Page 27 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

She meant the last part as a way of lightening the mood, a joke of sorts, but I couldn’t find much to laugh about in what she had said.

I had begun to relax and lower my guard in this place, but now as I looked around the highborn houses and the street behind me, and the castle that loomed above it, some of the light this place had gained in the last few days shuttered and died out.

And all I saw was darkness and shadow.

The sneers of the nobles as they looked at me.

The whispered comments passed between the females, and even the males.

The way some openly eyed me as if they wanted to tear me down, while others gazed at me as if I was something they could steal and drag into the shadows to do the gods only knew what with.

I suddenly wanted to return to my room, where I felt safe.

Jenavyr rested her hand on my arm, her touch light but firm, and her voice pitched low, serious at last as she said, “No one will dare harm you, Saphira. It would be their head. My brother would not tolerate it.”

He would execute them.

And something buried deep within me whispered that he would enjoy it.

That he would take pleasure from making someone bleed and hurt.

“Why did your brother buy me?” My voice trembled as I tore my gaze from the nobles and forced it back to Jenavyr, attempting to block out the darker side of this world I could only see right now.

There was light in this world.

I had witnessed it.

It wasn’t all shadows and blood.

No matter how many times I told myself that, it wouldn’t stick, and my imagination was running wild, conjuring terrible things, shadowy monsters that dogged my every step as we began walking again.

“My brother’s motivations are his alone to know.

It is not my place to speak of them, but I do not condone what he did.

” Jenavyr’s gaze drilled into the side of my face as I looked at the first buildings of the main town, trying to banish those monsters in my mind.

“He has been… How is Kael treating you?”

The concern in her voice, and in her eyes as I looked at her, touched me deeply, soothing some of my fears away and helping me chase the monsters out of my head.

She had the look of a female who wanted to protect something, who was ready to fight her own flesh and blood if she heard Kaeleron had been mistreating me.

That she would face his wrath by arguing with him over my wellbeing reaffirmed that feeling that I had found an ally in her, and maybe one in Neve too.

It bolstered my courage.

“Well.” It was the only answer that came to me as I thought about how Kaeleron had been treating me so far. “I’ve only seen him twice. Once for dinner and once for a swim in the lake.”

My cheeks began to heat so I turned my face away from her, pretending to study the buildings that were closest to the gate. The one to my right was a beautiful combination of grey stone for the ground floor and a half-timber upper floor under a black clay tile roof.

“That was a few days ago,” I added, wanting to feel her out about why Kaeleron hadn’t summoned me since that moment he had held me in his arms and tried to make light of how foolish I had been and how it might have gotten me killed. “I hadn’t seen him at all until just now.”

“My brother has been busy with court and preparations for Beltane. I have not seen him much beyond our scheduled meetings where I file reports about the regiments.”

So he hadn’t been avoiding me then?

Some part of me whispered that he had. That moment had shaken him too, and he had retreated, throwing himself into his work to avoid me. And perhaps punish me a little.

“Let us not talk of Kael. He can be so very tiresome.” Jenavyr smiled, her whole face lighting up with it, and it was hard to believe she was related to him when she looked like that, as if she was all light and warmth, no trace of darkness and shadow in her.

Maybe the two of them were a fractured whole, and he had received all the darkness while she had been graced with all the light.

“Come. Let us explore. I might even treat us to a sticky bun at the finest bakery in Falkyr.”

“Falkyr?”

“By the Great Mother, has my brother told you nothing?” She swept her arm out as she turned with me. “Welcome to Falkyr Castle, daughter of wolves.”

This female was definitely the light to Kaeleron’s darkness.

I took it all in—the bustling terraced town of half-timbered buildings around me, the great black wall that rose beyond them, and the onyx castle perched above them, its backdrop the jagged mountains and that twilight-kissed aurora.

Falkyr Castle.

“It’s so… strange compared with my home. I feel like I’ve gone back in time hundreds of years.” I drank in the castle, with its towers and turrets, and many arched windows, a small part of me wondering where Kaeleron held court within that monstrous building, the other trying to spy my balcony.

“I do not know much of your world. My brother forbids me from visiting it, but whenever Oberon visits, he tells me tales of that realm. I suspect they are somewhat embellished.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only female out there who had a controlling family member who didn’t let them do things they wanted to do. Jenavyr looked as if she longed to see my world, just as I had longed to see it.

“You must tell me of it.” She patted my arm again, her look almost conspiratorial. “I will ferret out whether Oberon has been lying about it.”

I swallowed.

She frowned.

“You do not wish to tell me of your world?”

I shook my head. “It isn’t that. I just… I haven’t seen much of it myself. I… um… I wasn’t allowed.”

Her frown deepened, her lips compressing as she studied me, and then she huffed. “I feel it is time females took more power and autonomy in both of our worlds.”

“Amen, sister,” I murmured with a smile. “But I’ll tell you what I can.”

We turned back towards the town and followed the main street that wound downwards through it as I spoke of my world and all the things I could think of that might be of interest to an unseelie fae.

But as we ventured further from the imposing castle, I found myself more absorbed in this world, falling silent as I studied it.

I forgot all about home and my family, and Kaeleron as I lost myself in taking it all in.

The street was growing busier, with many people coming and going, and we had to dodge several carts as they rumbled up the hill towards the castle.

The town had been broken up into more levels, land flattened out in places to allow room for colourful gardens and even animal pens, each level edged with a thick dark stone retaining wall.

The houses were set back from that wall, forming roads in front of them where people walked or stopped to talk.

There were pathways down from the levels, steep steps that hugged the walls, and the roads sliced into the levels, keeping a steady angle upwards towards the castle.

Several of the great stag-like creatures and two horses grazed in one pen beside a larger building with broad wooden doors that had been opened to reveal the workshop inside.

I peeked inside to find a farrier at work, lit by the golden blaze of the furnace as he worked to shape glowing iron into a shoe for a waiting stag.

“What creature is that?” I pointed to the glossy black beast.

“An elkyn. Beautiful creatures, are they not? They are very temperamental though and hard to tame.” Jenavyr gestured towards the ones in the pen that were rubbing their sharper front horns against the wooden fence, as if they were irritated and itched.

Their antlers were small compared with the one the farrier was working on, barely as long as their pointed horns.

“These are young. They will need to be worked for many more years before they are tame enough to pull the carts. But I prefer horses. The black one you see there is mine.”

“A beautiful creature.” I meant it.

It was large—far larger than I had expected a female to ride—and looked like a very patient beast as it stood stock still in one spot, idly chewing hay, as if it was waiting for its appointment with the farrier and was aware that was the reason it was here.

An intelligent beast, one Jenavyr clearly loved as she gazed at it.

We walked onwards, weaving through wooden market stalls that had been set up in a square near a large pond that filled the space below one of the retaining walls, my gaze roaming over the tools and items on sale, and then the bread and vegetables that had been laid out in baskets.

Surrounding the square were more half-timbered buildings, each with a store on the ground floor.

Tailors and seamstresses, bakers and butchers, grocers and confectioners.

There were even furniture makers, small book shops, and places selling intriguing antiques.

I stopped outside a store that had bowls of coloured powders and several moody but beautiful seascapes on display in the bay window.

This town had everything, and I wanted to explore every shop one by one.

But Jenavyr pulled me onwards.

We passed a weaponsmith and I slowed, watching the shirtless muscular fae male as he beat the steel with a great hammer, each strike precise as if he had honed his skill for centuries.

Maybe he had.

Unseelie appeared to be very long-lived if the ages of my handmaidens were anything to go by.

“I must speak with Garandil.” Jenavyr released my arm and briefly smiled at me before heading into the forge, where the soot-streaked male set down his tools to greet her.

I paused to take in the town and the people that bustled around me, fascinated by it all, bewitched even.

But the longer I stood there while Jenavyr spoke with the blacksmith, the stronger a feeling within me grew.

There was tension in the air.

My ears twitched, my wolf senses sharpening as I watched the people, looking closer now. Something wasn’t quite right about this place.