Jessamine
It takes three days before we reach civilization. Darrock is back in his clothes, leading the way through a busy street. He offers little to no explanation of where we are, other than, "This is Stormfort. The village offers direct passage into the capital. It's a shortcut."
The only problem is... I've seen villages, and this place isn't a village. It's a...I don't even know what to call it.
And...the capital? Only humans bother with such things, demarcating lands into provinces, countries and capitals. In Neredia, there are packs and territories. Villages and cities exist within the territories. The villages aren't always decrepit and rundown, depending on who lords over them, but even the finest, richest territories in Neredia do not look like this.
The cobblestone streets beneath my feet glisten as if kissed by the Goddess's light. Each stone is meticulously placed like whoever constructed the roads had all the time in the world. And resources.
The houses stand tall and proud, adorned with richly coated walls and windows that reflect the starless sky.
The edges of the roof shimmer and my eyes widen when I realize they are either lined with silver, gold or...just something shiny.
Stalls brim with finely dressed customers and merchants, and I watch in awe as they exchange odd looking currencies. Wolf statues of bronze and gold stand at certain intersection, water pour from their muzzles. No one is trying to chip away the gold or steal it. It's how I know something is horribly wrong with this place.
I blink, wondering if I've fallen into a world where luxury is the new normal and poverty is but a distant dream.
Fancy carriages dart past us, females my age and younger peeking out to coo and wave at Darrock.
I gape at them. At their skin. Their hair. Their eyes! For once in my life, I almost feel... normal. Like I could fit in here.
Darrock's red eyes don't even seem ominous anymore.
There's a freaking wolf strutting ahead of us with a bow on her tail. A bow!
The air carries the sweet scent of delicacies wafting from open windows, and the murmur of contented conversations weaves through the atmosphere.
I can't keep my mouth closed. Everything is fine. There are no hungry eyes or faces. No suffering. No beggars on the streets. Not one wretched looking soul here. I thought I'd been to the outskirts of Dawn once when I was looking for answers as a child, but I clearly have no idea where I wandered off to.
Because this isn't it.
"Change your mind already?"
The air is cold, but my skin is hot and crawling. It's the first time I'm being overwhelmed by anything. I'm awestruck. To think we haven't gotten to the city yet. "No," I tell him. "Too shiny, it's hurting my eyes."
"I'll provide you an ointment for that," he says without humor.
He shoves me forward before a teen stirring a carriage can run me over. The boy yells something at me in the language of Dawn and Darrock chuckles.
I don't give in to the urge of asking him what that meant as I withdraw my hand from his.
"Hold up your jaw, Violet. You look like a gawking fish."
"Go to hell."
In a sudden move, he seizes my wrist, slamming me against a brick wall. The building trembled as his fingers encircled my throat, lifting me from the ground. His pupils start to expand.
I slap at his hand, kicking his sheen, but all he does is stare at my pulse point like he sees something there. Like he wants to bite me. His lips part and I see sharp canines being caressed by a very pink tongue. My pulse pounds against his fingers.
A tsk leaves his lips and his hand retracts from my neck. "You are one to talk about manners. I'll hold off punishing you. For now. And don't think I've forgotten the stunt you pulled yesterday." His hand reaches behind me and he squeezes my rump. "Play nice, Violet, or you'll hate me."
"I already do," I snarl, prying his hand off my ass.
He pulls off me, a smirk playing on his lips. "How tempting it is to rip your head off. I wonder if your mouth will keep running then."
I smile. "If you wanted to rip my head off, you would have done it yesterday, after I drugged your apple and tied you to the tree. What are you, a dunce? Even a child knows not to accept food from strangers."
He snarls in my face, anger tightening every muscle in his body, and then, in a split second, it's all gone. I've never seen anyone transition so quickly from fury to absolute...nothingness. Fear burrows deep into me as I come to a realization that there's no way Darrock is mentally stable.
I should have known it the moment he licked Slyder's blood off his fingertips with a delightful smile on his face.
Thin ice. I need to thread carefully around him.
"A valiant attempt at trying to vex me.” He snaps his wrist and I feel a sharp sting on my neck followed by the feel of something warm dripping down my skin. Darrock's finger comes away red and he wipes it with a handkerchief that materialized from thin air. "I’d happily give in, but I’m afraid I quite like my head where it is.”
He thinks Kier will kill him if he touches me. I raise my hand to my cut skin and hold. “We both know Kier doesn’t care if I live or die.”
Maroon eyes twinkle with amusement. “You don’t say.” He turns, and starts down a path that leads into a well-lit alley. “And I wasn’t talking about your beloved Alpha.”
**********
We pass the night at an inn, and against my will to stay awake the entire night, I sleep like a child, waking only when Darrock pounds on my door the next morning, threatening to break it down if I didn’t come out. I was given all of ten minutes to shower and put on his clothes that now reeked of sweat and hell knows what.
We journey out after a quick meal and we barely speak to each other the rest of the way. Or stop to rest. I move along tiredly, and find myself asking after every minute if we’ve reached yet. He stops responding at some point and I stop asking, focusing on making my feet work.
The only indication that we are somewhere different is the sudden shift between scorching hot sun and a heavy downpour. Darrock keeps moving like it’s nothing, and I’m forced to trail behind him, shivering, teeth clattering with my hands wrapped tightly around my bag. I’m unsure how long we walked for, but when we stop before a set of enormous gates, I’m soaking down to my underwear, the fabric of my clothes clinging tightly to my skin.
My teeth clatter violently, and my toes are numb in my boots.
I stare up at the gatehouse and the guards teeming above it. A tall man with beady eyes yells, “Identity yourselves.”
Darrock snarls viciously, the sound carrying well over the rain beating down furiously on the ground. The men freeze, and the tall one leans over, peering closer. I squint, wiping the water from my eyes, and the male’s voice booms, nearly splitting my eardrums. “Open the gates! Alpha Darrock has returned!”
There is a loud squeak, and the middle of the gate parts a little, expanding wider and wider until both are completely ajar. Darrock enters, but I hesitate, peering past the gate at the little heaven on the other side of it. It’s a castle, even bigger than Kier’s. It looms ahead, rain drops causing it to glimmer in daylight. “You live with your King?”
He pauses at the threshold. “Delighted as I am that you find my abode befitting of a King, this is nothing compared to the castle. Come on in, Violet.” He tilts his head. “Scared?”
“You tell me. Would you follow you if you were in my shoes?”
There’s that creepy looking smile again, and I notice a man jogging towards us in my peripheral. “Don’t look so forlorn. You’ll have my people thinking I have collected you against your will.”
“Right, because you didn’t.”
“Did I though? You followed because deep down, you know where you belong isn’t in that hellhole.”
“That hellhole will always be my home.”
He snorts derisively, just as the man stops in front of us. Lanky, about five eleven, the male stands shorter than Darrock, but that doesn’t make him look any less intimidating. His brownish hair is cut close to his head and he has a fresh, clean-cut face. Velvet brown eyes flick in my direction, a faint interest sparking and dying almost immediately, before they return to Darrock. He lowers his gaze submissively. “Your absence was felt and I did my best to cover for you. Your engagement is in two hours, and His Majesty has ordered you be shot on sight if you stand Nymeria up.”
Darrock growls, rubbing his chin. “He sends me on an errand and threatens to kill me if it keeps me late. How rich.”
“You were supposed to return two days ago.”
“Something came up.”
The male’s brow arches and his eyes slide to me. “Another woman? You really must have a death wish, Darrock.”
Darrock waves him off and start walking ahead, his movements fluid in the rain. “Stop nagging me, Caspian, and bring the lady in.”
The male, Caspian, ventures a step forward, and I move to the side. “I can walk.”
“Really?” the man asks, sarcasm dripping from his voice, and his hand closes around my upper arm as he shoves me inside with him. The gates shut loudly behind us and I look back, panic spreading across my chest. There was no running, and even if I could, I didn’t particularly have anywhere else to go.
Keeping up with Caspian’s pace is hard, and he ends up dragging me all the way to the entrance. He’d said Darrock was getting engaged. That meant the prick didn’t bring me here to actually mate with me. I suppose that’s a good thing. Why then did he save me and bring me with him? To piss off Kier? Trying to understand what the man was thinking gives me a headache. Nothing he’s done so far makes any sense.
Inside the castle…manor…whichever it is, is more magnificent on the inside, the hallways brimming with people—too many—as they wait out the rain.
At the sight of Darrock, the crowd parts, bowing as one as they quieten. The tension in the air is palpable and every one of them seem tense. It is not at all like this at Kier’s castle. I wouldn’t call Kier lax in his authority but everyone feels at home around him. There’s the fear and respect, but even more than that, there’s so much love.
Here, it’s all power as Darrock struts past, ignoring every offered greeting, and I feel the thick, heavy aura suffocating the hallways lessen as he veers left, down a different path. They raise their heads and look at me as Caspian pulls me along. Their gazes are intrusive, inspecting me like I’m an odd-looking creature. Some even point at me, confusion and question lighting their eyes.
I keep my head down when I start to hear sentences like, “She looks familiar. A lord’s daughter, perhaps?”
No, just Madeline’s daughter.
We go up a set of spiraling stairs, passing through a yard blooming with chrysanthemums of colors I’ve never seen before, and a high-pitched scream suddenly cleaves the air. “Brother!”
A slight figure crosses the yard and crashes into Darrock. Caspian halts behind the pair, but he doesn’t let go of my arm. The female buries her head in Darrock’s chest, a soft whine leaving her lips as she speaks so many words I don’t understand. Darrock responds to her slowly, but not unkindly, and she pulls away, taking a peek around him.
Eyes of startling red meet mine and widen. “You’ve brought me something to play with?” the female version of Darrock whispers in common tongue, and I blink, only to have her face so terrifyingly close to mine. I didn’t even see her move.
Her nose is suddenly on my neck and I scramble back. Her face crinkles. “She needs a bath.” The female rocks back on her heels nimbly, like a dancer about to do a twirl, and she stretches a hand forward, snatching mine from Caspian’s grasp. “You may call me Raya. You have such remarkable eyes.” Right, coming from someone who looks like the fantastical bloodsuckers.
She couldn’t be older than nineteen, though she doesn’t look it. She’s taller than I am, with a curvy frame that’s wrapped in a dress made of cloud—I don’t know. The material is so ethereal and soft. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’d thought Moira was flawless. The woman in front of me is exquisite. There’s not a single hair sticking out the pores of her skin. Every line and curve of her features have been carved with delicate hands with a single goal in mind—perfection.
I pull my hand from hers, startled at the contact. She doesn’t seem to like that and I can tell because her pupils start to dilate like Darrock’s when he’s peeved. She starts towards me but her brother pulls her back. “You can play with her later, Raya. I need you to make her look…” he scowls at me. “Presentable.”
Raya takes one look at me and shakes her head. “I have to get prepared for your engagement. I will not spend the afternoon dealing with…all of that.” Her eyes narrow at her brother. “Since when do we take in strays?”
Wow. Ouch.
“Since now.” He flashes her a feral smile. “And I wasn’t asking.”
Raya rubs her forehead. “How presentable are we talking?”
“Presentable enough to appear before the king.”