Kingdom of Villains, page 3
“Primrose.”
He moved the plate to the corner of the cell. “After your mother?”
“Yes, although I do wish it was my first name.”
“What’s wrong with Fia?”
I half rolled my eyes. “Besides the obvious?” I hissed when the narlow bit me and set it back in the bedding. “Your teeth are getting too sharp too quickly, little pig.” Snatching the other narlow before it wandered out of the cell, I put the babe into the bed with its siblings. “I don’t know,” I answered his question. “I just thought they’d have picked another flower, you know, to better honor her maybe.”
“You would prefer to be named after a flower?” I nodded, dusting off my skirts though it was pointless. “Fia suits you.”
“Liar.” I narrowed my eyes but smiled just a little.
“Not lying, fire-breather.” His lopsided smile sent my stomach swooping. “Or perhaps I should call you Violet.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Your eyes.” The breath-robbing words had barely left his mouth when his own eyes shot behind him, expression hardening as he heard it first. A rustle growing in volume from outside.
“Fia?” Regin. “Fi, where the shit are you?”
I looked toward the unused door, then back at the prince. He jerked his head toward it, though his jaw was clenched.
It seemed Regin hadn’t gone home after all.
As quietly as I could, I closed the cell and then hurried to the door, nearly knocking Regin over when I threw my shoulder into it so it would open.
He stumbled back, grabbing the steps behind him before his rear smacked them. “Fuck, Fi.”
I squeezed past the door to close it. “What are you doing here?”
Regin straightened, cursing when I slipped by him and up the stairs. “What am I doing here?” he asked, incredulous, and followed. “I think the better question is, what are you doing down there?”
“I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Then why didn’t you show at lunch or dinner?”
He reached my side, and we stopped above the stairs. “I’ve been busy, okay?”
“With what? Playing games in the dungeon?” His head shook, features twisting with annoyance. “You haven’t collected another stray, have you?” When I failed to answer, he groaned. “You said it yourself, Fi. We’re not kids anymore. Time to quit playing mother to all monsters.”
Tears burned my throat, but I refused to let them fill my eyes.
To avoid a partial truth would mean giving myself away entirely. It was clear Regin knew nothing of the Unseelie prince sitting in a cell mere feet below the ivy-tangled steps. If his father had not told him, I had to assume it was for a good reason.
“You’re right. So…” I gathered my skirts and walked into the clustered gardens. “If you’ll excuse me.”
His footsteps crunched behind me. “Fi, come on. You know I didn’t mean to be cruel.”
I waded through the wild dusting of overgrown shrubs and wisteria, the long rock-paved drive at the front of the castle in view through the curtain of a willow tree.
Then my arm was clasped. I was thrown around, my waist caught in Regin’s firm grip.
“Don’t you get it?” His chest heaved with a rough exhale, his eyes flitting back and forth between mine. “I’m just trying to soothe my ego.” At my frown, he licked his lips and sighed. “You were supposed to meet me, and you didn’t show.” He swallowed. “Again.”
“Oh,” I breathed, now understanding why he’d lashed out at me.
But even knowing that I’d left him feeling some sort of way with my absence, it didn’t remove the sting of his earlier tone and words. “It wasn’t intentional. You know I want to…” But for all the daring thoughts and imaginings I’d had, I couldn’t seem to voice a thing.
“Want to what?”
My stomach squeezed. “Well, I’ve wondered if maybe we…”
“If we could what, Fi?” Regin urged, low and heated. “I need you to actually say what you want instead of running from me.”
My chest tightened, a slimy feeling itching at my innards. “You know what? I don’t want anything.” I stomped away. “So just forget about it.”
“I’m afraid I cannot do that.”
I stepped over a small pile of branches hidden beneath the ferns and continued toward the front of the castle. “We’re good friends, Regin. Let’s not ruin that.”
“Well, if we’re such good friends,” he said, reaching my side. “Since when do you do your crazy shit without telling me?”
“Since you don’t care for the crazy shit I like to do anymore.” The words hung between us, sour but true, and I knew. I just knew we were doomed before we’d even started.
This time, he didn’t follow me.
Perhaps it was for the best, the ensuing onslaught of regret for my words be damned.
“Mother of monsters.” The prince’s voice floated like a sheet of silk over the skin. “Much better than spoiled Seelie princess.”
Just when I’d thought I could quit overthinking the maddening exchange with Regin and that we’d walked far enough out of earshot of the dungeon, the Unseelie prince just had to go and open his mouth.
Courtesy of the two confusing males and worry over the well-being of the narlows, I’d lain awake until the stars had begun to fade.
“It’s rude to eavesdrop, and I’m no mother of—” I faltered before his cell. “Is that what you all call me? The spoiled Seelie princess?”
“Some call you the wildling”—he lifted a broad shoulder—“but most call you Fia the feral, for not a day passes without a leaf in your hair, dirt on your cheek, or brambles stuck to your skirts.”
Well, that last one wasn’t exactly new or wrong. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall outside of the narlow’s cell, smirking at the prince. “Which one of the rumors about yourself is true then?”
Colvin returned my smirk. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.” Although we knew those rumors about me all were, I still said, “You already know which one is true.”
“Mother of monsters, indeed,” he purred in a way that suggested it was not something to be ashamed of. Not at all. “You’ll need to tell me of these supposed rumors first.”
The very thought of it made heat rush up my neck.
His eyes narrowed, and he cursed, then chuckled. “Moon melt me. How old are you?”
“The rumors don’t state that?”
“Nineteen?”
“Not until the spring.”
He cursed again. “Then do not worry.”
“You think me too young to know of filthy things?” I said without thought or care for what might come next. “You have had a harem of lovers for many years.”
But the prince just tilted his head back against the wall, arms hanging over his bent knees. Eyeing me, those golden orbs glowed, then he sighed. “I can indeed play with fire.”
Knowing that was all he would admit, I nodded. “How?”
A grin revealed sharp and deadly canines. “When my body, my blood specifically, heats beyond return, it gathers like coals beneath my flesh and awaits release.”
Sun squash me. The succinct yet punctured way he’d spoken those words…
I’d never thought myself much for blushing, and it angered me that he could arouse anything within me. Curiosity, a shred of kindness, and even conversation. But the blushing angered me the most, and to the point of making it worse, my skin growing impossibly hotter.
So I checked on the narlows and unfolded the handkerchief of mince stew I’d robbed from the kitchens after claiming that I did not want porridge. The cubs pawed at my fingers, too impatient to wait until I’d unraveled the soiled silk.
I laughed. “Hold on, beasts.”
“They’re all males.”
“How do you know?”
“You get a sense for such things after enough time with them,” he informed. “Bonded by land and all.”
I supposed he would know.
Giving in, I let the stew fall to the ground, and the narlows ate as they wished. Then I checked on the sleepy cub, fingers carefully peeling the blankets away. He flinched, curling toward the warmth I’d stolen.
I covered him and sat against the wall, watching the other two eat and roll over one another.
“Who is he?”
The abrupt question threw me so thoroughly that I wasn’t sure how to answer or if I should answer at all. Yet I did, my words curt. “My friend.”
A careful curiosity darkened his next question. “Do your friends usually trail your scent in hunt of you at night?”
I gave the prince my eyes, found his already watching me, bright but with what seemed an endless yet edged patience. “Do yours?”
His lips curved.
And it grew suddenly stifling, the cool dampness of the dungeon reminiscent of a foggy summer day. I tried to look away when his eyes began to shine so bright, I thought they might explode into stars, but failed when the gold spread. It moved into the whites of his eyes, grew into a honey-colored brown, and then…
And then red.
Laughter followed the opening groan of the door up the stairs, footsteps crunching down them moments later. “…Told him he didn’t know me at all if he thought I’d forget a winnings like that.”
“You’ll never see that coin. Gregorn’s a swindler, through and through.”
Colvin’s brow rose, and I blinked.
His eyes… they were now normal. As normal as star-spun gold could ever be. Perhaps I’d imagined it, I thought as self-preservation finally kicked in, and I hurried out of the dungeon via my favored exit to the overgrown gardens.
But I hadn’t.
I’d not met any other Unseelie. It was likely a common phenomenon for most of them. Especially being that so many of them relied on drinking one another’s blood to fuel their magical abilities. It shouldn’t come as a shock then, that the Unseelie prince might also need to feed.
I was jumping to conclusions. Conclusions that didn’t even matter, I soon remembered as I traipsed back through the castle to return to my search of a new home for the narlows and overheard heated voices.
Backtracking just enough to avoid detection, I lingered on the window ledge.
A few feet away from the council chamber doors, I feigned interest in the mince dried to the beds of my nails and caught the tail end of my uncle’s statement. “… wouldn’t have handed himself over without protest otherwise.”
“But he did so before all in attendance in a show of good faith,” Karn, Regin’s father, said, his voice, typically roughened with a relaxed arrogance, low and serious. “Are we to dishonor that so profusely?”
“He cannot live.”
I stilled, fingers falling and my back meeting the stained blue glass of the window.
“Dangerous words, my king.”
“Yet you know they are true. The last of his ilk terrorized Gwythorn for nearly a decade until it was miraculously stopped.”
“That was well over half a millennia ago,” Karn said. “Times have changed, and perhaps, the thirst for such bloodshed has too.”
“You know our base desires never change, especially for a creature like him. And you know damned well that even if it were possible to unwind such genetically ingrained instincts, we still cannot take any risks.”
“We gave Olette our word that there would be no foul play. That we would try to reach a compromise. I urge you to remember who we’re dealing with here, Brolen.”
I could imagine my uncle’s cheeks mottling with his rising incense. “You think compromise with blood-lusting monsters is something to be accomplished?” A throaty scoff. “There’s a reason we still stay well south of the border, Karn.” Those last words were clipped, as if almost spat at Regin’s father.
Silence.
I hoped to hear Karn’s voice rise, to hear him tell my uncle that he was out of line and to indeed tread carefully. Though I knew he never would. He never did.
My teeth gnashed at the thought of Uncle Brolen sitting there, all puffed up like a crowned peacock with nowhere to parade his newfound power.
They unclenched when Karn said in an eerily calm tone, as though tempted to plead with my uncle, “Just think of the repercussions.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing, believe me,” my uncle grumbled. “But even the prince himself knows what must be done.”
“I don’t think you’re wrong, my king.” My uncle’s captain and longtime friend sighed loud enough for me to hear. “That’s the problem.”
Having heard enough, I slipped away quietly, entering the stairwell at the end of the hall.
Inside it, surrounded by shadows, I fell back against the rough stone wall. My ears rang. The flame in the sconce above my head showed a slight tremble in my hands when I lifted them to my cheeks.
They were far from warm now.
My skin was ice, my blood cooling sludge, and my heart’s gallop slowing to an echoing thud.
He was to die.
The Unseelie prince in the dungeon had handed himself over, but for what reason, I didn’t know. My mind swam as I pieced the timing of his arrival and the information I’d just heard together. My uncle’s absence was not entirely unusual, but I hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of him since he’d returned days ago.
So Colvin had given himself to my uncle at the meeting of the courts. But why? What had happened? What was it he’d done that was so terrible they would want him killed?
It wasn’t until I was lying in bed that night, the book I’d been perusing open upon my stomach, that I recalled his eyes. His demeanor. The solemn acceptance of his fate. And I acknowledged the question I’d continuously overlooked. Perhaps on purpose.
What was he?
I woke with visions of blood and war still fading from my dreams and the cover of my book digging into my rib cage.
Smacking my lips together, I tossed the book beneath my bed and rolled to the floor with a painful thud, rubbing at my eyes. Each word of my uncle’s conversation with Karn pounded into my skull, relentless as I climbed to my feet and drained the water straight from the pitcher.
Prince Colvin would die.
Whether he deserved to or not. But even if he did deserve it, what would the death of the Unseelie prince mean for the rest of us?
The patchwork of blood-colored dreams was answer enough. I tried to remember them more clearly while bathing, but the suds were long gone by the time I surrendered. For there was no need.
The Unseelie were not only monstrous but also mercilessly vengeful.
We were fed cautionary tales veiled in the form of bedtime stories as we grew. Only to learn some years later exactly what they were.
Morsels of history handed down to each generation.
A shiver skittered up my spine as I dried off and dressed, my hair still wet and untouched by a brush as I made my way to the kitchens.
Adon was talking the ears off the new apprentice, who was washing dishes at the sink, but he paused when he saw me.
“Princess.” He bowed, then tossed a towel over his shoulder and met me at the wooden counter in the center of the muggy room. “It’s nearly time to prepare lunch.” He took his time to add, to ensure the barb was clear, “Perhaps you’d like to wait for some squid stew.”
“You know I do not care for seafood,” I said, my nose crinkling. I continued checking the pots of leftovers intended for the staff. “I’ll help myself.”
Adon refused to heed my dismissal. “You don’t typically care for a meaty breakfast, either.”
“And you shouldn’t care for my business.”
“That is a little difficult when it is my job to feed you,” he said, mirthful but with an undercurrent of irritation. “Dare I even ask what you might be up to now?”
Slopping some pie into a bowl I snatched from the drying rack, I merely filled it and took my leave. Adon’s mutterings trailed me into the dark halls beyond. “Born rude, that one. Suppose that’s what happens when there’s no mother or father around to show her any better.”
Most would be outraged enough to tattle on someone like Adon, but when most of this luminescent castle was filled with gnats just like him, it became but another game of ceaseless venomous gossip.
I wasn’t above such things. In fact, watching people squirm and argue over stories Regin and myself had created and spread just to cause entertaining trouble while growing up had been so enjoyable that I smiled while recalling the memories.
But as Regin had grown busier with training over these past few years, I’d discovered I needed more than courtly drama to feed the things I lacked and loathed to look at.
Atop the stairwell, I paused to listen. Hearing nothing save for the muted bustle some floors above, I unlocked and opened the door to the dungeon.
“Pie?” the prince asked. He sniffed the air as I settled inside the narlow’s cell. “Beef and pea.”
There was no need to answer him, and I wasn’t so sure I could as I peeled away the buttery pastry before letting the cubs at the meaty innards. Setting the remaining pastry in the bowl, I pushed it across the floor toward the prince’s cell.
It rocked and hit the bars, crumbs exploding over the ground.
Colvin didn’t reach through them. He watched me. I could feel it as I kept my own eyes plastered to the unmoving babe in the nest of blankets. “Something troubles you.”
I’d thought I could ignore it. That the prince’s fate would not bother me if I refused to let it, just like I had with so many other things in this eternally long life I’d been given.
It shouldn’t bother me. At all.
Yet it so evidently did. A sharp discomfort, similar to that of terrible indigestion, unsettled my chest, my empty stomach. I was certain he could hear it, even if I shifted to try to hide it.
“Fia,” he prompted, tone deep with knowing.
“I don’t wish to talk about it.”
“Is it that male?” A hair-rising wrath bit at the question. “Did he do something?”
“No,” I snapped. “Nothing like that.” I’d forgotten to stress about the last encounter I’d had with Regin in the aftermath of my recent discoveries. Guilt poked at me, and I inwardly vowed to find room to worry about the trivial later. I hoped I would.
