Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine Book 1), page 31
He wasn’t awake. No one would be. It was long after midnight.
It didn’t matter. I walked to the end of the hall to the row of arched windows that gave view to the star shine over the lake in the distance.
A harsh laugh echoed from down the hall. From the springs, I realized. About to head back to my room, I stopped at hearing my father’s voice.
“... marry you. I will not have her used as a weapon to bring me to my knees.”
A pause. “And if she refuses?”
“She cannot.”
Silence.
I crept closer but didn’t dare get too close to the stairs that twirled down beneath the ground to the springs.
Several failed heartbeats later, Avrin murmured, “You cannot mean...” Another pause. “She is your daughter.”
Molkan growled, “I went without one for twenty years, only to be handed a creature sullied by my enemy.” His voice dropped. “I care not for her fate. I cannot afford to when more important things are at stake.”
More silence followed. A silence so loud, I feared my chaotic heartbeat might be heard. I gripped the window ledge, knowing I should walk away before I heard anything else that might leave another scar.
Then Avrin spoke in a hard tone. “Tullia is not an object to claim or discard, Sire.”
A gruff, humorless laugh bounced up the stairs and echoed down the hall. “Yet that is exactly what she has become, and if you truly desire to one day take my place, then you must learn from my mistakes.” Molkan barked, “Cease thinking with your fucking cock.”
The white-haired servant delivered a sheer golden gown that would leave minimal to the imagination.
Although I was far from pleased with the finery, I still smiled and gestured for him to lay it on the bed.
He lingered a moment, his features tightening as he looked from my uneaten breakfast to me. I hadn’t the energy to reassure him. And I hadn’t the energy to ask if there would be anything else to accompany the revealing material that resembled more of a seductive nightgown.
I gave my eyes back to the window, my stomach in endless knots and fear my only companion as the door quietly closed.
The first sign that something was wrong was the dress. The second was that no one came to decorate my face nor do my hair.
And as the sun dipped low and the stars began to sprinkle across the darkening sky, apprehension stilted my movements when I finally donned the gown.
A knock sounded.
Avrin entered my room a moment after, dressed in the regalia fitting for his high rank. The brown jacket was fringed in a dark forest green that matched the crest of a baneberry flower over his chest and the three stripes at his broad shoulders.
He eyed me up and down, his hands clasped behind his back. The posture and stance resembled my father far too much.
A father I hadn’t seen in days.
I pondered whether we’d get to talk before this ball. But as Avrin’s gaze dipped down my body, I became keenly aware of every shape and curve I was forced to put on display. “I believe I’m missing a slip, perhaps.” I laughed, but it was lacking in humor. “Or, at the very least, a cloak.”
Avrin didn’t speak as he crossed the room to where I stood.
My stomach squeezed at his silence and nearness, a nervous breath rattling free. “I need a minute. I still need to do something with my hair.”
His giant boots stopped, the toes almost kissing my bare ones. My eyes stayed there as Avrin leaned close to kiss my cheek, whispering, “I’m sorry, Princess.”
Thinking he was referring to the harsh words he’d thrown at me before he’d kissed me, I maneuvered a smile into place as I lifted my eyes.
It fell when he leaned back with tightening features reminiscent of the male I’d met the night Rolina had died.
A burning cold enveloped my wrist.
My gaze dropped as he seized the other, and I flinched from both the burn of the iron and to get away.
It was too late. Iron manacles encircled my wrists.
I glared up at him, horror filling my chest and my eyes. “What is the meaning of this?”
He reached into a pouch at his waist, and I knew before he pulled it free. I knew what would be blown into my face, and I stumbled back.
It made no difference. Even as I turned and covered my nose and mouth, the glittering dark flecks still reached me.
Avrin, at my back, gently tugged my hands down, the chains clanking. I screamed, but it fell into a whimper as I inhaled and blackness entered my vision.
Laughter and merriment cloaked like a faraway song.
My eyelids were heavy, gritty as I tried to keep them open.
I soon discovered I would have been better off keeping them shut. The room appeared in patches. A glowing chandelier dotted with orbs of fireflies twirled slightly from the stone ceiling.
Turning my head to the side, I startled.
Three males stood there, goblets in hand, gesturing to me while muttering, “beautiful” and “goddess-damned shame.”
The gown I’d donned, the gown I’d felt insecure about wearing for how much it revealed of my body, was now gone. And I’d have given anything to have it back.
I was naked.
Naked in a shining bronze cage barely wide enough for two males.
Red welts marred my wrists. The chains were gone, and they were unnecessary. The only method of escape appeared to be via the top, but the cage was so tall that I’d surely fail and only injure myself trying.
The door was latched closed with a golden padlock.
I shook it, my teeth clacking with the force of my desperation to wake from this insanity.
Just a nightmare.
Just a nightmare, I kept repeating, and if I made enough disturbance, then I could wake up and find myself—
A hand clasped my rear and squeezed.
I flinched, my knee banging into the metal cage, and pushed up to sit against the bars. Pointless. Males, and even some females, still ogled me while smirking and laughing. Their jeers and leering became a cacophony that buzzed like a swarm of bees in my ears.
The room swirled as my vision blurred with tears and excruciating fear. Not just any room, but a throne room. At the opposite end was a dais with two males atop it.
My father sat upon his throne. A crown of wreathed golden leaves glinted on his head.
Behind him, standing tall and proud and observant of all the guests flooding the room, was Avrin.
He’d chained me and stripped me of my gown, then caged me like an animal.
Why?
The question slammed into each corner of my mind. Trapped breath burned within my lungs, leaving me panting and dizzy. Bile crawled up my throat, and I pushed it down while closing my eyes.
A rasped male voice crooned to my ear, “Hello, pretty whore.”
I screamed and moved back, only to fall into the hands of another male on the other side of the cage. One of my breasts were clasped, pain screeching as I pulled free and the fingers refused to relinquish my nipple.
It was endless. Endless and barbaric and it couldn’t be real.
It just... it couldn’t be.
This ball of which was supposed to welcome me into my kingdom was nothing but a nightmare. It had to be—
“My fine and loyal friends.” Molkan’s voice boomed above the laughter and crass names hurled at me, and the room slowly descended into silence. “Our feature for this evening is finally awake.”
Had anyone touched me while I’d been asleep? How many people had seen me unclothed, helpless, and had... oh, goddess.
I curled into myself and vomited.
A male hissed his displeasure as it splashed through the bars and onto his shoes. He reached through them and slapped me.
My head crashed into the bronzed metal, and I slumped to the cage floor.
The king needn’t have yelled anymore.
He had the entire room’s attention as he said, “Some of you might think you know who this creature is, but let me make one thing abundantly clear.” There was an intentional pause before he declared, “She is no daughter of mine. She is a traitor.”
Murmurs and soft laughter arose.
I flicked damp strands of hair from my face. Rising, I looked across the room to the male who’d sired me.
“She is enemy-bound.” Molkan’s eyes met mine, empty and dark. “The secret wife of Florian Hellebore.”
Everyone gasped and shouted their outrage.
I flinched as wine was thrown at me. Spit followed, as well as fruit and goblets that clanged against the bars and punched into my skin. I cried out, but quickly muffled it behind clenched teeth when I realized reacting only encouraged more of them to torture me.
None of the pinching fingers, insults, and bruising blows hurt nearly as much as Molkan’s next booming declaration.
“This traitor was sent to our beloved kingdom to spy for her husband under the guise of wanting to escape him and to know her people, wanting to know me”—he laughed—“and under the guise of wedding one of our own loyal warriors, but we caught her.”
None of that was true. Not a single fucking word.
“No,” I croaked—would have screamed if only someone would have believed me. No one would, I knew, when they did not wish to.
“Quiet, traitorous filth,” a female spat from beside the lust-gazed male she clung to.
I ignored her and looked at Avrin, only to find him finally staring at me.
His jaw was fixed. Gold eyes unreadable.
This was insane. Avrin had come for me. He and many others had been sent to retrieve me, and we all knew I wasn’t yet married...
My stomach curdled, my hand clapping over my mouth. I closed my eyes as the realization threatened to make me sick again.
The contract.
Florian’s inability to tell me when we would be wed.
“The winter king has requested the return of his wife,” Molkan went on. “This spawn of mine that he stole with the intention of humiliating me.”
I glared through wet lashes.
Florian was not the type to make requests.
“So tell me...” Molkan’s voice echoed, utter silence trembling within the cavernous room. His eyes met mine again, a gleam within, before he said with smug amusement, “Who’s humiliated now?”
Laughter crashed against the walls of the room in unending waves.
My heart splintered, cracked wide open and filled with the sound and the stares and the vulgar gestures and my own endless stupidity.
The king of Baneberry said nothing more. He stepped back with stone features and lowered onto his golden throne.
Avrin stood beside him, clean-shaven chin high and staring beyond me.
Behind my enclosure, a small group of violinists stood in gold and brown formal wear. The whine of their instruments returned, and conversation rose with it. Now that the explanation for my presence had been delivered, no matter how false, many had seemingly lost interest in me, dancing and drifting throughout the room.
But some only moved closer.
Groping hands snatched my arms and even attempted to slip beneath me to pinch my rear. I gave up on trying to move when there was nowhere to go. I kept my arms over my breasts, my legs tucked and crossed. The bars of the cage slowly closed in. My ears rang with the howl of my heartbeat.
I closed my eyes tight and folded over with my head upon my knees.
How could this have happened?
All this time, I’d been married while assuming I was not. All this time, I’d thought I’d known who the enemy was, and I was wrong.
There wasn’t just one. I was trapped between two evils.
I could scream like the hawk that soared low past the row of arched windows flanking the side of the throne room. I could plead with the goddess and those around me to stop, and to believe me as I explained that I hadn’t known.
None of it would matter.
Florian had wanted me thoroughly ruined and humiliated before he killed me.
And this father I’d stupidly thought would shelter me from him...
His conversation with Avrin in the springs spun through my violent thoughts. If Molkan couldn’t wed me to his precious adviser because I was already married, then I was of no use to him. I was only as he’d claimed—just a weapon for Florian to use against him.
Both kingdoms were intent on being my doom.
And I had no one to blame but myself for ever daring to believe that a home might be found for someone like me within these treacherous lands of Faerie. Gane had warned me. Even Hal, with his stolen jewels and missing digits, had warned me.
Yet I knew the entire population of Crustle could have warned me, and still, I would have ignored them all.
I still would have wanted to know.
Now I knew, and regret spiked like thorns around my pulsing heart. Each shallow breath grew tighter, and my knees soaked in tears, as the touching ceased but the insults and probing gazes assaulted in never-ending torrents.
I recited my letters faster than ever before, the volume rising to a scream trapped within my mind each time I finished and started again. But I could only get away with pretending to ignore what was happening for so long.
My hair was pulled, and I lurched to the side. A hand wrapped around my throat.
I snarled, attempting to tug it free.
The male with orange-flecked brown eyes laughed, a tobacco stem hanging from wine-red lips. His laughter ended with unexpected swiftness as his fingers uncoiled and he backhanded me across the face.
I met the bars again, the room twirling as I contemplated giving in entirely. As I fought the temptation to just lay there and let them all do as they wished.
I saw her then.
A row of portraits hung at the back of the room, half covered in shadow, but I was only interested in one.
A portrait of a queen with a tiny silver crown and large hazel eyes. Her cheeks were rounded and high just like my own. Though cropped to her shoulders in voluminous curls, her near-white hair was just like mine, too. Her nude-lipped smile was guarded grace.
My mother.
An onslaught of flapping wings and birdsong dragged my wet eyes to the ceiling.
I was asleep—surely.
Flocks of birds, many dark, many white and gold, and many an assortment of colors and sizes, entered the glassless arched windows.
Molkan’s guests cursed and waved their arms as the birds circled the throne room twice before leaving the way they’d come. As more cursing and laughter echoed in their wake, I watched them fly away and wondered if they would be the last thing I’d see.
The puffy-faced male with bulbous eyes who studied me while he drank looked to his left before stalking into the thick crowd.
A screech sounded. A hand clasped my ankle.
Instinct pushed me up, my hands slapping blindly at whoever had been so daring as to pull me from the cage.
Avrin’s gold eyes were visible through the tears in my own.
He stood there and waited until I calmed, but I couldn’t calm. I doubted I’d ever feel calm again, and that was if I somehow survived this place and its people.
A brown cloak fringed in forest green was tossed over me.
I didn’t hesitate. My hands shook as I rushed to cover myself as best I could with the soft material.
Avrin extended his hand.
I glared at it, then at all the guests still sneering and staring at me, and swallowed. Ignoring his offer, I slid to the edge of the cage, forgetting it had been placed on a podium and nearly falling to the floor as my legs failed me.
Avrin caught me beneath the arm before my knees hit the hard ground. He guided me through the slow-to-part onlookers toward an arched doorway filled with shadows in the back corner of the grand room.
I was taken down a hall and then another, then down a spiraling set of stone stairs carved from the earth into near darkness. Two sconces lit an entryway to a dungeon. A sour-faced guard stood waiting between them.
“Avrin,” I said as the guard stepped aside, but my voice broke. “Avrin, wait.” I knew if I was placed in a cell, I would likely not leave until it was time to meet my end.
He ignored me and led me past the twin rows of empty cells.
“This is all a mistake. I’m not a spy, and I’m not Florian’s wife. Whoever told you that is lying.”
He stopped at the last cell, then opened the iron bars and released me into the dank space that housed nothing but a rotting cot.
Avrin didn’t speak until the grate was closed, and I was trapped behind it. “You heard what the king said.”
“But none of it was true.” I reached for the bars and hissed when they singed the tips of my fingers.
“Florian has requested your return,” Avrin said, toneless. His golden gaze roamed over me, and I clutched the cloak tighter.
His cloak, I noted, judging by the scent. That he’d given me that much meant he might be the only one I could reason with.
He spoke before I got the chance to think of a convincing argument. “If I were you, I’d give your father anything he desires so that you’re not sent back to your soulless beast of a husband in pieces.”
The word husband was another slap to the face.
I shook my head. “What is the point, Avrin? Molkan will kill me.” I knew it within my bones. There was now no leverage to be gained with my existence—only with my death.
Avrin said nothing, apparently waiting to see what else I might divulge.
“I didn’t know.” I swallowed as a spell of dizziness arrived, and leaned against the cold stone beside me to keep upright. “I didn’t know we were married.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Avrin glowered and stepped closer, growling low, “What is your plan, Tullia? Tell me what Florian has sent you here to do, and I swear I will do what I can to get you out of this alive.”
“I have no plan because I did not know,” I gritted, tears leaking from my eyes. My voice softened with dismay. “I didn’t. I had no fucking idea, Avrin. He had me blood-sworn before he brought me to Hellebore, and I assumed the contract was merely an agreement to marry, not the actual...”
“Marriage contract,” he finished for me, brows crinkled.
