The Savage and the Swan by Ella Fields

Author:Ella Fields [Fields, Ella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novel
Publisher: Ella Fields
Published: 2021-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

I returned to my rooms uninterrupted, numb, and exhausted enough that I prayed whatever punishment awaiting me could wait until morning.

The sentries were back at their posts. Eyes trailed me. I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead, using what remained of my energy to keep my head held high—wondering if Bron had even made it over the crossing if the king had known what I was up to.

I had to believe he had. That he’d see my mother, my people, and give them some measure of hope in the form of a useless golden twig.

The morning arrived with breakfast waiting for me outside my door. Bleary-eyed from only managing to capture a few hours of sleep before more nightmares and my torn conscience got the better of me, I carried it inside my rooms without daring a glance at the giant closed doors down the hall.

The bread grew stale by the windowsill, my tea cold and half-drunk in the delicate teacup as midday ruptured through the crawling ivy over the windows.

And still, I waited.

I waited for something that never came, and after drawing myself a bath, I fell asleep upon the fresh furs that’d been placed on the end of my bed while I’d been gone. I woke right before dinner was delivered, but instead of taking it inside and closing the door, I dropped it onto the small table and walked back out into the steak-and-mushroom-scented hall.

The doors to the king’s rooms were open, and I chanced a quick look behind me, knowing there was nothing there save for statues and ghosts, then peered inside.

The bed was made, the décor untouched by dust and fresh books sitting upon his nightstand. I wanted to see what they were, to take a closer look at that map with its horrible red splotches, but I couldn’t move.

Maybe that was due to it being another trap. Or maybe it wasn’t at all, and my paranoia had reached perilous heights in the king’s unnatural silence. Where was he? His scent smothered his rooms, made my blood hum to go in search of him, the most recent bite of it leading toward the stairs.

My feet carried me to and down them before I could think better of it, and as I twisted around the last one to follow that scent, a scream raced up my throat.

“Going somewhere?” An imposing male stood by a statue half his size, a statue of his baser self—a wolf.

I stopped. “Who are you?”

In his hand was a dagger, its edge glinting under the candles floating in the crystal chandelier above our heads. “Scythe.”

Flicking my eyes from that dagger to his scarred gaze, I nodded. “I suppose I was looking for the king.”

“You suppose?” he asked with a tilt of his head. That scar, I had to wonder if it was the reason for his uncouth name with the way it curved through the sealed skin of his missing eye. “It was cursed,” he said then, surprising me. He raised the tip of the blade to his face.

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