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“If you can do as you say, you’ll be my favorite,” says the King, with a toadlike smile.
“I’d be honored, Your Majesty,” I manage.
I barely get the words out before the same guards who escorted me to the throne room advance again, pulling me to my feet. One soldier maintains a grip on my upper arm—not too tight, but it’s a warning all the same.
As we leave the throne room and traverse more hallways, I try to rake together my scrambled thoughts and sort out my emotions.
I’m angry, so angry I’m trembling, and I’m still sick with fear, because I’ve bought myself a day and a night, but after that I won’t be able to hold off my fate any longer.
We’re descending stone steps, and the chill of the air makes my heart sink, because this part of the palace feels subterranean. Like an underground jail. Which means there’s even less chance of escape.
“I need a servant,” I say breathlessly. “Someone to bring me meals.”
“Go fetch one of the servants from the House of Bounty, Hutch,” says one of my guards to the other. “Someone who can double as door guard and errand boy.”
Hutch nods and hurries off.
The remaining guard ushers me to the end of a long, dark, stone hallway. He takes out a key and unlocks the heavy door, hauling it open with a grinding squeal of iron on stone.
“This is your workspace for the next day and night,” he says. “Your servant will be posted outside, and there will be a guard posted halfway down the hall and another at the far end.”
I move forward tentatively, peering into the room. It’s paved with rough, flat stones, barely visible between the stacks of loose straw piled up to the ceiling. There’s a big iron lantern hanging from a chain overhead, and two more lanterns flanking the door. In the center of the room sits a low wooden bench and a large spinning wheel. One corner of the chamber contains stacks of wooden boxes, each holding countless empty bobbins, ready to be filled with threads of pure gold.
The guard on my right clears his throat. “The room was set up last night. They weren’t sure if you needed an actual spinning wheel to accomplish the magic, so they provided one. Just in case.”
“How thoughtful.” I scan the room again, all the way up to the high ceiling. No windows. “What if I need to relieve myself?”
“This is part of the dungeon,” says the guard in a condescending tone. “Prisoners use slop buckets for waste.”
“But I’m a potential bride.”
“That you are,” he says, reluctantly, as if he would rather force me to use a bucket. “When the need arises, let your servant know and you’ll be escorted to the guards’ privy around the corner.”
I don’t understand why this man, whom I’ve never seen before today, wants me to suffer the indignity of a slop bucket. What did I ever do to him? Why should he relish the thought of a stranger’s discomfort? Are people really that cruel? I suppose he must be dreadfully unhappy, and he takes it out on others. His yellow tunic marks him as a guard in the House of Bounty, which means he’s a eunuch. Did he choose this life willingly, or was it forced upon him?
His sandy brows pull together. “What are you staring at, girl?”
“Just wondering what kind of person you are,” I say.
He fixes me with a glare. “Get your ass in the cell.”
As I back away from him, into the room full of straw, panic flares hot in my chest. If that door closes and locks, I think I might lose my mind. This room can’t be the last place I see before I die—it can’t.
“I need some water!” I blurt out as he reaches to pull the door shut.
“Fine.” He rolls his eyes, then calls to another guard who’s approaching along the hallway. “Larrick, fetch the King’s concubine some water.”
Hearing myself called “the King’s concubine” nearly makes me vomit. I swallow, trying to breathe as deeply as I can despite the corset—inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth.
By the time Larrick returns with the water, Hutch is coming back too, accompanied by the servant who will be tending to my needs for the next day and night.
And by some stroke of luck or fate, that servant is the same blue-eyed stranger who showed up in my bedroom.
It’s all I can do not to let a shocked “what the fuck” escape my mouth. Instead I pinch my lips together and stare at him.
He doesn’t wear his livery neatly like the other servants—there’s a rough-and-tumble look about him, a scruffy nonchalance. His vest hangs askew, his tunic is wrinkled as though he slept in it, and his hair sticks straight up along the crown of his head. His pants look just slightly too short for his long legs.
“I found Rupert wandering around the House. I thought he’d be the perfect man for the job,” Hutch explains. “He used to be a guard, and he knows the palace ways.”
