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“What’s hunting them?”
Why do I even care?
“I’ll give you the answer in exchange for one drop of blood on this door,” she replies, her tone greedy. “One drop of blood. It will free me, and I will answer every single one of those burning questions in your mind. I’ll explain to you why you don’t need to be in the race. I’ll explain to you how you can choose your own future. I’m your ticket out of here. The castle knows it. It’s why it keeps bringing you here.”
The castle walls groan, getting colder, and thunder bangs outside alongside the clinking rain on the stone. “I don’t trust you.”
She pushes her hair over her shoulder. “Go and ask them about it. Ask them about the fifth court and see how much they value you over their secrets. See if they don’t kill you on the spot for knowing more than you should.”
She starts laughing. “So many secrets. So many lies. On and on and on it goes. No matter the world, the secrets are the same. The undying love is the same. How sad everyone dies for the same thing in the end.”
She laughs. I put my hand on the wall without realising I even moved, and thankfully, a door appears. I twist the handle, looking back at the crazy woman as she laughs and laughs. “I still don’t know your name.”
She grins at me, showing all her broken and black teeth. “I’ll tell you when you free me, and let’s be honest with each other, you’re one test away from finishing the race, and you don’t want to be any of their queens. There is only one ticket to freedom, because they’re never going to let you go. You know it, I know it.”
My heart races as I turn from her, and she keeps laughing as I rush through the door and slam it behind me, leading me out to the main corridor. Matron is standing on the stairs, talking quietly with Arty, and I’m surprised. They both go quiet. Matron turns back to look over at me. Her eyes wander across my face before she turns around and carries up the stairs. Arty hops over with a big grin on her face. “I was just looking for you!”
“What did she want?” I ask as Arty hooks her arm through mine.
“Oh.” Arty pauses. “I was just asking Matron about food choices and if we could choose something nice for our last meal here. Before I came here, I much preferred to eat far more vegetables than there are offered, and there never seems to be a great selection. Plus, do you think they know about pizza yet? Because they really need to know about pizza—”
I cut off her rambling. “When we first met Matron, you said there was a fifth court.”
She pauses mid-sentence, stumbling over her words a bit until she stops. She unhooks her arm from mine. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
She frowns at me as she takes a step back. “No, I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, I have to go—”
“Wait, Arty.” I reach for her arm, but she moves out of the way. “On our first day here, you said there was a fifth court, and I need to—”
“No, I didn’t,” she bites out, angrier than I’ve ever seen her before she storms off up the staircase, all but running from me. I watch her go, wondering what the hell that was about. I’ve never seen Arty so cagey. I’ve never seen her like that at all.
A thick arm falls over my shoulder. “Ah, just the beautiful woman I’ve been looking for. Have I ever told you purple is my favourite colour?”
I chuckle, looking up at Arden. I’ve gotten used to this constant need for touching that he seems to have. “Hello to you too.”
“Come on. I want to show you something.” He tugs on me.
“Should I be concerned?” I ask. Part of me wants to ask him about the fifth court, but at the same time, if I ask him, then I’d have to explain about the crazy lady in the prison that the castle keeps taking me to, and something in my gut tells me not to do that. I mean, I don’t know them. I don’t trust them completely, and I know nothing about this world. I could be killed, like the prison woman said, for knowing too much. Arden might like me, but he will hate me in the future when he finds out I’ve only spent time with him and flirted with him because of a deal with Lysander, which ends with his death. If I can do it, that is.
Asking him about the fifth court seems reckless. I can’t be reckless. I need to survive here. Arden’s going to hate me either way, and something in my chest stings at the thought of him hating me. When he finds out the truth about Lysander, and he will have to find out at some point, he might kill me first. I can’t stay here, and I can’t kill him. I don’t think I even have it in me to kill someone. But if it’s between leaving here and killing him, I don’t know. Because staying here means I’d have to be someone’s queen. It means I’d be trapped for the rest of my life, and I might as well kill myself with that option. It will be between me and him.
I look up at Arden and really look at him. His black hair is cut to his shoulders, but shaping his handsome face, and the darkness of his hair makes his tanned skin look like honey. Somehow, he makes long hair look attractive, although it’s cut shorter than when we first met, and now it’s styled. This close, I can see he has stubble that I want to run my hand across. He is ridiculously handsome, and if we met in any other way, his looks and humour would have made me fall hard for him. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.
But he isn’t human. He is a dragon shifter king, and I’m just the mortal he kidnapped that’s trying to kill him. Arden leads me through two corridors and a door into the main room of the kings’ place before leading me up the stairs. He opens a door that’s clearly his bedroom, and I raise my eyebrow at him at the door. “Your room?”
“It’s a surprise,” he says, leaning into me so my back presses on the frame. We are close. Really close.
“Is it in your pants? Because if it is, I’m leaving.”
He laughs. “I really, really like you. But even I wouldn’t use a cheesy pickup line like that. That’s more Emrys’s style, and that’s why he is single. But some girls do seem to fall for it because he has a pretty face.”
Yeah, I hate that Emrys can make me laugh with his terrible pick-up lines and pretty face. Arden isn’t what I’d call pretty, not like Emrys, but he is more ruggedly handsome.
I walk into Arden’s room. His place smells like fire, not that I would have thought it could smell like anything else. There’s a massive fireplace that takes up the one side of the wall, with flickering flames lit inside, and it’s lovely and warm in here. He doesn’t have a bed, but rather a massive couch covered in red blankets and big cushions. There are several bookcases around the room, filled up with books, but in the centre of the room is a massive table filled with all sorts of strange little bottles, rocks, crystals, insects and so much stuff that I don’t know what to look at first. Thunder bangs outside, and a flash of lightning brightens the room for a second.
Arden waves me over to the table. “As I told you before, my court is good at things like this.” He clicks his fingers, and a fire lights up on a Bunsen burner in front of him. His eyes light up and he looks so excited as he moves around the table, arranging things. He waves his hand over the flame, and it swirls around in the air as he picks up a bottle off the table and the flames hold it within. I watch as it burns around the bottle, the liquid inside turning from a cool pink almost to a dark blue. Arden picks the bottle out of the flames like it wouldn’t hurt him. Maybe he is fireproof. It shouldn’t surprise me. “I have two things for you.”
