Page 6 of A Beastly Court

I knew my refusal disappointed him, but it frustrated me more since I couldn’t shake this unfounded gut feeling that it was wrong. But why? I had plenty of memories of us being intimate—in the doorway of my bedroom, under a maple tree, even kissing through an open window—and each had had the intent to consummate our passion. While I’d burned with lust then, something was holding me back now.

One last shred of obligation to my family, maybe? Maybe if I didn’t have sex with Ossian, I could return to their good graces? But did I even want to if that meant denying a part of myself and acquiescing to their prejudices? And Grandmother had cursed me, after all, her own flesh and blood.

Ugh, Meadow. You’re a hot mess and no mistake.

Thrusting a washcloth under the faucet, I glared at the color of my eyes—Hawthorne green—in the mirror as I braced myself for the vigorous scrubbing it always took to remove the white crust from my face. More precisely, from my eyes. It was like the Sandman blew half a desert into my face every night, though he didn’t have the courtesy to leave me with any dreams I could remember. No, most of the time I woke up with a racing heart and a sweat-drenched forehead and no memory of the struggle I had just endured.

With a malcontent grunt, I wrung out the washcloth and draped it over the faucet to dry. The cold leaded glass of the bathroom window sweated against the heat of my hand as I muscled it open to get my first breath of fresh air. It was the only one I was likely to get.

While darkness still reigned inside the stone castle, the late-autumn landscape beyond the walls was blooming with the color of dawn. Everything glittered under a fine layer of frost as if the world had been sprinkled with icing sugar overnight. Wan yellow light on the forested horizon illuminated a sky that promised to be a pristine blue with no clouds the entire day. It would be a beautiful day to train outside… if Ossian would ever let me leave this castle. He was fae—didn’t he understand a green witch’s magic was stronger when she wasn’t trapped inside stone walls?

I understood it wasn’t safe outside, not with a hobgoblin bandit raiding the village and hamlets, mallaithe plaguing the forests, and sluagh blackbirds lurking, but couldn’t I just stand on the bridge for a minute?

My grousing was interrupted by the toll of the deep-toned bell in the castle tower. Hurrying now, for the fae king’s day also began early, I shut the window and quickly brushed and braided my hair, letting the brown rope drape down my shoulder. Then it was shimmy out of the nightclothes and into long woolen socks and a long woolen dress of sage green before the cold air wicked the heat away from my skin. Then came the supple leather bodice and belt, and my feet practically dove into the matching leather boots next, further insulating themselves from the stone floor. While I preferred my vintage sundresses or gypsy blouses and linen pants, I didn’t protest this throwback to the Medieval Age. What Shari made for me, I gladly wore. She was the royal seamstress, after all.

Around my head and shoulders went a cowled hood (also made by Shari), but it didn’t dip so low as to obscure the necklaces I wore. The amazonite pendant didn’t exactly “go” with the Celtic shield and it all clashed with the gold-and-rubies ring I wore on my finger, not to mention the silver-and-ruby earrings Ossian had given me the day I’d moved into the castle with him. I’d never been one to care too much about fashion, not like Lilac. After transferring the censer to my belt and slipping the strap of my foraging bag over my shoulder, I was almost ready to walk out the bedroom door.

Hanging on twin pegs in the wall right of the heavy oak door were two wrist guards, a forest scene of deer running through the trees tooled into the leather and coated in gold leaf. Except they weren’t to guard my wrists. They created a barrier between my iron cuffs and Ossian’s skin. A golden toggle wiggled into a loop secured the guard over each cuff, and now I no longer posed a danger to the fae king and could begin my day.

My footfalls were a whisper like faraway waves through the empty east wing. When once I’d thrived on community, I was thankful for the solitude now. While I thoroughly enjoyed Ossian’s subjects, my gut clenched at the presence of his inner circle, particularly Alec.

The man and the others like him had bluish-green fae markings climbing their skin like ivy and a tattoo of their allegiance to Ossian on their necks. I didn’t mind tattoos, but theirs were eerie. Arcane. The Brotherhood, they called themselves, though they didn’t seem very fraternal to me. Most of the time, I rarely saw them; they were always out patrolling or doing whatever bidding of Ossian’s that required the use of opposable thumbs.

But Alec… he seemed to make it a point to lurk around the castle. Part of one of his arms was missing, just below the elbow, and instinct told me that it had been an injury caused by violence. However, it wasn’t his ink or the mystery of his missing forearm that unnerved me most. It was his eyes—pale blue and as piercing as icicles. They roamed over me, simultaneously jealous and covetous, and it made my skin crawl and my magic flare.

Nearing the junction with the castle proper, my skin and magic did those exact things as that very man stepped into the center of the archway. An oath to the fae king prevented him from ever stepping foot in my little sanctuary, but that didn’t stop his shadow from stretching and thinning from the foyer across the stone floor to my feet.

“Milady,” Alec drawled, a dagger sliding loose from his sleeve and into his hand. “Going somewhere?”

CHAPTER TWO

“Nowhere that merits your protection,” I said tartly, still eyeing the dagger as I swept past him. I held up glowing green fingers. The color was strong, but the power was a bluff, which wasn’t something I was going to admit aloud. “These still work, you know.”

His pale blue eyes gave me their customary covetous sweep as if I was a prized calf halfway through my fattening era before he turned to follow me. “If that were the case, the king wouldn’t have made your safety my priority.”

As if you’d do anything but stab me in the back the first chance you got.

Either Alec was an overzealous Brother or hopelessly in love with Ossian—there was no other explanation for the man’s fanatic devotion to the fae king. It didn’t matter which, for the outcome was the same: envy. Without words, he’d made it clear to me from the beginning that we weren’t just rivals for Ossian’s attention. We were archnemeses.

So why Ossian had assigned him to be my escort, even though he knew we detested each other, I’d never understand. Maybe because he was one of the only humans in the entire court? I didn’t see how that made him more qualified, not when one of my best friends was a literal honey badger. Perhaps it had something to do with the fae-like markings on his skin?

“I’m safe within these walls,” I grumbled, loathing even the act of speaking to him. “And don’t you have monsters to hunt or a hobgoblin criminal to track down and apprehend?” Or small animals to torture? I didn’t say.

“The other Brothers are on it. I’ll join them after.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know where the great hall is, Alec. Been taking my meals there twice a day for the last week, you know.”

Hastening my steps did nothing to get away from him—he was too long in the leg for that—but it did bring me closer to Ossian. The sooner I was with the fae king, the sooner Alec found somewhere else to be. The two of us were never to be disturbed unless the court was threatened.

And speaking of…

I gulped and stood stock still in front of the great hall’s double doors. On the other side of them was the court’s greatest threat chained to the wall left of the dais.

A bear.

But not just any bear.

A grizzly the size of a mountain with claws longer than steak knives and paws so huge they could crush a man’s skull like it was an overripe watermelon. He was foul-tempered and savage, hateful amber eyes glowing like saucer-sized pennies.