,” Amanda answers without a hint of annoyance at me. “He sleeps in another tower.”
Another tower. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“His Majesty did say he intends to come to you later.” She sounds like she’s trying to cheer me up. She’s picked the wrong fucking tactic.
“I’m sure he does,” is all I say in response. I can’t take any more of this. “Amanda, can I be honest with you?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“My entire life was just ripped away from me. My family is destroyed. The one person I thought was on my side was using me and lying to me. I’m trapped here. And all I want,” I say, my voice dropping to a deadly low I’ve never achieved before, “is a fucking cheeseburger and to be left the fuck alone.”
“Cheeseburger,” Amanda says, seizing on the only thing in her purview. “What would you like on—”
“Get out!” I shriek, and she curtseys and scurries down the stairs.
I stand there, frozen with shock. I dig my nails into my wrist, hard, because I have to wake up. I can wake up in London, to my alarm in my tiny little bedroom in the flat I share with three other humans. I won’t even complain about going to work.
But even when I draw blood, I’m still in Aconitum Hall. I’m still standing in my new royal bedroom. My new royal life. I throw myself down on the bed and scream into the pillows.
I’m still royally fucked.
CHAPTER 19
Nathan doesn’t come to see me until two a.m. It’s okay, though, because I’m still up, still furious, and I have the empty plate my burger was served on.
“Hey!” he shouts when the plate hits the wall beside the door as he opens it. He’s forced to briefly retreat to avoid shards of airborne china, but he doesn’t give up, even when I hurl my glass at him. That, he merely sidesteps while closing the door behind him. “Bailey,” he says, annoyingly reasonable. “Calm down.”
The two words guaranteed to make me fly even further off the handle. I grab the bundled silverware I never used and hurl it at him. “Fuck you!”
This time, I manage to hit him, but napkin-wrapped cutlery doesn’t inflict the devastating kind of damage I want to. It doesn’t inflict any damage at all, other than making him look momentarily silly as he tries to swat it away.
“I’m sorry, I chose my words poorly.” The way he says it makes it seem like he’s the one who’s been put in a shitty situation and I’m somehow making things worse.
“Fuck you!” I scream at him again. “Poor choice of words? The poor choice was banishing my sister and ruining my parents!”
