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Queens of Thorns and Stars (with Elle Cross)
A HARPY TIME
DEE ST. HOLM
A Short Tale of the Monsters Ball
Theo
“I could help, you know.”
Theodore Essex jerked as an amused voice chirped from beside his ear. Where on earth had that person come from? Not that he could tell. He was unable to see anyone past the leaves of ivy clouding his vision. He grunted, tried to turn around to regard the speaker, and only succeeded in sending himself spinning in a maddening circle.
As happened when one tried to scale a stone wall, and ended up hanging upside-down, having gotten oneself thoroughly tangled in the vines covering the stone barrier.
Bloody humiliating.
To be fair, breaking into balls wasn’t his normal manner.
His days were typically spent reading in chambers—otherwise known as doing all the research for the solicitor who’d deigned to accept him as an apprentice—and performing whatever errands the man required. On a typical day, his greatest challenges involved navigating the courts and delivering legal documents to some of the seediest locations in London. To be sure, that involved some degree of danger, but he prepared for those eventualities, and those were necessary acts while he secured the position that would ultimately liberate his sister, and their estate, from their malignant boil of a father.
Going into trade should have been enough. But no. Their father had forced Theo’s sister, Penny, to attend the Monsters Ball. And having escorted her to the door of the estate, he was then told to get himself gone. And Theo would be damned if he let her face those monsters alone.
Hence his current predicament.
He hadn’t planned to scale the outer wall surrounding Broadstone Hall—the imposing estate perched on the cliffs of Dorset—nor had he dressed properly for the occasion. But needs must—or so he’d thought. Alas, he’d overestimated his climbing talents. Clad in unsuitable shoes and with his legs thoroughly tangled, he was thus at the mercy of the vines.
Ever so slowly, the vines spun him around.
At first, all he could see was the dark of the forest.
Then a pair of stunningly fine eyes appeared in his field of view.
Bright yellow and gleaming with mischief, they sat within a face that was inches from Theo Essex’s own—a true feat, as he was hanging at least eight feet off the ground, suspended by the most tenacious spread of ivy ever grown.
He gave silent thanks that his spectacles had stayed on his face—they were useful at concealing his true feelings—and strove for a banal tone. “I beg your pardon, madam?”
Her lips curved. “I said, I could help you.”
He lifted a brow—or tried to. “Is that so?”
She grinned at him, displaying a set of neat—and remarkably sharp—teeth. Hers were the pointed features of a creature that had bitten and would bite again—and, he suspected, gleefully so. To his utter shock, the thought sent a bolt of heat straight to his loins.
“Iwon’thelp,” she said. “But I find myself compelled to point out that Icould.”
At a complete disadvantage, Theo could only say one thing in response: “Are you intending to hinder me?”
Her head tipped to the side in contemplation. “Not at the moment.”
“Grand,” he grumbled.
He shifted his view as best he could to take in the rest of her, and found himself regarding a well-dressed lady perched on the branch of an oak tree beside the wall. A set of massive wings folded neatly down her back, and her feet were a set of hawk-like talons, the claws gleaming bright against the bark.
Just what he needed, to be caught by a bloody harpy.
No doubt she was an attendee of that bloody Ball, which meant any moment she’d tire of this game and retreat to the house—where she’d alert the countess or the guards or some bloody minotaur. Normally he was well prepared for those eventualities, but bringing his work-kit, as he called it, had felt both unnecessary and potentially incendiary.
Shows what he knew about the Monsters Ball.
