Beauty (A Faery Story 3)

She shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts. What was happening to her? Her mind flew back to so many years before. She’d been just a child, listening in on her parents talking. Her father had worried that Bron was touched in the head. Her mother tried to say that imaginary friends were normal for a six-year-old. Her mother had touched her father’s face and asked him to spend more time with Bron and Cian. She vaguely remembered her father saying something about them not needing his steadying hand the way Beck did. Then her father had been gone and her mother wept.

Bron had stopped talking about her Dark Ones that day. Even at six she’d known something was wrong, despite what her mother had said. Six-year-olds might have imaginary friends, but the Dark Ones didn’t seem imaginary.

And now Bron was twenty-seven.

She could still feel Shim’s hold on his cock. He’d gripped it with the confidence of long use. She could practically see him winking at her flirtatiously.

We’re coming, Bron.

That voice in her head was accompanied by the candle at her bedside flaring to life. But she’d blown it out.

Mad. It was the only explanation.

She forced herself to take another drink and then tried the bread. If she had any chance at running, she would need some strength. After taking another small sip and chewing through some of the bread, she turned to the window.

She could hear activity and stood on her small cot, straining to see out the window above her. Grasping the bars that covered the window, she went up on her tiptoes and could barely see the courtyard outside. Guards worked, hauling logs into the clearing. They were directed by the sheriff to place them in a circle surrounding a giant pole.

The maypole. Bastards. Yesterday it had been decorated with colorful ribbons, the center of the children’s joy. Today it would be the center of the bonfire that would take her life. They would lash her to the pole, and the executioner would tie her down and they would set her on fire.

She stared out, recognizing a few of the guards. They had laughed and danced with her at the festivals and now they would be the ones who lit her body on fire, the final payment for defying the pretender.

There was the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. Loud and lumbering. Not Niall. Bron slipped back down to the bed. She’d been so afraid the night before, for Ove, for herself. Now there was a horrible nothingness as the window in the door opened, and the mayor’s puffy face showed through the opening.

“Traitor bitch.”

Yes, she would likely hear a whole lot of that. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

His face twisted, contorting into a mask of fury. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know. I’ve placed wards around the village. No magic is going to save you.”

She hadn’t expected it to. It was standard procedure to ward the jail against all magics. The sheriff certainly didn’t want prisoners to be able to escape death by way of magic. Bron wouldn’t be surprised if Micha had the whole damn village warded after yesterday. “I didn’t expect it to. I don’t really know what happened yesterday, Micha. I know you won’t believe it, but I don’t care. I didn’t mean to torch your guard.”

“He died, you know.”

Bron was surprised to not

feel a thing. It had been the guard or Ove, and Ove hadn’t done anything wrong. In that moment, she would have killed anyone who was going to try to hurt the innocent youngling. She would do it again. She would never be able to sit by and watch. If she hadn’t felt that power surge, she would have attempted to stop the guard in some other way. She would never be able to sit idly by and watch as someone was killed for no reason.

But that’s what you’ve been doing for thirteen years, Princess Bronwyn.

“You don’t even care. I never knew you at all. Know this, I’ll find that little brownie and I’ll throw her on a fire, too.” Micha huffed as though he’d expected something more. Some groveling perhaps or offers of her body in exchange for a bit of mercy.

That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t stupid. After what had happened yesterday, there would be no mercy for her. She was just happy someone had thought to take Ove away. “What do you want, Micha?”

“You should call me by my rightful name, you ungrateful bitch.”

Why wouldn’t he go away? Shouldn’t the hours before her inevitably horrific death be quiet and peaceful? She could try to go to sleep and see Shim and Lach again. Maybe, if there was a place beyond this one, maybe they would be real.

Selfish. So selfish. You want to die so you don’t have to fight.

The voice inside her head was getting obnoxious. Well, the voice that seemed steeped in guilt. She apparently had a whole bunch of voices inside her head. “If you aren’t going to tell me what you want, then feel free to go away.”

“I want you to tell me where your bitch sister went to.”

That had Bron sitting up and fast. She was definitely still capable of feeling something. Gillian had slipped her a note. Goddess, the last thing she wanted was to get Gillian killed. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

His eyes narrowed to little slits, making his whole iris look like endless dark. “I doubt that. She’s already managed to kill three of my best guards.”

Gillian? “I don’t believe it.”