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“Are you afraid of my face?” His features shift into those birdlike ones, beak and feathers for hair. “Or are you afraid of my power?” He lifts a hand, and bands of steel snap out of nowhere, locking around my torso and holding me in place as if driven by magic. “Or of what will happen at Ret Relah?” He drags out the last syllable the same way Royad did on the boat, and I can’t help but wonder if this is the way the end of spring celebration is to be pronounced and if all humans are doing it wrong.
“You’re a quite meager bride,” he notes with a sweep of his gaze down my body to where the table is covering up most of me. “So, eat up.”
At a flick of his fingers, and a feast appears on the table. Roast meats, vegetables, fresh bread. Even a pie sits at the center of the table. I don’t take a closer look, or my ravaging hunger will push me to grab a helping of each dish and glut myself. Not that I could with the Crow King’s power preventing me from moving.
I seethe at him, and he waves his hand again, the magical bonds falling away like tethers of mist.
“I don’t know who told you I was your bride, but they’re wrong. I’m not going to marry you.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say. Not over my dead body was I going to marry that monster.
King Myron laughs, features shifting back into their human form, and the contrast is so startling that, for a heartbeat, I stare with rapt fascination. Then I remember to be afraid, and my pulse skyrockets. “I’m afraid that’s not up for debate. I need a new bride, and Tavras sentyouto my Seeing Forest.”
“I wasn’t sent,” I disagree, clutching my bad hand with my good one to keep them both from grabbing for the food. Guardians, I’m so hungry. “I was taken from Fort Perenis by your … dog.” It’s the best term I have for Royad.
King Myron’s features freeze, making him somehow even more beautiful—and scary. I don’t dare breathe.
“Don’t talk of what you know nothing about.” He waves a hand in dismissal, feathers shivering across the edge of the table. “Or don’t speak at all.”
Without another look at me, he loads his plate with food and starts eating.
Naturally, my tongue has its own ideas, loosening at the exact moment he orders my silence. “Seeing Forest… Is that your kingdom?”
He cocks his head at me as if trying to decide how to respond to that, then inclines his head. “For now.”
Ice slides down my spine at his gravelly tone, as if this is a question he has been asking himself for hundreds of years and never found a satisfying answer to.
I hold his all-black gaze for as long as I dare. “Why do you need a bride when Askarea provided one last year?” I remember Royad’s words vividly. “Do they abandon a monster like you?”
I shouldn’t be speaking to him like that. I know it; he knows it. And the glare he gives me tells me I might not live long enough to find out what made his last bride run—other than those feathers and his unquestionable cruelty.
“What’s your name, human?” he demands, lowering the chicken leg he was leading to his mouth.
Perhaps if I push him hard enough, he’ll change his mind about marrying me. Who am I but a human prisoner? There is no benefit for him other than?—
“Your name,” he repeats, that deep, cold voice turning lethal.
My body locks up from fear this time. But one more push and I might be either dead or free.
“Knowing you aren’t set on keeping me longer than a year, I see no reason to tell you.” Bold of me? Perhaps. Reckless? Definitely. Still, it feels so good to show the spark of defiance that will have me doing anything to break free from this new prison I have yet to understand.
And I see it in Myron’s eyes that he’ll do anything to make sure I don’t succeed.
Six
The sun is up earlyin this part of the world, or time functions differently, I don’t know, but when I wake the next morning, the forest beyond the palace is tinted in bright daylight, bugs and bees buzzing around the yellow-blooming vines crawling up the wall and framing the outside of my window. It takes me a moment to accept that something beautiful, such as the delicate blossoms, exists in this cursed place where cruelty seems to be the main means of communication.
When I made it back to my room the night before, I wasn’t nearly satisfied. A slice of meat and a small piece of pie was all I dared eat for fear of being poisoned again. Who knows where I’ll wake up the next time the Crows put me under? Of course, I didn’t touch the wine. Even with its deep red color, I wasn’t certain it wasn’t of fairy-making, and if there’s one thing I’m trying to avoid at all costs, it’s losing my wits in the presence of the enemy.
So, I opted for water back in my room and pulled out the two pieces of bread I managed to sneak into my sleeve when King Myron wasn’t looking. That, combined with exhaustion, put me to sleep faster than even the loving waves of the Quiet Sea.
A gaze past the late spring landscape tells me we are far from the ocean. Not even a stripe of the coast is visible between treetops and a clear blue sky. So, this is the Seeing Forest. I don’t know where in the fairylands we are or if we have crossed into a different realm altogether. It is something I need to find out so I know where to run to once I escape. Though, at this point, anywhere is better than here. That’s probably the reason they didn’t show me a map or give me any details about the whereabouts of thiskingdom.
I rub my good hand over my face and smooth out the tunic and pants I slept in for lack of something else to wear. I surely won’t take anything out of the dresser or the armoire. That would mean I’m accepting my situation, and I’m as far from that as from the waters I miss so much.
My hair spills in tangled waves past my shoulders, and I leave it there, not bothering to smooth it or braid it. Who am I going to impress?
At least, I’m alone, no Crows aiming spears at me or forcing me to put on fresh clothes. That gives me a moment to truly take in my room, and I can’t help marveling at the detailed carvings on the furniture, the heavy, dark wood, and the silver, ornamented knobs on the armoire and dresser. The bed is a frame of carved stone, though, reminding me of the tombs where they put noble families to rest in Tavrasian graveyards. Were it not for the soft mattress and the plain linen beddings, I would believe this actually was a grave.
Leaning on the wooden windowsill, I glance down the tendrils of green and yellow to measure the distance to the ground. I’m too high up to jump without breaking my neck, and there is no frame to climb down on. The palace is enormous and bone-white on the outside. Towers enclose the expanse of the side where my room is situated, their roofs elevated to accommodate an open space that reminds me of a shelter for birds to slip into, only much, much bigger. The massive stone walls of the palace are cracked in places, I note when I turn my head to take in the dimensions of my prison, but the grooves are too far away for me to reach and use as a foothold—given I’d even make it out the window without tumbling to my death.
