CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ARABELLA
“Why are you covered in blood?” My stomach turned somersaults as he tried to scrub the specks from his face and beard, to loosen the crimson caked around his fingernails. He sat on his knees just outside the cabin, where even the shadows couldn’t hide what mired his skin and clothes.
“You know why, Bells.” He glared at the basin water that turned pink, then red, and then thickened to the point where it wasn’t able to get him clean, but instead only made it worse.
“Where’s the animal?” Some of the blood was fresh. “We need the meat, Oryn. We’re starving. Did you bring any home for us at all?”
He shook his head, bracing his hands on his thighs. “Why do you have to ask so many damned questions?”
“Why can’t you answer any of them?” I fired back.
“Fine.” He smiled cruelly over his shoulder, hands braced on his knees. “You want to know what I really hunt, Bells? I hunt men. Fugitives. Debtors. I don’t care who they are, as long as I collect the rewards.”
“You sell your soul for money?” I spat.
“Haven’t you?” he asked, leveling me with a knowing glare. I froze, blinking rapidly. How did he find out? He was never here anymore. Always hunting in the woods, never able to stay or help. And the money he earned, which must be a good amount, we never saw so much as a coin of it.
He handed me the basin of water, filled with a man’s blood. My reflection rippled in the copper-scented water. I hated that I’d given my own blood for the same reason my brother took someone else’s. Money. I hated it. I hated everything about it. It wasn’t Mother who ruined us by taking off with our things. It was our love of money that rotted us from the inside.
Others had it worse than we did and managed to make due.
Oryn started laughing and gave me a meaningful look. Gripping the bowl tight, I threw the water in his face. The bloody water hit him square in the face and he closed his eyes, silent for a moment before letting out a guttural growl that made the hair on my arms stand up straight. Then he was on his feet, launching himself at me. I hit the ground with an oof, the air pushing out of my lungs, unable to take in more. He grabbed his favorite knife and I couldn’t stop the tear that fell out of my eye or the wobbling of my chin.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he enunciated, holding the blade to my throat. “And if I hear of you taking a trip to Brookhaven again by yourself, you’ll regret it. Understand? I’m humiliated enough by him. I won’t be humiliated by you. Not you, Bells.”
I managed to nod and it calmed him. He exhaled deeply and took the knife away from my skin; a small sliver of which stung beneath my palm as he stood and walked back toward our cabin, still coated in the blood of a man he didn’t even know, wiping the blood of his only sister onto his filthy breeches.
The moon was full, its light pale blue and bright enough to show the stains he left on my clothes. I ran to the river to see if the fresh water could take the stains away before they set in for good.
CARDEN
“Arabella!” I screamed into her face, but she wasn’t waking up. No matter what I did – shaking her, putting myself between her and the damned mirror – nothing pulled her out of the memory. She stared through me, past me, into a different place and time.
“You need assistance, I see,” purred a panther, black as night, as he prowled from deep within the shadowed corridor.
I pushed Arabella behind me protectively. “Who are you?”
“She is lost in her own mind,” the feline tsked. “Such a terrible thing to experience. She believes it’s real; that it’s happening right now. She doesn’t remember you or this place, least of all this game. She’s in grave danger. Sadly, some don’t come back from these unfortunate events.”
“How can I help her?” I pleaded.
“Silly human, you can’t help her. You will only hurt her if you keep screaming and jostling her about.”
“Can you help her?”
“Of course, I can,” he answered. His enormous front paws stopped on a piece of pale tile. “The question is, will I help her?”
“Will you?”
“Tell me why I should,” he challenged.
“It’s why you came here, isn’t it? Why you helped yesterday… You want her to win.”
The cat yawned, showing his incisors. “I want her to live.”
“Why?”
“Because life has become much more interesting with her in it,” he replied.
The cat turned to the mirror and his eyes flashed for a moment as he watched her desperately scrubbing at the stains on her dress, sobbing on the bank of a wide river. Splinters of water, painted silver by the moon, danced in front of her as she scooped her hands full, trying to scrub away the truth, to tamp it down where no one would see it, where no one would know.
The panther stared quietly, not moving a muscle.
There was only one person I knew who watched her so feverishly, and I suddenly realized who he was. “Rule?”
The panther bared its teeth at me and jumped into the mirror, the surface rippling like water in a still pond before settling and hardening. My hand felt nothing but cold, smooth glass in his wake.
He approached her image in the mirror gently. She barely noticed him through her tears, but when she did, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Warily, she let him come close. Arabella’s current body was still frozen beside me and I wished it was I who could wake her, that it was I who could save her and she had no need for Rule or his vexatious fae power.
“Arabella,” Rule finally spoke softly.
“Who are you?” she asked through her sniffles.
“A friend.”
“I have no friends,” she replied angrily, wiping another tear away.
“This is nothing more than a memory,” Rule soothed. “You are with Carden.” The panther continued, “You are in the hall of mirrors. Do you remember being there with him? Do you remember the game and Queen Coeur?”
She pressed her eyes closed for several beats and then opened them. “I think I remember, but…”
“But what?” He laid on his side, placing his paw in front of her knees. With one finger, she stroked his fur and he began to purr, staring at me through the mirror. The beast in me stirred, as Rule knew it would. His lips curled up on one side, snide as ever, even in feline form.
“You’re soft,” she remarked gently.
“I know.”
“I know who you are,” she replied.
The great cat grinned. “You’ve always known.”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re smart, Arabella.”
“Not smart enough to not get stuck in a memory,” she sighed.
“Some memories are difficult to escape. But I’m not sure you’re truly stuck. I thought you were. While watching from the throne room, I saw Carden trying to bring you back and imagined you were caught in your own mind, but you aren’t stuck at all, are you? You’re trying to control the memory.”
“Why would I do that?” she asked, looking away from him.
“Because there’s something you don’t want Carden to see.”
Arabella dropped the skirt of her dress, the now faint, rust-colored stain spreading out across her knees. “Is he okay?”
Rule stared at me, but answered her. “He is.”
“Does your mother know you’re helping me?”
“She isn’t ready for the game to end yet,” he replied with a carefree shrug.
Arabella snorted. “And when she is, you won’t come to my rescue. Right?”
He transformed into the fae we both knew, his golden hair gleaming in the moonlight, dressed in a blue so deep it was nearly black, and grinned at her like he knew a secret she didn’t. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”
She stood and watched him warily. “You needn’t fear me,” he purred, standing and closing the distance between them.
“Really?” she sneered sarcastically.
Rule’s countenance changed in an instant, his smile drying up like a puddle on a hot day. Gone was the playful cat, and in his place stood a man with teeth who would shred the bones of anyone who stood against him. An attribute he’d taken from his mother. “Who has been spewing lies about me?”
“No one needs to lie about you, Rule. I can see it for myself.”
He stepped toward her, close enough for his chest to touch hers, but Arabella didn’t cower and he didn’t back away. Not even when I yelled his name in warning, his pointed ear ticking ever so slightly at the sound. He hooked a strand of her dark hair around his finger and brought it to his nose, inhaling her scent.
“Rule,” I growled, powerless to intervene from my place on the other side of the mirror. I didn’t want him touching her. Not even her hair. The beast inside roared. It wanted to taste his blood, to spill his guts and coil his entrails around my claws before severing them. I wanted to roll around in his golden blood until I was nothing but a gilded monster and no man remained.
“You make too many assumptions, Bella,” Rule alleged softly. “Take your brother, for instance. Do you know what he felt after leaving you here?”
Her brows kissed one another. “He left and didn’t come home for months,” she breathed. “His actions made it pretty clear about what he felt and how he felt about me.”
“You think he thought ill of you?”
“Of course, he did!” she exploded.
“He didn’t think less of you at all.” Rule shook his head, sympathy in his eyes. “Try again. How did Oryn feel?”
“I don’t know,” she gritted. “I don’t know how he felt, but I know he hated me after that. He was afraid to get close. We grew apart, and he didn’t seem to mind it.”
Rule stepped away and offered her his hand. “Let’s go see.”
“See what?”
“Oryn, of course,” Rule proclaimed, tossing a wink at me over his shoulder as he walked away with her.
ARABELLA
I took his hand. What other choice did I have? It was part of the game, but more than that, I wanted to know what Oryn felt and why he put so much distance between us when we’d always been close before that night.
“Can Carden still see everything?” I whispered to Rule.
He gave a nod as we walked further into the woods. It was unnaturally dark, and the farther into the forest we walked, the more unsettled I felt. I opened my mouth to ask him where my brother was, when he pressed his finger over his lips and flicked his eyes ahead of us. Oryn was there, pacing among the trees. My older brother, whom I thought was stronger than stone, was sobbing frantically and tearing at his hair.
My heart felt like it might cave in at the sight.
“Oryn can’t see you,” Rule breathed against my ear.
“Can he hear us?” I asked.
Rule shook his head.
“Then why are we whispering?” I asked, trying out my voice. Oryn didn’t even look in our direction. After a few moments, he calmed himself and we followed him as he stormed into the cabin where he quickly gathered his things and left before I returned. Father was passed out in his room and never even knew he’d been home.
“Can you take me back to Carden?”
“In a moment.”
Rule’s eyes caressed everything in my hovel, from the dusty floorboards rotting along the far wall, to the cot I called my own and the threadbare blanket half-covering it. He even seemed to see the things I had hidden beneath it. I wasn’t sure what was so fascinating or why he even cared, but he took his time looking around and I let him. Our things were a fraction as fine as the dirt on his shoes, but time was something I needed to use to my advantage and Carden’s. If Rule wanted to waste some, that was more than okay with me. We just had to last in this nightmare until sundown.
I couldn’t help but squirm when he walked across the floor and peered into my father’s room. Bottles of all shapes and sizes littered every surface, including the floor. It was a wonder he didn’t break his fool neck on one of them when he stumbled in during the dark of night.
I cleared my throat to get rid of the scratchiness. “See anything you like?”
Rule turned his focus on me. “I do, indeed.”
“What’s that?” My face heated under his scrutiny.
“I’d like a souvenir,” he asserted. “I want something of yours.”
“Why should I give you anything?” I asked, straightening my spine.
He grinned. “Because I have given you much.”
He had me there. “Fine,” I conceded, crossing my arms over my chest. “Take what you’d like.”
“Anything in the room?” His eyes gleamed with mischief and I dreaded what I was about to say.
“Anything in the room.”
He stepped closer.
“Not me,” I squeaked, throwing my hands up to keep him away.
Rule laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t remove you from the game, Bella, but I would have something on your person.”
“On my person?” I glanced down and instinctually knew what he wanted. My fingers gently touched the leather cord. “Not this,” I whispered.
“Yes, that,” he whispered back. Then he bent to my ear and spoke so only I could hear him. “I promise to give it back if you win.”
“Why do you want it?”
His heart beat against my chest, faster than a human heart and much stronger. “Because it is precious to you, and because you are becoming very precious to me.”
I pressed my eyes closed as his lips dragged down my cheek.
He deftly untied the cord at the nape of my neck and tied it around his own. Peering at my reflection in the mirrored shard, I saw a haggard young girl, ill-equipped for the trials she’d faced. I was beyond exhaustion and desperately hoped day two of hell was about to end.
He stepped close again and I hoped he didn’t whisper in my ear again. Rule made thinking difficult, and I had to keep my wits about me. He was part of this game, somehow. I could feel it in my marrow.
In the distance, a great roar rolled out over the land. Rule just grinned. “It seems someone is jealous,” he purred.
“Take me back to him,” I ordered.
Rule rolled his eyes. “If you insist.”
“He is my heartmate, Rule.” The Queen may have declared it, but my heart knew it was true.
The Prince sobered and put his hand on his chest, over his heart. “Carden may be your heartmate, but he’s not your only tether, Bella. Remember that.”