by Emma Hamm
Wordlessly, she shook her head.
“Is there anything I can do to make this night easier for you?”
What lovely, meaningless words. She shook her head again and tried very hard not to look at him. She didn’t want to know what he would do to make the night easier. An evening in his bed? Hardly worth it. An insider’s look at the King’s life? The last thing she needed was more opinions rattling around in her mind.
She supposed he could kill the King for her, but that also wouldn’t end well. He was a personal guard to the man she’d been hired to kill! If he found out why she was here, or what she planned on doing, then he would likely serve her head on a platter to the man who paid him.
Lorelei was alone here. And she thought it would be easier than what it actually was.
Abraxas’s eyes darkened and again, she swore there was a hint of gold in them, or perhaps fire that burned just slightly. “You are a very somber woman for one who wants to marry the King.”
“I don’t want to marry the King, and I realize I shouldn’t tell you that,” she replied. “I’m here to do my duty, and that is all. It feels as though everyone’s eyes are on me all the time, and I’m unused to it.”
His hands flexed at his sides, clenching in that confusing movement. A muscle in his jaw jumped. He looked past her for a few moments, his entire body stiff as though he were expecting a fight.
Then he blew out a long breath, obviously forcing himself to relax. “That is something I can help you with, Lady of Starlight. I am very used to having eyes on me.”
She had a hard time believing that. He’d stood behind the King and not a single potential bride had mentioned him. They were all staring at the man in garish bright purple, as though nothing else existed other than him. But Lorelei had seen Abraxas.
She’d noticed he hadn’t taken his eyes off her for most of the dinner. She had seen the intensity in his gaze as he analyzed every one of her movements. Strangely, knowing that he was watching had helped her try to fit in with the others.
Her attempts had failed, of course. The other young women wanted nothing to do with her, other than Beauty, and even that little darling had started making her own friends here.
Lorelei fisted her hands and propped them on her hips. “Just how are you going to help me with that? In case you didn’t notice, you’re the King’s shadow. Not the King’s right hand.”
“Ah, but there are things you do not know and things you might not wish to know about my life.” He grinned. “Regardless, I think it’s important that you know how to handle the eyes of hundreds upon you. After all, you’re here to marry the King. If you succeed...”
His lifted brow obviously suggested that he thought she might. But that wouldn’t do. No one should even remember that she was ever here.
Lore tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stared over his shoulder at the door that led out into the dining hall. “What’s your trick, then?”
“I remember that I am not like the others. In your case, you are not some young woman who wandered into a castle and hopes to find herself a king. You’re so much more than that.” He lowered his head, staring up at her with meaning in his gaze. “You ripped arrows out of a carriage, attacked an Umbral soldier, and then killed a man all on your first day here. Those other women couldn’t hold a candle to you, or what you are capable of doing.”
His words made her go cold.
“Pretty words,” she murmured. “And so interesting that you would remember what I did. Considering you weren’t there.”
She knew he wasn’t there. He couldn’t have been. If he was the King’s personal guard, then he would have been with the King in the carriage that had gone ahead of all his brides.
Abraxas froze, and she knew she’d caught him in a lie. Somehow, he’d heard about what she had done. Or maybe he had been there, and she simply hadn’t seen him. But whatever the reason was, she wanted to know how he knew about her actions at the attack.
“Abraxas,” she said again. “How did you know any of that?”
He wouldn’t look her in the eye, and that was enough of an answer. He was searching for something in his head, an explanation, a lie, a distraction so he could get out of this situation without her poking any harder.
She’d let him try to figure all that out. Lorelei leaned against the wall behind her, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared at him while he thought. Apparently, that made it much more difficult. He cleared his throat, tucked his hands behind his back, and looked anywhere but at her.
Perhaps he thought he could wait her out. That if he said nothing for long enough, that she’d at least attempt to fill the silence.
She wouldn’t.
Lorelei waited until he broke.
Abraxas snarled out a long sound that was eerily animalistic. “I was curious if anyone knew anything about you, considering our conversation in the great hall. Another guard was in your caravan and saw what happened.”
“The only guards in our caravan were the Umbral Knights. And if you’re going to tell me those tin canisters can hold a real conversation, then I will definitely assume you are lying.”
His eyes slid to the side again. “You are far more astute than I gave you credit for, Lorelei of Tenebrous.”
The title hit her harder than if he’d thrust a knife between her ribs. Lorelei of Tenebrous? No one had ever called her that, but to be leveled down to a legacy of swamp and ash? She’d never been so insulted in her life.
She knew he had no way of knowing her correct title. No way of understanding why his words had made her straighten her back and clench her teeth. It wasn’t fair to be angry at him for something he had no clue was so insulting.
But she was.
She was so angry that she couldn’t even see straight. Lips pressed into a thin line, she snarled, “That will be all, Abraxas. Go back to standing behind your king like the good little guard dog you are.”
He made a mistake. She walked by him and he grabbed her arm as though he had any right to touch her.
“I don’t know what I said—”
He didn’t get to finish those words.
Lorelei whipped around. She grabbed onto his fingers and pulled them in the wrong direction, pushing them back to his wrist until he let out a low sound of pain and dropped down onto one knee. He stared up at her with surprise in those strange, yellow eyes, but she refused to feel any kind of pity for him.
“I don’t like being touched,” she growled. “Particularly by someone who thinks they can grab me whenever they want. Do it again, and I will take these fingers for myself. Do you understand me?”
He should have been afraid. Instead, he grinned, and the expression was one of feral pleasure. “Lesson learned.”
She threw his hand away and stomped out of the servant’s corridor. Lorelei looked at the table with all those squabbling idiots, her stomach sinking. She couldn’t sit by those foolish little girls who didn’t understand what it meant to have a heart.
So instead, she found the single soul at the table who had given her the smallest bit of kindness. Beauty. She sat between two sticks of women who were barely touching their food at all. In fact, most women here weren’t eating.
Good. They wouldn’t mind having a change of scenery then.
She walked down the line of the table and not a single person looked at her. Maybe they all thought she was one of the servants. She certainly could have been with her dark clothing and ability to stay out of sight.
They were fools to not look at her, but she supposed it helped in the long run. She leaned over and muttered in the ear of the girl she’d sat next to, “You need to move down one.”
“Excuse me?” the girl blinked up at her. “I can’t. There’s someone sitting next to me.”
“There isn’t.” Lorelei pointed to the blank seat. “You’re in the wrong seat.”
The girl looked at Lorelei’s vacant spot with a surprised stare. “Oh. I thought someone was sitting there earlie
r. I must have been wrong.”
“I suppose you were.”
She then moved her attention to the next person. And the next. Until she got to the spot beside Beauty, vacated it, and sat down with a satisfied smile. “How’s your dinner going?”
Beauty set her fork down and cleared her throat. “How did you do that?”
“Do what, my dear?” Lorelei raised her brows comically high.
And this was why she liked the girl so much. Beauty didn’t question why or how she’d gotten every single person to move. Instead, she burst out laughing. The snorts mixed with giggles reminded Lorelei why she was doing this. Taking on all this stress and the danger of killing the King.
For people like Beauty. For the kind-hearted lovers of Tenebrous, who deserved a better leader than this horrible man who only wanted what was best for him. Beauty deserved to live in a world where there was more for her. Where she could grow and help her family, or start her own business and impact the entire world at large.
Lorelei picked up her new fork and knife, then peered down at the food on the plate in front of her. “What was that stick eating? This looks like rabbit food.”
“You’re actually going to eat that?” Beauty asked. “I couldn’t force myself to put it in my mouth. The servants brought me soup instead. I said I was sick.”
She sighed and did her best to mimic puppy dog eyes. “If I say I’m sick too, do you think they’ll cast pity on me?”
Beauty laughed again, and the sound was music. “Maybe, if you’re a good enough liar.”
Thankfully, Lore was very good at that.
Chapter 14
Lore
Arm in arm, Lorelei walked with Beauty back to the long hallway of rooms where the brides were sequestered. Each door had been painted a different color, and she could only assume that was so Agatha could keep track of who was who. Why would she learn their names when she could just remember colors?
Beauty paused in front of her door that was painted a lovely shade of blush pink. “Well, this is me. I hope you have a pleasant night.”
As if they were on a date.
Lorelei couldn’t help herself. She swept into a low bow and held her arms out wide. “It was an honor to spend my evening with you.”
“Lorelei,” Beauty scolded. “Go back to your room before someone sees you!”
As if any of the Umbral Knights would care. They lined the halls like shadows, tucked behind the curtains of the windows between each room. Like they were nothing more than decorations or statues.
Lore didn’t remove the grin from her face as she waltzed away from her new friend. Beauty had made the evening bearable, and here she had been thinking that wouldn’t be possible in the slightest.
Who’d have thought? An elf could become friends with a mortal woman. Perhaps times were changing.
She tucked a dusky strand of blonde hair behind her ear and walked over to the rather disgusting bruised mauve that signified her room. Had Agatha picked this color because it was a fine shade of vomit? The head of housekeeping had something against Lorelei. Every time she walked by the old hag, the woman would glare at her as though she wished her stare could set a person on fire.
Lorelei stepped into the room and locked the door firmly behind her. The King had given them luxury, that much was certain. She was so used to her tiny room in the attic of a person who likely had no idea there was an elf living above their head. This room, however, made her reconsider how comfortable she’d been in the dust and cobwebs.
The four poster bed stretched to the ceiling. Real white lilies tangled in a canopy overhead, clearly enchanted so that they would never wilt. The ceiling was painted with fluffy white clouds, so real they looked like she could touch them. A giant wardrobe at the end stood ready to be filled with all her lovely gowns, if she’d had any. And floor to ceiling windows at the end opened up onto a lovely white marble balcony. Likely the King thought he could ride up to the castle and wave to all his prizes as they leaned out their windows to watch him.
He’d be lucky if one of the fools didn’t fall off the balcony in their hope to reach him. But perhaps that was a rather morbid thought.
Lorelei stepped farther into the room, in case anyone was listening, before she called out, “Pixie? Are you still here?”
She wouldn’t be surprised if the little thing had wiggled out underneath the balcony doors and headed home. If there was a home for her to return to. Lorelei knew most of their homelands had been destroyed when the mortals built their homes in the Solis Occasum region.
The bed skirt rippled and a tiny lady stuck her head out.
“Ah,” she said with a soft smile. “There you are.”
The pixie crawled out from under the bed with a tuft of dust on her head. She was clearly not happy about still being in the castle, but determination rode on her shoulders. The pixie put her hands on her hips and pointed to the wardrobe.
“What?” Lorelei asked. “I know I brought nothing that suited a woman trying to marry a king.”
The pixie shook her head and then took off toward the wardrobe. Her wings fluttered like she was trying to fly, but she didn’t manage to get into the air. If anything, she looked like a regular tiny woman running across the floor.
Lorelei frowned. Something had clearly happened in her room while she was gone, though she didn’t have the faintest idea what could have made the pixie so upset.
She walked to the wardrobe and threw it open. If someone were hiding in her closet, then they would have a battle ready to greet them. But instead, all she saw were an infinite amount of gowns that were so beautiful, they made her eyes hurt.
These weren’t just dresses. These were the works of Borovoi. Only a leshy could make twenty gowns that looked like the gods had stitched them.
The pixie made a chirping sound and glared up at her as though to say she had some explaining to do.
“I suppose I should tell you what’s going on. Is that what you want?”
The pixie nodded firmly.
“Right. Well.” Lorelei supposed the pixie was the only person she could trust with the truth. This little creature had every reason to want the King dead. After all, the man had captured her and her entire family to place in little glass jars. Specifically to light his castle because regular bulbs wouldn’t do.
She leaned down, lifted the pixie into her hands, and then carried the other creature to the bed with her. Gently, Lorelei set her down on the goose down coverlet.
“I don’t want to marry the King,” she began.
And then she told the pixie everything.
Every tiny detail of the rebellion’s plan and how she feared it wouldn’t work. She held nothing back and purged all the lies and half truths from her soul. At least now she could feel better about herself. She could assume that her debts were wiped clean because someone else knew.
Although, if Lore had anything to do with it, the pixie wouldn’t still be here when she finally killed the King. She wanted the pixie off in her homeland with the rest of her family. It was the least Lorelei could do.
When she finished purging her soul of all the things she knew she had to do, she paused and looked the pixie in the eye. The creature had crossed her arms firmly over her chest again.
Lorelei didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
The pixie shrugged.
“That’s not exactly an answer. You’ve lived here for a long time, shouldn’t you know the workings of the castle?” Having someone on her side who knew how to get through the hidden corridors would certainly make things easier. The question was if the pixie would even help her.
Considering the glare on the tiny creature’s face, Lore wasn’t so sure she would get an ally this easily. The pixie had her reasons, she was sure, but Lore would so love to not be alone.
Finally, the pixie nodded.
“You’ll help?” Lore clarified.
Again, the
pixie nodded.
“Good. Mostly, I want to know where the King spends his time alone. I understand that asking for that is probably more difficult than it sounds, but I think if I knew where he spends his evenings, then that might give me an opportunity to find the perfect time to kill him. Now, I know you might want to know how I plan on killing him. That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet.”
The pixie flapped her wings, obviously telling Lore to stop talking.
“What is it?”
She had to lean down all the way to the bed to hear what the pixie was trying to say. Their voices were notoriously high pitched, and some of the magical creatures couldn’t hear them at all. Elves had good hearing, better than most magical creatures. Lore could just barely make out what she was saying.
The pixie squeaked like a mouse trying to talk. “The Umbral Knights are with him always. Some of them outside of their armor. Killing him in his sleep would not be easy to do.”
Damn it, she should have guessed that he would have the Umbral Knights involved. “That was the only option I could think of. He’s always surrounded by people. It’s not as if I could poison his food.”
“You will need to get him in a more compromising position.” The pixie gestured crudely with her fingers.
Lorelei refused to do that. Even though Borovoi had suggested the same thing, she refused to seduce the King so that she could have the perfect opportunity to kill him.
Leaning back, she shook her head. “No. I’m not doing that. There has to be another way.”
The pixie shot into the air, her wings suddenly working just fine, and landed on her shoulder. She grabbed onto Lore’s ear with both hands and shouted, “This is not about you!”
No, of course it wasn’t. It was about all the other creatures the King had killed. The ones he’d enslaved in this castle of madness simply because he thought they were pretty. Or useful, like the pixie.
“But do I have to seduce him?” she whispered, staring at the balcony as though there might be something on the other side that could help her. “I can’t stand to have him in my bed. After all he’s done.”
