Page 41 of The Ruthless Fae King
“Lucien,” I whispered.
Marcelle froze on top of me and then there was a hard smack across my cheek. I instinctively pulled for the wind, and nothing happened.
It was in this moment, with Marcelle’s quivering body on top of me, that my shock dissipated. My rage came back to me andI felt everything.
The blood-curdling scream that ripped from my throat scared us both. Marcelle yanked himself off of me, rolling to the side, and I propped up on my elbows, reeling my fist back and connecting with his perfect, upturned nose.
“You bitch!” he growled, and then a bright blinding light went off before my eyes, stealing my sight.
“I hate you! I will never be your wife,” I screamed, even though it wasn’t true. Iwashis wife. I said yes and now he’d taken my purity.
It was done.
I blinked rapidly.Whiteness. That’s all I saw. I yanked at the cuffs on my wrists but nothing happened except a searing pain. I was naked and screaming like a lunatic, when someone came up behind me and placed a cloak over my shoulders.
“Lock her in her room!” Marcelle yelled.
I felt like a feral animal who had just been caged. I reached out, blindly smacking whoever carried me and bucking in their arms.
“My lady, please calm down,” a male guard’s voice pleaded.
I couldn’t see. I was powerless and I’d just consummated my marriage to Marcelle.
Rage didn’t begin to cover how I felt.
I screamed, and thrashed against the giant guard who held me. I was naked with barely a cloak to cover me and I didn’t care.
“Princess, stop!” the guard hissed.
I wasn’t sure I could sleep at night if I didn’t fight right now. If I didn’t do everything possible to get out of here, I wasn’t sure I could live with myself in the future.
But despite every fist I threw, and kick, it was no use. I’d never needed to physically fight before. I always had my wind magic. I was too weak.
The guard threw me onto a bed and slowly my vision began to return. Shadows moved around the room and then a door slammed, and a lock slid shut.
The full desperation of what had just happened weighed on me, and then with it a wave of shame. Why did I allow that to happen? Could I have fought earlier and stopped it? Would Marcelle hurt my mother or sister?
I was powerless.
I was married.
Not to Lucien.
Sobs wracked my body as I wailed into the blanket. Clutching for the pillow, I brought it to my mouth and screamed. I mourned the loss of something I had saved for Lucien. I’d wanted to experience that with him… and now I never would. I alternated between sobbing and screaming for nearly an hour until, finally, I passed out.
* * *
I wasawoken to the sound of the hinges on the door squeaking. For a moment I forgot where I was, then the nightmare of my reality all came rushing back to me. My heartbeat spiked in my chest as I looked frantically at who was about to enter my room.
Please don’t be Marcelle.
When I saw an unassuming handmaid, I relaxed a little. The door closed behind her and she bowed deeply to me. Her blond hair was tied into two braids and she didn’t look a day over seventeen winters old. She wore the Summer fae crest on her brown apron, which she smoothed with her hands as she approached me.
“Hello, Princess Madelynn.” Her voice was soft and calm. “My name is Birdie and I’ve been assigned as your lady-in-waiting.”
“Birdie?” I didn’t mean to say that out loud but it was a peculiar name.
She smiled, approaching the bed timidly. “My mother died in childbirth, so my father named me after her favorite thing—bird watching. I know it’s not a common name, but I love it.”
