Thankfully, I held back the question, knowing it was counter to everything I had ever been taught about surviving this world. Let no one in. Keep our existence secret.
The three of them were the most interesting thing to happen to me in the entirety of my life. A sad testament, but there it was. Even though I knew next to nothing about them, I didn’t want to see them go.
“That older boy. The leader . . .”
“Fowler?”
He hesitated. Heat crept over my cheeks at the quickness of my reply. “There’s a look to his eyes. He’s dangerous.” I resisted pointing out that perhaps this was a good thing. Being a little dangerous in this world was a requirement. “As long as they’re here, you’re not to be alone with him. With any of them. Understand?”
I nodded. Sivo didn’t say any more, but he didn’t have to. The truth was there, a cloud hovering over us. If we were to keep our secrets, then they couldn’t stay.
And yet the thought left me hollow. I’d never been given a taste of anything else. I’d certainly never confronted a boy who smelled of ferocity and life and vitality. A boy with a deep, rumbling voice that made everything in me tighten in a way that I couldn’t comprehend. It was new. Different. It was feeling.
Guttural cries drew our attention toward my chamber, where Perla had started to work on Madoc’s leg. My mattress groaned and squeaked from his thrashing. Perla’s brisk, efficient voice shushed the boy and then instructed his sister and Fowler to hold him down.
I winced as Madoc’s moan stretched over the air. The terrible cries twisted into shrill pleas. “No, no, no, no . . . stop, please, no . . .”
This was even worse than the death cries I occasionally heard from my perch in the tower. This was the sound someone made who wanted to die. I shivered, the noise worming its way beneath my skin. I pressed a hand to my twisting stomach and inched closer to the hearth, lowering my face and soaking in the warmth.
Sivo claimed that because I had grown up under the mantle of dark, my senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were keen. He claimed it was an advantage in this world without light. Right now, with my throat closing up at the noises coming from my chamber, I wished myself free of the advantage.
“Go back down and change,” he instructed. “I’ll ready breakfast.”
Glad for the escape, I descended the winding stairs, leaving Madoc’s sobs and the crunch and grind of bone as Perla reset the leg.
I entered the anteroom and quickly undressed, shivering in the cold air of the tower’s bowels. My heart still beat swiftly, body humming with exhilaration. The events of the morning left me in a strange daze. Almost like I had woken from an especially vivid dream and didn’t know quite where I was anymore. But of course, I was where I always was. Only now, at long last, things were different.
I tied up the laces at the front of my gown with deft fingers and smoothed a hand over the soft fabric, once again the girl Perla preferred me to be. The queen of Relhok.
The title meant nothing anymore except to Perla and Sivo. Even to me, it rang dully. A royal assumed dead. Lost and forgotten. Trapped in a tower within a cursed forest, surrounded by monsters. It was the kind of fairy tale villagers entertained their children with on long winter nights when the world was good and right.
I returned to the second floor, my silk ribbons with their fraying ends clutched in my fist. The room was empty, the pop and crumble of a log in the fire even more pronounced in the vacant space.
Sivo’s deep voice rumbled from my bedchamber and I knew he was in there with the others. I thought about joining them, but the ribbons in my hand reminded me of my fallen hair. Self-consciousness seized me. For some reason my appearance mattered.
Deciding to tidy myself in Perla’s chamber, I moved across the stone floor and pushed open the door to her room. As I stepped inside, a swift intake of breath greeted me. The sound, combined with a warm, musky, undeniably male smell, was freshly familiar.
Too late, I realized the room wasn’t empty.
FIVE
Fowler
“EVER HEARD OF knocking?” I faced the girl, annoyed at the intrusion. In truth, annoyed at everything. I shouldn’t have been here with any of these people. I should have been far away, my only distraction avoiding dwellers.
Propping my hands on my hips, I gave Luna an eyeful, waiting for her shock, her embarrassment, but it didn’t come. She stared straight at me, still that oddly composed girl from the forest unaffected by arrows flying at her head or approaching monsters.
Or by me standing naked in front of her.
“I didn’t realize you were in here,” she explained.
I didn’t bother to reach for my clothes. I angled my head, waiting for her to move, to avert her eyes, to turn. Expected behavior. She did none of those things. She didn’t even blink.
“Your mother—”
“Perla is not my mother.”