Page 19 of Fated to the Wicked King

Despite everything, I had been provided with every manner of comfort: clothing, warm baths, and the shiny platters of food that magically appeared at the sitting table for every meal. Not that I had any sort of appetite.

My fingers fiddled aimlessly in my coat pockets—brushing against innocuous powders and herbs, which, with a certain expertise, could be turned into sleeping draughts and small explosives.

It was often said that a prisoner’s first duty was escape.

Despite my agreement with the king, I had been mulling over several escape attempts for the past couple of days, just in case. Except there were no guards around to trick. No cage, barrier, or passageway I would need to blow up in order to escape to the outside. If I tried to wander too far along the grounds, either the castle’s sorcery would see me immediately turning around, or shadows would hinder the path.

My science could not defeat the Wicked King’s shadows.

They were everywhere in the castle too, behind my door, along the floors of every hallway. Each morning, the shadows would shepherd me to the hall to question prisoners for hours, and afterward, lead me back to my room. Otherwise, the shadows would block my way, keep most doors shut, and constrain me to certain areas of the castle.

It wasn’t implausible that His Majesty was monitoring my activities.

It was as though he could read my mind, watched my every move, and remained one step ahead of me.

It seemed an entire lifetime ago when the same notion brought feelings of warmth and belonging. Not anxiety. Not trepidation. Not this perpetual battle of frustration and desolation.

I blew out a helpless sigh. I was going to go out of my mind if I had to keep to my room all night long once again. Being unable to sleep as my mind spun theories against problems with no foreseeable solutions.

Dragging my exhausted body out the door, I crept out of my chambers and down the hall.

Shadows swirled around my ankles, but it didn’t seem as though I was being restrained from having a little walk about the castle.

As I crossed darkened paths, tapestries fluttered in the gust against the stone walls; candlelight shimmered across the same paintings lining the walls over and over—in different sizes, within different gilded frames.

A royal family—mother, father, son.

A stitch tugged on my heart for the king. If someone had murdered my entire family, I would be irrationally and endlessly enraged too.

Hallways folded, bent like a hazy maze. I wasn’t even sure where I was going. It was entirely possible I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to my room, but I walked on.

Light flickered from a door standing ajar up the way.

Upon approaching it, I peered through the gap. My heart swelled at the tall shelves lining the walls, the vaulted ceilings, and rows of spines of books. A smile broke across my face as that old parchment scent tickled my nose.

It was the library.

Slipping through the door, I tried to make the least amount of noise, walking past a sitting area where a chessboard in mid-play sat at a round table with two chairs. The lamplight brightened the room. I eagerly headed for the nearest shelf to inspect the titles.

Literature, poetry, history, botany, mechanics—there were books covering many fascinating topics. I smiled in triumph. Time would be of no consequence if I could remain here in this room with all these books, and my captivity would feel less like a slog. If I could not escape the castle, I could simply escape into books. Pretend I wasn’t even here at all. Pretend I was in another world altogether.

My fingers hovered over the spine of one large leather-bound tome about mystic tides. I tilted my head to read the gold-embossed text, increasingly pleased at the solemn quiet the library had to offer.

It almost felt peaceful.

The skin at the back of my neck prickled with warning, even before a hidden paneled wall to my right slid open with a subtle but unmistakably mechanical shift of gears. A darkened figure emerged.

The king stopped as abruptly as I did.

We stared at each other.

The look of genuine shock on his face was almost comical—his normally controlled expression shattered in an instant, steel-blue eyes widening in disbelief as if I was the one who had materialized out of thin air.

I suspected my own face looked much the same.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Whenever I interrogated the prisoners these past couple of days, the king would always stay on his elevated dais, far across the room. This was the closest I’d been to him since I arrived at the castle.