by Casey Bond
“Why would I do that?” she asked, looking away from him.
“Because there’s something you don’t want Carden to see.”
Arabella dropped the skirt of her dress, the now faint, rust-colored stain spreading out across her knees. “Is he okay?”
Rule stared at me, but answered her. “He is.”
“Does your mother know you’re helping me?”
“She isn’t ready for the game to end yet,” he replied with a carefree shrug.
Arabella snorted. “And when she is, you won’t come to my rescue. Right?”
He transformed into the fae we both knew, his golden hair gleaming in the moonlight, dressed in a blue so deep it was nearly black, and grinned at her like he knew a secret she didn’t. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”
She stood and watched him warily. “You needn’t fear me,” he purred, standing and closing the distance between them.
“Really?” she sneered sarcastically.
Rule’s countenance changed in an instant, his smile drying up like a puddle on a hot day. Gone was the playful cat, and in his place stood a man with teeth who would shred the bones of anyone who stood against him. An attribute he’d taken from his mother. “Who has been spewing lies about me?”
“No one needs to lie about you, Rule. I can see it for myself.”
He stepped toward her, close enough for his chest to touch hers, but Arabella didn’t cower and he didn’t back away. Not even when I yelled his name in warning, his pointed ear ticking ever so slightly at the sound. He hooked a strand of her dark hair around his finger and brought it to his nose, inhaling her scent.
“Rule,” I growled, powerless to intervene from my place on the other side of the mirror. I didn’t want him touching her. Not even her hair. The beast inside roared. It wanted to taste his blood, to spill his guts and coil his entrails around my claws before severing them. I wanted to roll around in his golden blood until I was nothing but a gilded monster and no man remained.
“You make too many assumptions, Bella,” Rule alleged softly. “Take your brother, for instance. Do you know what he felt after leaving you here?”
Her brows kissed one another. “He left and didn’t come home for months,” she breathed. “His actions made it pretty clear about what he felt and how he felt about me.”
“You think he thought ill of you?”
“Of course, he did!” she exploded.
“He didn’t think less of you at all.” Rule shook his head, sympathy in his eyes. “Try again. How did Oryn feel?”
“I don’t know,” she gritted. “I don’t know how he felt, but I know he hated me after that. He was afraid to get close. We grew apart, and he didn’t seem to mind it.”
Rule stepped away and offered her his hand. “Let’s go see.”
“See what?”
“Oryn, of course,” Rule proclaimed, tossing a wink at me over his shoulder as he walked away with her.
ARABELLA
I took his hand. What other choice did I have? It was part of the game, but more than that, I wanted to know what Oryn felt and why he put so much distance between us when we’d always been close before that night.
“Can Carden still see everything?” I whispered to Rule.
He gave a nod as we walked further into the woods. It was unnaturally dark, and the farther into the forest we walked, the more unsettled I felt. I opened my mouth to ask him where my brother was, when he pressed his finger over his lips and flicked his eyes ahead of us. Oryn was there, pacing among the trees. My older brother, whom I thought was stronger than stone, was sobbing frantically and tearing at his hair.
My heart felt like it might cave in at the sight.
“Oryn can’t see you,” Rule breathed against my ear.
“Can he hear us?” I asked.
Rule shook his head.
“Then why are we whispering?” I asked, trying out my voice. Oryn didn’t even look in our direction. After a few moments, he calmed himself and we followed him as he stormed into the cabin where he quickly gathered his things and left before I returned. Father was passed out in his room and never even knew he’d been home.
“Can you take me back to Carden?”
“In a moment.”
Rule’s eyes caressed everything in my hovel, from the dusty floorboards rotting along the far wall, to the cot I called my own and the threadbare blanket half-covering it. He even seemed to see the things I had hidden beneath it. I wasn’t sure what was so fascinating or why he even cared, but he took his time looking around and I let him. Our things were a fraction as fine as the dirt on his shoes, but time was something I needed to use to my advantage and Carden’s. If Rule wanted to waste some, that was more than okay with me. We just had to last in this nightmare until sundown.
I couldn’t help but squirm when he walked across the floor and peered into my father’s room. Bottles of all shapes and sizes littered every surface, including the floor. It was a wonder he didn’t break his fool neck on one of them when he stumbled in during the dark of night.
I cleared my throat to get rid of the scratchiness. “See anything you like?”
Rule turned his focus on me. “I do, indeed.”
“What’s that?” My face heated under his scrutiny.
“I’d like a souvenir,” he asserted. “I want something of yours.”
“Why should I give you anything?” I asked, straightening my spine.
He grinned. “Because I have given you much.”
He had me there. “Fine,” I conceded, crossing my arms over my chest. “Take what you’d like.”
“Anything in the room?” His eyes gleamed with mischief and I dreaded what I was about to say.
“Anything in the room.”
He stepped closer.
“Not me,” I squeaked, throwing my hands up to keep him away.
Rule laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t remove you from the game, Bella, but I would have something on your person.”
“On my person?” I glanced down and instinctually knew what he wanted. My fingers gently touched the leather cord. “Not this,” I whispered.
“Yes, that,” he whispered back. Then he bent to my ear and spoke so only I could hear him. “I promise to give it back if you win.”
“Why do you want it?”
His heart beat against my chest, faster than a human heart and much stronger. “Because it is precious to you, and because you are becoming very precious to me.”
I pressed my eyes closed as his lips dragged down my cheek.
He deftly untied the cord at the nape of my neck and tied it around his own. Peering at my reflection in the mirrored shard, I saw a haggard young girl, ill-equipped for the trials she’d faced. I was beyond exhaustion and desperately hoped day two of hell was about to end.
He stepped close again and I hoped he didn’t whisper in my ear again. Rule made thinking difficult, and I had to keep my wits about me. He was part of this game, somehow. I could feel it in my marrow.
In the distance, a great roar rolled out over the land. Rule just grinned. “It seems someone is jealous,” he purred.
“Take me back to him,” I ordered.
Rule rolled his eyes. “If you insist.”
“He is my heartmate, Rule.” The Queen may have declared it, but my heart knew it was true.
The Prince sobered and put his hand on his chest, over his heart. “Carden may be your heartmate, but he’s not your only tether, Bella. Remember that.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PRINCE RULE
Mother interrupted the game before I could reunite the heartmates. It wasn’t because of her love for me, or her sympathy for the predicament I found myself innocently tangled in. It was because she was angry. Hours before dusk, she ended the day’s game just when it was about to ge
t interesting. I wanted to see Carden’s face when he realized that I, too, held a tether to our Arabella. Pity we were interrupted.
Before finding her in her tea room, I absorbed Arabella’s mirror shard into my flesh, hiding it from Mother’s sight. It was the first thing she looked for when I stepped inside, and the last thing I vowed she would find.
In an upholstered blue sitting chair, Mother slowly drew the tea cup to her lips, blew across the watery blue liquid to disperse the steam, and took a dainty sip. She drank tea at precisely the same time each and every afternoon. An array of delicious-smelling confections was plated across the table’s surface, but she ignored them as she always did. This was her way. Ordering that things be made and brought to her, and then acting as if they weren’t nearly good enough.
I strolled across the floor and grabbed a raspberry tart, biting into its crunchy edges. Crumbs fell to the floor at my feet and Mother’s eyes snapped to them. She returned her cup to the saucer she held. “Sit down, Rule.”
“I prefer to stand.”
“Very well.” She smiled, barely concealing the aggravation I knew bubbled and boiled beneath the surface. “Is it true?”
“You will have to be more specific, Mother.”
She gently sat the saucer on the table. “Do you have a tether to the girl? It’s what you implied, is it not?”
“I have a great many faults, Mother, but I am no liar.”
“Sever it,” she ordered, her voice pleasant; as if she wasn’t asking me to cut off a part of myself, a part that was integral to who I was; as easily as if she were appointing me to a mundane task around this castle, as she always did to keep me from boredom, as she claimed I would succumb to with too much idleness.
“You ask too much,” I replied as nonchalantly.
“I only ask for your loyalty,” she insisted, steel creeping into her tone. “How could you possibly be loyal to me, when the tether requires so much of you?”
“My tether to you is stronger. Surely you know that.”
Her teeth gritted together. “It doesn’t matter. I will not compete with a waifish human girl for the attentions of my own son.”
“There is no competition,” I tried to argue.
“Oh no? Then explain why you entered the game to come to her rescue. Why you’ve guided her. Yesterday, I assumed you were simply toying with them, but today I learned you were driven to protect her. You’re going to ruin everything, Rule, and I won’t allow it.” She ran her hand over her cerulean skirts, smoothing the billowing fabric; a soothing mechanism that she always attempted, but that never quite worked.
“Did you even consider that I was coming to your aid and not hers?” I reasoned. “Did you want the game to end almost as quickly as it began? I know you better than that, Mother. You like to toy with the mice before you bite into them.”
“Even so, my order stands.” She struck her fist on the table, overturning the tea cup. Its contents spilled across the glass surface and dribbled onto the floor, a blue puddle forming at her feet. She shifted her silken slippers away from the mess and composed herself again.
Not allowing her tantrum to rattle me, I contended, “Even if you order it, I cannot sever the tether. It’s impossible.”
Mother leveled me with a glare. “There’s one person who might know. Go to her, Rule. I want it broken by morning,” she sniffed. “The game is important to me. I won’t let you spoil my fun.”
Her fun was the only thing of importance to her. The game was only a small part of my mother’s twisted view of the world.
“Oh, and Rule?”
“Yes?” I paused halfway to the door.
“The color tonight is white.”
This did not bode well for Arabella and Carden. If there was any color my mother hated almost as much as gray, it was white.
Her lips curled into a cruel smile.
“I’ll make the announcement.”
She dismissed me with a flippant wave and I strode out of the room, having lied to my Mother for the very first time. I notified the first Cursed I could sense of the night’s color choice, which set him immediately on edge. Then, I set out to find a woman I’d been avoiding for two centuries—a woman who held a massive grudge against me, but who I somehow had to convince to help me, and fast.
If my mother knew my tether to Bella was stronger than mine to her, she would kill her in an instant, her precious game be damned.
CARDEN
One minute I was roaring at Rule to get his hands off of Arabella, and the next, I was screaming at the clock in the center of the throne room, taking one of the fae with narrow, twisting horns off guard. He jumped back at the sound and sight of me. Arabella appeared a few seconds later.
“Is it sundown?” she asked, her brows scrunched together.
Instead of answering her question, I demanded, “What was that back there?”
“What?”
“He touched your hair, Arabella. You let him touch your hair.”
“It’s just hair, Carden,” she replied wearily, dismissing my ire. She turned in a circle, glancing around the room. “Wait, where is everyone? Where’s Queen Coeur?”
The fae I’d startled upon my arrival had already run out of the room and no one else was there, unless they were Cursed and Unseen. And you could never tell where those poor bastards were. “I don’t care where she is. I want to talk about what happened in the mirror,” I insisted.
A steely look came into her eyes and she folded her arms over her chest. “My brother is a mercenary. Are you happy to know that, Prince?”
“That… I don’t care about Oryn. I care about you. Do you want Rule?”
“Do I want Rule?” she spat. “Are you seriously jealous? I was trying to kill the clock back there, Carden. You should be thanking me for coming up with a plan.”
Stunned, I ticked my head back. “So, you don’t enjoy his company?”
Arabella sighed, relaxing her posture. “I wouldn’t say I don’t, but I’m not sure I do, either. He’s… complicated.”
He certainly was a complication. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
“It doesn’t even matter,” she muttered.
“What doesn’t?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” She strode to the door and I followed her around the maze as she searched for something.
“What are you looking for?”
“A window.” We jogged down another enclosed hallway, and then another and another. “Where are they?” she growled. “This is crazy. It… Sometimes it feels like the castle is alive; like it’s just another player in this game, and it denies us the thing we want most unless the Queen or Rule allows it.”
“Maybe it is.”
She pushed fallen strands of hair out of her face. “I’m so sick of this game, Carden. I’m sick of this place and everyone in it. Except you, of course,” she added quickly, staring down a long corridor. It looked the same as all the others we’d gone down. Polished checkerboard tiles. Flickering white-flamed torches along the pale walls.
“The walls aren’t blue anymore.” I ran my hand along the white swirling patterns. The walls were covered in white velvet.
“I guess we know the new color for tonight.” She brushed her fingers over the fabric, leaving a trail across the surface, slightly darker than the untouched areas around it. But then a crimson stain appeared where her fingers had touched. Like a fresh cut, the divot began to fill with red and spill over and down the wall.
I leaned close and sniffed. The scent of copper filled my nose. “It’s human blood.”
“What? How can that be?” Arabella leaned in, careful not to touch the wall again, and inhaled. “Carden?”
“What?”
“Whose blood is this?” Her skin paled and I hid my face from her so she wouldn’t see how enthralled I was with the scent.
/>
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to know.”
“I hate her,” Arabella seethed.
“So do I.” I hated that she had so much control over us.
The scent of blood was driving me crazy. The beast roared just beneath the surface. I worried that one day, I wouldn’t be able to tell me from it. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control it, and that I’d hurt Arabella. I could see her pulse jumping in the vein in her neck. When she raised her hand to push her hair back again, the veins in her wrist throbbed toward me. My teeth began to elongate and coarse hair emerged from my skin. I panted, already anticipating the pain I knew was coming.
“Carden? Are you okay?”
“No,” I breathed, struggling to control myself.
The only thing I could do was run away from her. My roar echoed down the corridor as I put as much distance between us, as quickly as possible.
“Carden!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RULE
The door squealed on its hinges as I pushed it open. Her cottage had been abandoned. Only the remnants of ribbon spools, fabric, and rusted shears littered the counters. The floors were dusty and a pack of rats had built a nest in the far corner of the main room. I’d just turned back around, spinning on my heels, when I saw the glamour shimmering in my periphery.
She’s clever, but you can’t fool the one who taught you the trick.
“Nice try, Esmerelda.”
The glamour faded and life returned to the cottage as slowly and deliciously as flower petals unfolding. I ascended each step as it appeared and entered her house. Purples and blues, pinks and greens, yellow the color of sunflower leaves and lemons, blues in every shade, emerged from the gray shadow. Where my mother preferred one color at a time, Esmerelda preferred them all at once and everywhere. That was the simplest way they differed.
She sat at her workbench, hunched over the hat she was still busy stitching. She refused to look up, feverishly working the needle in and out of the material, the dark thread disappearing into the stiff fabric.
