Page 8 of Wolfkissed
“She likes animals, it would seem,” a woman chirps and shrieks with laughter. “Want a pet, dear? Are you into bestiality, perhaps?”
I recoil at that and glance around for the woman, but the crowd suddenly feels suffocating, closing in on me, with gleeful eyes and sneers.
I’ve tried, but I can’t take any more of this, not tonight.
Turning on my heel, I run from the great hall and its monsters.
CHAPTER FOUR
ROSAMUND
Once more, I’m locked up in my room. My sanctuary. My self-made cage. Thankfully, Della has lit the fireplace, and it’s warm inside.
Tearing the silk moths and flower pins from my hair, leaving a trail behind me, I flop onto my four-posted bed, lie on my back, and kick off my shoes, letting them thud to the floor.
Staring up at the dark canopy that’s stitched with silver flowers and stars, my head spinning, I wonder if today’s events actually happened. It doesn’t feel real. The flowers and stars spin, too, a drunken sky mirroring the chaos inside my head.
Instinct has me checking that my knife is under my pillow, where I always keep it, a habit I formed after the werewolves’ attack.
Tonight’s assault, though, was insidious. As if leaving my home to marry a stranger wasn’t stressful and frightening enough, now this… affront. Onslaught. Insanity.
Tomorrow, I decide. Tomorrow I will clarify this with Stepfather. He has no right to impose this creature on me. Surely, it was meant as a jest. A joke in bad taste, but a joke nonetheless. He has no grounds on which to wish me harm. I’mleaving anyway. He even announced it tonight. I’ll be out of his hair soon.
He has to see reason.
The music from the great hall filters through my door. Shrieks of laughter, yelling, and a drum. Bagpipes. Mandolins and dulcimers. A male voice singing. It has to be Eriard, I think, the bard my stepfather usually employs for his banquets. I wonder if he’s singing of the end of King Rouen and the reign of the fae, but that would be impolite, considering tonight’s guests of honor.
The House of Fireflies. What debt did they owe my stepfather? A big one, for sure, to require an act of madness, such as entering dark fae territory and kidnapping one of the beasts themselves.
What did Stepfather do for them? Since when is he so chummy with the fae? He has traded and met with them, same as every other human noble, but he never expressed any sympathy for their kind. I grew up in a household that has always kept the fae in subtle contempt, and it suited my own trauma and rage against their wild kind just fine.
I doze on and off as the night wears on, eventually managing to unlace my corset, undress, and burrow under the covers. Dreams torment me, taking me back to my captivity days and the claws raking over my flesh, only this time I’m inside a cage, snarling and transforming into a wolf myself.
I come awake to loud knocking on my door. I lift my head, disoriented and drenched in cold sweat, gritting my teeth so hard my head throbs.
The knocking returns, and it’s like a hot poker pushing into my skull.
It’s still dark outside my narrow windows. The wind whistles through the cracks. The music has gone silent, as have the voices and laughter.
“Who’s there?” I carefully sit up, wincing at the pounding behind my eyes, and realize I’m only in my long chemise. Quickly, I slip out of bed and grab my blue dressing gown from a chair. “I said, who’s there?”
“My lady!” a vaguely familiar male voice says. “This is Jos, his Lordship’s steward. I apologize for bothering you so early in the morning.”
Morning? It’s not even dawn. I approach the door warily. “What do you want?”
“My lady, your stepfather has ordered me to deliver the… the bodyguard to your room.”
“What? Here? You’re bringing that abomination here?”
He clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable with this mess. “He’s to be your bodyguard, my lady. He’s supposed to be here with you. At least, outside your door.”
“He can’t!” I take a step back, even though the door is closed, a childish fear rising in me that the wolf will break through it and come for me.
“Your stepfather has ordered me to bring him here. I… apologize.” He pauses. “The fae has shifted back to his human fae form. If that helps.”
“Does it?” I shake my head. “He’s not coming in here.”
“My lady.” Another pause. “I’ll leave him outside, then.”
