“Are you dragging your heels, Carrot?” he growled, finally turning his gimlet eye on her. “Wasn’t it you who said let us hurry?”
Twisting her lips and realizing she’d struck a nerve—and likely a very deep one based on the condescension he now threw at her—she gestured for him to continue leading her. “Yes.”
“Good, because we’re here.”
And suddenly the massive dimensions of the castle shifted, and where before there’d been endless miles of hall, now they stood within an absolutely empty chamber. There was nothing on the walls, floor, or ceiling. It was stone and nothing more.
She had to wonder if his leading her down the hall had been little more than a ruse meant to increase her anxiety. If so, the man was a master manipulator, not surprising considering who he was.
“Clever, troll.” She laughed.
And his eyes widened before quickly thinning. Again he was clenching his fists. “Thus begins your first test. Whatever you do, make sure to pass, or the consequences will be dire.”
With those parting words, he vanished.
Chapter Seven
Rumpel stood on the other side of a wall that worked in many ways like a two-way mirror. To Shayera it would seem as though she was in a room of stone, but he could see everything she did.
Sitting on his throne of gold-plated horned skulls, he glowered. She was walking about the room, tracing long-boned, delicate fingers along the wall, curiosity burning bright in her clear gaze.
Looking high and low, she bent over to study the floor, revealing a long expanse of impossibly fine-honed and supple thighs so ivory white that they appeared to gleam with a natural luminescence.
Something about the woman unnerved him: his reactions to her every slightest gesture, her imperial manner, and how she seemed determined to ignore his baiting. She was beautiful, yes, but he’d seen beauty aplenty, had helped create some of the most beautiful objects in the whole of the galaxies. There was an intellect that burned brightly behind the striking fa?ade and that intrigued him. His desire to touch her, to trace the delicate flesh of her body, increased with each meeting.
Then she’d asked about Caratina’s shawl and he’d snapped. He never snapped, not because someone was curious.
“She is a fine one to look upon, massster.” Giles’s smoky form materialized beside him.
“Yes.”
Ruby-red eyes shone brightly as they stared at Shayera through the demarcation.
“You do not touch her,” Rumpel said with a definite growl in his voice.
Giles was handsome, as were all demone. He had an angularity about his features, which were both sharp and birdlike, but that gave him an exotic appeal to the fairer sex, and normally Rumpel did not care what his demone did with his wards. So long as the acts were consensual, it was no matter to him.
For reasons beyond him, this time it did matter.
Quirking a thick brow, his valet quickly assessed the warning and nodded. “As you wish. Would you rather I fetch another, sir?”
Clenching his jaw when Shayera exposed even more of her shapely form, he shook his head. “You know the rules of the game better than the rest—it is you or no one.”
A delicate frown tipped Shayera’s brows as she turned around in a slow circle, looking completely perplexed by the mystery of the empty room.
“Judge her hard,” Rumpel said. Then, with a flick of his fingers, the game well and truly began.
Suddenly the world was alive with chaos and noise. Shayera gasped, twirling on her heel as she stared at a world completely foreign and alien to her own. She was in a city center, but there were sights and sounds she’d never actually seen in her real life.
Giant monolithic structures that moved on wheels roared past her. She knew them to be buses because mother had often told her stories of Earth, had read her books from her previous world.
Yellow, smaller vehicles that she assumed to be cabs sped past on the befouled streets. Pedestrians moved in random, shifting patterns around her. Some even barreled into her shoulders, glaring at her when she gasped in surprise at their rudeness.
Latching on to her throbbing shoulder, she stared at the man in the brown suit and thick glasses who was glaring at her.
“Watch it!” he said in a loud, strange accent before disappearing into the thick crowd.
“Move!” a girl called and then hands shoved into her back.
And then there were more hands and more yelling and Shayera had never been more terrified than she was of the horrific sounds which were accompanied by a putrid smell, the mixture of excrement and urine and the rot of fish. Buildings towered as high as the eye could see and her bare feet were bloody from stepping on sharp stones and glass. She had no shoes on. Where had they gone?