Page 16

CHAPTER 16

I spent the day exploring Torbernite, admiring all the decorations that were thrown up in honor of Exitium Lunae. The gardens, beach, and meadows were all set up in preparation for the celebration. Blue and silver tablecloths were draped over tables, cushioned chairs set out around fire pits. There were multiple locations set up with assortments of appetizers, giant banners, and colorful drinks, all of which I wanted to see and taste, but my temporary maid had informed me that the Bulars requested my presence in the meadow tonight.

After returning to the room to get ready, my hands gripped my large skirt as I descended the stairs. I’d weaved the tie on the mask into my hair, keeping the strands around my face held back. The rest flowed down my back in loose waves.

The dress was heavy, the bodice thankfully not too tight, courtesy of my maid heeding my request to give me room to breathe. Already, Torbernite was growing on me, and I was somewhat sad to be leaving here so soon. Lander and I had given our speech halfway through the day to the townspeople, standing in the street in the city, and while they didn’t seem too pleased with my piece, they adored Lander. I had expected that, but thankfully, it had gone much better than Sulphur. No food was thrown, and I survived the day.

The sun had since set, the rings turning their typical purple hue before transitioning to silver. People milled about as I exited the castle, some wearing extravagant attire, and others more casual clothes. The Lunae Festival was all about equality, and wearing whatever felt comfortable was a big part of that. Tonight, people weren’t judged for their clothes or their actions. They were celebrated for their freedom of expression.

Perhaps that was why my father never spoke of or attended the festival.

Lander’s mother had given me the dress I was wearing, having it specifically made to match the mask she’d gifted me. Though it was still Amosite’s typical garnet colors, the detailing through the dress was intricately beautiful, making it feel like my own rather than something I was forced to wear. The full skirt was a deep maroon with bits of sheer black fabric spread throughout the folds while the bodice carried the same black lace as the mask. It stretched above the top of the corset, looking slightly risqué against my skin. Given the nature of the holiday, I’d chosen to ignore that bit. For the first time, I felt pretty in my kingdom’s colors.

I crossed the gardens, maneuvering around a few large groups of people drinking and laughing. Before attempting to find Lander in the crowd, I grabbed a glass of berry wine from a nearby table, downing it to shove aside my nerves. I savored the rich flavor as I inhaled the scent of smoke from the bonfire and the distant smell of roasting pork. I’d been to many balls before, but never anything like this. I couldn’t help the nerves being tossed around in my stomach like a boat on rocky water.

“Enjoying yourself?” Paxon asked, striding up beside me.

I coughed after gulping down the last drop of the sweet wine. Clearing my throat, I set the glass back on the table. “I’ve only been here a couple minutes, but so far, I am.”

He wore a dark green three-piece suit, every inch of it perfectly tailored for him. “This is what you get to look forward to in marrying a Bular.”

“A once-a-year holiday celebration?”

He turned, and I followed his gaze to find Lander swaying around the bonfire, a handle of bourbon in his grip.

“Lander’s habits are not of my concern,” I said, understanding what he was trying to say.

Paxon faced me with a raised brow. “No?”

I shook my head. “He’s enjoying his life.”

“He’s ruined it.”

“He doesn’t look ruined to me.”

Paxon sighed, reaching past me to grab a drink. “The people think he’s a joke. A spectacle to laugh at when he overindulges in alcohol or wastes vials of magic by gambling them all away.”

“He bets magic?” I’d never heard of such a thing. I was aware that people with an abundance of vials were considered rich, but I never would’ve thought they’d be used in a game of luck.

Paxon slowly sipped from his glass before replying, “It’s a dangerous addiction. But perhaps the citizens of our kingdom will overlook it once they fall in love with you.”

“I highly doubt that will come anytime soon.” Being the daughter of a greedy, selfish king wasn’t a good look, as I’d come to find.

“Perhaps magic could persuade them,” he said, watching me carefully.

What he was insinuating would never happen. People kept secrets for a reason, and mine couldn’t be revealed.

“Perhaps,” was all I said before heading into the throng.

The nearby flames from the bonfire warmed my bare arms and shoulders while the wine heated my cheeks. A small band played off to the side, and many danced with their partners to the beat. In a flash, I was pulled into the embrace of a man, and I blinked to find Lander grinning down at me. He smelled of booze, but he looked happy, smiling from ear to ear. He swung me around until the song was over, then another upbeat tune began, and he passed me to another dancer. Everyone traded partners every few steps or so, and I threw my head back with a laugh, letting the music and wine flow through me as it fueled the joyous race of my heart.

Halfway through the song, I twirled into the arms of another man, his hands gripping my arms stronger than the rest, but the buzz nearly made me blind to it. The stranger didn’t spin me like the others. In fact, he kept me quite close to his stiff chest.

“Enjoying the last night of your life?” he asked, his voice low and close to my ear.

My feet stumbled slightly as we continued moving while it took me a moment to process what he’d said. “I’m sorry?” I tried to pull back to get a better look at him, but he held me in place. To anyone else, it’d look as if we were simply dancing.

His fingers dug harder into my shoulder. “Oblivious thing, aren’t you?”

My heart skipped. Play dumb. Act na?ve.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” I mustered as much confidence behind my words as I could.

The hand pressed to my lower back slid around to my waist and gripped, the tips of his fingers brushing the underside of my breast through my corset.

“I have to ask you to let me go.” I tried to keep the fear from my voice, but it shook anyway. Were there people here to kill me?

“I don’t take orders from weak little bitches like you.”

My eyes darted around until they landed on Lander, who was inebriated as ever, laughing with a tall, dark-haired woman. He didn’t so much as glance this way, infatuated with whoever the girl was. Paxon was nowhere in sight, but for some reason, I felt a bit of relief at that. Knowing him, he’d watch and see how I handled the situation. Everyone else was so caught up in their conversations and dancing that no one noticed what was happening before them.

But I was not weak.

Putting all my force behind it, I brought my knee up to meet with his groin, the act hidden in the mess of my skirt. He let out a grunt, the impact enough for him to loosen his hold on me. I shoved his shoulders away, leaving him keeled over with his hands cupped between his legs.

My dress suddenly felt suffocating, and despite the cool night air, I needed somewhere I could breathe, away from the stifling bodies moving every which way. I bundled my skirts in my fists and hurried away from the crowd, weaving through people lost between dancing and drinking.

Maybe the festival was a bad idea. The citizens of the other kingdoms weren’t particularly happy with my father’s hold on trade and his hoard of supplies he refused to share, and with that, I should’ve known tonight might be a dangerous event to partake in. My guards had been here, but they were now distracted, as I’d suspected they would be. I’d have thought that to be a relief, but it clearly wasn’t. Threats loomed, even on the night where equality was supposed to be celebrated.

The festival butted up to the edge of the forest, and as I entered the tree line, an opening in the distance revealed itself. My dress snagged on various twigs and rocks, but I carried on in the hopes of the man not seeing where I’d disappeared to. He was drunk, allowing himself to act unruly simply because of the holiday.

My body was confused whether to enjoy its buzz from the dancing or to let fear seep in with the thought that the man might come looking for me. I had to hope my knee had done enough damage to keep him away.

Emerging from the trees as the sound of the party faded behind the foliage, a small pond sparkled under the rings above. The crisp scent of dew on the blades of grass was a welcome reprieve from the multitude of invading smells at the celebration.

Lightning bugs danced in the air above the water, stars glittering across the surface. I looked up to find one shoot across the sky, and while it might’ve been foolish, I whispered a wish to the stars. Perhaps they’d hear it and give me mercy just this once.

Tell me the world is not truly all this bad.

Crossing to the pond, I perched myself on my knees and trailed a finger through the still water, watching as it rippled. The water was like glass, showcasing the world above, and in the reflection, I stared at my mask. It was breathtaking, there was no doubt in that, but it wasn’t me. It was a perception, hiding who I truly was behind distracting beauty. I was wearing Amosite’s colors as if I was proud, and yet, all I felt was shame. Shame to have a father so greedy, and to live in a kingdom so rich, yet so poor.

Among the faint croaking of frogs and chirping of crickets, a twig snapped, but before I could turn, my head was thrust down, water instantly surrounding my face and flowing up my nose.

“Keep her under!” a man shouted, his voice contorted by the water around my ears. Another pair of hands grabbed my shoulders, forcing me farther into the water.

I thrashed against the hold of the two people, trying not to scream, as it would only spend what oxygen was left in my lungs. I tried to blindly reach behind me to find a weapon, a body, anything, but found nothing of the sort. My hands plunged into the water, trying to push off of the sandy shore, but it only kicked up debris, the dirt stinging my eyes. I squeezed them shut, but the sting was nothing compared to the rest. I was drowning, my lungs burning with the natural urge to breathe. If I let the water in, that would be the end.

“Bring her up,” the man who had spoken before commanded.

Hands pulled at me, and then my head was above water, and I was sucking in air. My face and hair were drenched.

“Please.” I gulped, my lungs raw from the sudden intake of oxygen. I coughed hard, my throat feeling like it was torn to shreds. “Please. I’ll do anything. Please don’t kill me.”

The man behind me chuckled. “We’ve got a beggar, boys.”

The one to my right said, “I like it when they beg.”

A hand gripped my chin hard, forcing me to face the guy to my left. He had a shaved head with black ink swirled over every inch of skin, aside from his face. “She’d look even prettier begging for me to fill her tight cunt.”

My chest heaved as nausea rolled through me, but I was too starved for air to think about vomiting. Instead, I spit at him, the glob landing right on his cheek. “Fuck you,” I seethed in between pants. I might not have the upper hand here, but that didn’t mean I had lost all my fire.

His hand released my chin and flew back, a crack splitting through the air as he slapped me. Rough fingers gripped my chin again as pain stung my skin, my mask barely taking the brunt of the hit. “You want to spit on something, bitch? I’ll give you something to soak.” His free hand moved to his pants.

I thrashed my body, but the other man wrapped his arms around my shoulders, keeping me in place. I tossed my head back, and a crunch sounded right before he yelled out in pain. His arms fell from around me, and I instantly twisted, landing flat on my stomach in the grass. The bald man grabbed my arm, but with the water slicking my skin, I slid free and scrambled to my hands and knees.

The one who had spoken commands grabbed my hair, and I screamed out in pain as he lifted me off my hands, my knees barely touching the ground now. I reached up, scratching at his arms, but he held firm.

“Lucky for you, we like a little fight.” As he spun me, I recognized that the bald man with the now bloodied nose was the one who’d danced with me.

“You fucking coward!” I spit. “Bringing your friends because you couldn’t fight a girl on your own!”

The short-haired man holding me up chuckled. “She’s feisty.”

I tried to pry his hand off my hair, but he kept his hold firm. “Let me go,” I bit out.

“I’m having far too much fun to do that,” he said, like holding a woman against her will was amusing to him.

“You heard the girl. Let her go,” a deep voice said from behind us, interrupting the chaos like a wish whispered on the wind.

He spun, keeping me in his grip as he faced whoever spoke. “We’re not sharing.”

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the water and sand from my eyes to focus on whoever it was that was speaking. I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t pinpoint from where.

The man stepped out from the shadows of the tree line, dagger in hand as he picked at his nail with the tip of it. My heart picked up its pace as I instantly recognized him.

“Doesn’t look like she wants to be shared,” Bowen said, not bothering to look up from his dagger.

“She’s having a grand ol’ time. Aren’t you, honey?” the short-haired man asked, jostling me a bit. “Just a bit of foreplay.”

I breathed furiously through my nose, not giving him a response.

Bowen looked up from his dagger, his eyes immediately landing on me, like he, too, was waiting for a response. “See, I have a hard time believing that,” he finally said. “It looks to me like she was putting up quite the fight.”

“She just wanted to play, is all,” the bald man said from behind me.

Bowen cocked his head slightly. “Are you having fun, Princess?”

Short-haired man tightened his grip on my hair in warning, so rather than shaking my head, I tried my best to plead with my eyes. Bowen wasn’t buying their story, but I wouldn’t survive if he walked away.

Bowen flipped his dagger a few times, his eyes following it as he tossed it into the air. “One chance, boys. Let the girl go.”

“We ain’t scared of you,” short-haired man said.

“That’s unfortunate.” Bowen didn’t hesitate as he gripped the handle of his dagger and threw it directly at us. The man holding my hair yelled out as he dropped his hold on me. My palms hit the grass as I coughed from the impact, the short-haired man falling to his knees in front of me. My stomach twisted at the sight of the dagger protruding from his wrist, and I frantically crawled away as the bald man darted toward Bowen.

In the blink of an eye, Bowen produced another dagger, taking aim and landing it directly in the side of the man’s neck. He fell to the ground, not moving as blood spurted into the grass like a fountain. The one with the broken nose tried to stand, slipping in the wet sand, but he barely made it a foot before another one of Bowen’s daggers lodged itself into his shoulder. He screamed out in pain as Bowen landed another in his hand where he’d reached to grab the knife.

I crawled backwards, fear threatening to lock my muscles and shut me down, as Bowen approached the group. My shoulders hit the trunk of a tree, halting my retreat. The pungent scent of iron hit me like a fist to the chest.

Blood.

My blood?

“You see, boys”—he grabbed his dagger from the one man’s neck, wiping it on his jacket—“if a woman doesn’t say yes”—he straightened, admiring the blade to be sure it was clean—“it means no.”

He turned on the short-haired man with the blade still sticking out of his wrist and approached him where he sat holding his arm. Bowen brought the tip of the dagger to his jaw, forcing the man’s chin up, then shoved it through his skin. Blood poured from the man’s mouth as Bowen removed the blade, wiping it on his shoulder pad. The man fell back in the grass, and as Bowen stood, he didn’t bother turning around as he threw his dagger at the man by the shore. It landed right in his heart, and he fell face-first into the sand.

I hardly saw as Bowen approached me. As my eyes moved from the bodies to him, my feet scrambled in the dirt, but my back was already scraping against the bark of the tree. There was nowhere for me to go.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, slowing his steps.

“You expect me to trust you?” The words barely got out through my rushed breathing.

“I did just kill three men for you,” he pointed out.

My fingers dug into the dirt as I pressed my back harder against the tree. “Please. Just— don’t come near me.”

He held his hands in the air, palms out. “Okay.”

We stared at each other for a moment. A slight crease formed between his brows as his gaze scanned my face before he asked, “Are you hurt?”

“N-no.” But it hardly sounded convincing, even to my own ears.

His eyes fell to my dress, and I looked down to find the front of it had torn. Instinctively, my arms wrapped around my torso in a poor attempt to cover myself. I hadn’t realized how hard I was shaking, how cold my skin now was.

He shrugged out of his jacket, and I instantly stiffened at the ink swirling along his muscled arms. The blue hue from the glowing flowers by the pond illuminated the way the tattoos wound up his arms like rivers on a map. With his bulging veins, his sculpted muscles were silent proof of the strength he’d just showcased by killing three men without so much as breaking a sweat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Giving you my jacket.”

“Why?”

He took a step toward me, jacket in hand. “You’re wet, cold, and exposed. Unless you would rather not have it?”

“People will wonder why I’m wearing it,” I said, which was such a vacuous excuse.

“You can tell them whatever story you’d like, Princess, but covering up would best suit you tonight.” He crouched a few feet from me, holding the jacket out toward me, his blood-stained dagger in his other hand.

I stared at the jacket in his grip, my mind warring with itself over the fact that he was, in fact, a criminal, and yet, he’d saved me. Why was he in my father’s castle if he was a criminal? “They wanted to kill me.”

Bowen studied me as he inhaled. “They did.”

“Why?”

His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “There could be many reasons.”

Our eyes met. “Are you like them?”

He hesitated, thinking on his answer. “No.”

“Then why do people fear you? Why does my father not like you?”

He stood, stepping closer, then kneeled again to wrap his jacket around my shoulders. For some reason, I let him. I realized my question wasn’t the brightest, as he’d clearly just buried multiple daggers in three men and was covered in ink, proving he was a thief, but my mind wasn’t working coherently at the moment and his voice kept me in the present rather than the spiraling of my mind.

“People fear things for an abundance of reasons,” he replied.

I brushed a wet strand of hair off my cheek. The mask stuck to my face uncomfortably, and with the tangle of my hair, it’d be a pain to get the knot undone. “What are your reasons?”

His eyes met mine again, and somehow, I found a sliver of escape in them. What beauty was found in the sky, when he held it all right there?

“We all have our secrets, Princess. Some are just kept for better reasons.”

“Is there ever a good reason to have them?” With the removal of his jacket, he clearly wasn’t afraid of me seeing the tattoos littering his skin. But what else could he be hiding?

His shoulders slumped the barest amount as his eyes softened. “I like to believe so.”

“You’re not wearing a mask,” I acknowledged, changing the subject. I needed to keep talking or I feared the panic would set in.

“I’m not.”

“Do you not celebrate Exitium Lunae?”

His body instantly went rigid again before he straightened, turning to grab his dagger from the man’s body on the shore. “No.”

“Why not? I thought everyone did.” I kept peppering him with questions for fear he’d leave. If he did, I’d be alone again. Vulnerable.

He shoved the body onto its side with ease, extracting his dagger from the man’s chest. With a thump, the man was face-first in the sand once again as Bowen moved to run his dagger through the water. “Holidays aren’t my thing.”

“But killing is?”

He wiped the blade on his thigh, sheathed it in his belt, and stood. “If you believe the deaths of these men were all in good fun, I think you should replay the events of what happened before they took their last breaths.”

A shiver skated down my spine at the all too fresh memory.

“You should get back to the castle,” he said, not looking at me.

I pushed to a stand, his jacket still draped around my shoulders. I pulled it tighter around me, my wet hair and dress catching the cool night air like a web. I should heed his direction and turn in for the night, but curiosity kept me rooted in place. “Why are you out here if you’re not celebrating?”

With the silver rings casting an ominous glow over his dark pants and black shirt, he looked almost like a painting, with rough edges and wind-strewn hair. He was so unkempt compared to the men I was used to, so much more dangerous, and it seemed to draw me to him like a magnet. The shadows only succeeded in emphasizing his tan forearms and sharp jawline, and I fought to keep my eyes from straying to them.

I shook my head, finding myself having taken three steps toward him. The adrenaline was messing with me.

“Keeping you alive, apparently,” he muttered.

“Aside from that.”

He subtly shook his head, his jaw ticking, and began walking toward the tree line.

“Wait,” I called after him before I could stop myself.

He paused, not turning back around.

“What do I say if someone asks what happened?” I suspected Bowen wasn’t welcomed here, and for that, I needed to know if he wanted his presence known. Being out in the forest during Exitium Lunae gave me the impression he was here on another agenda.

“It’s your story to tell, whether you’d like to or not. It can be our secret or the world can know. Your choice.” With that, he continued on his way, disappearing into the tree line.

Maybe it’d be the last time I saw him, but I’d thought the same back in Amosite, and here he’d been, showing up when I was on the verge of being killed. Given his sneaking around, I figured he wasn’t from Torbernite, which made me curious as to why he was here in the first place.

Perhaps this secret was best kept close, for his sake and mine.