Chapter 5

The sound of footsteps from the other guard echoes as he runs down the hall, leaving me alone with the female guard.

"Shit, shit, shit." The female voice leans closer again, and a hand grasps my shoulder and shakes. "Hey. You. Princess." Another jostling shake that makes my teeth rattle, "Wake up. Don't even think about dying. I just got promoted and I don't want to go back to border patrols because you died on my watch."

Shit she's loud-I want to tell her to keep her voice down. And then I want to ask her to pour some water down my painfully parched throat. But the cramping in my stomach makes a sudden return and I clench my lips together to keep from crying out.

I don't know how many minutes pass-Ten? Thirty?- before the sound of footsteps echoes down the hallway again. Through my ragged breathing and the shifting of the female guard's boots on the floor, I hear the footsteps come to a stop inside my cell.

"I don't have time to play nursemaid, Princess."A low stony voice says. Even though a fever, I recognized the new voice easily. The King of Monsters is back.

The male guard is the one who speaks first. "The staff alerted us that she hadn't been eating or drinking. We found her like this."

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long has she not been eating or drinking?" The King demands, voice like a silk-shrouded blade.

"Well," the male guard coughs nervously, stuttering out quickly, "Uh-you see-when we questioned the kitchen staff, they said the trays have come back untouched for the past two days."

"And I'm only hearing about this now?" The King's tone is black enough that even as out of it as I am, I'm glad I'm not on the receiving end of it.

I open my mouth to try to speak, to ask him to please send me home, but all that comes out is a rough wet cough.

"Fuck, did she just cough up blood?" The male guard behind the King asks.

"Ryke," The King's stony voice says, "find the Healer. Meet us in the West Wing."

"Yes, your Majesty," The female says, light booted feet take off at a sprint down the hallway.

There's an argument happening behind me-the rough spew of voices that I can't make out. My mind is fading again beneath another wave of pain. There's a clinking of chains, the brush of rough fingers against my flushed, overheated skin as the cuffs are removed from my wrists followed by my ankles.

I'm shifted onto my back with a firm but somehow gentle hands. And then I'm flying-weightless. My stomach gives a nauseating lurch and I clench my teeth together tightly to keep from dry heaving. Hot and cold sweats cling to my forehead and shivers wrench their way through my body. The press of iron-like arms tucked me firmly against a firm leather-clad chest.

It's too hot. Much too hot. But through the haze of the fever, I can't find how to tell him. Despite the iron-clamp I have on my lips to keep from crying out, a whimper escapes. The hands clutching me tighten at the sound.

The King's voice is a roughened murmur in my ear, "You don't get to give up that easily, darling."

I shiver, and this time it has nothing to do with the fever scorching its way through my veins. As Commander Lothbrook carries me out of the stony dungeon, I collapse into blissful oblivion. The darkness of unconsciousness snaps open wide and swallows me whole.

I think I must have crossed into stage five of the illness. Hallucinations. It's the only way to explain what I'm seeing when I open my eyes.

I'm no longer in the dungeon but tucked into a bed. No longer being scratched by the taffeta ballgown that's been scraping against my flushed skin, but in a nightgown so soft it's just a whisper of fabric against my skin.

More shocking than any of that, though is that my fever has broken. I'm still uncomfortably warm-piled high with thick blankets with a fire roaring nearby, but the icy hot chills that had been raging beneath my skin in the dungeons have impossibly vanished.

I'm no longer in a dark cell. Light flickers brightly from a fire burning in the grate of an elaborate fireplace carved into the room's stone walls. The room doesn't resemble the palace rooms I grew up in. There, you could see where the stones had been fused to assemble the walls of the palace's structure. Here, though, the stone coalesces into one continuous rounded shape as if the rooms have been carved from something, like the walls of a cave.

I'm still surrounded by stone, walls made entirely of rock, but it's different-there's marble and granite mixed in among the stone walls. Crystal embedded in the gray and those crystals glimmer in the firelight, giving everything a dreamlike quality.

Along those stone walls are tapestries so colorful and intricate that it's hard to look away from them. Beautifully constructed images depicting what looks to be portions of history. The images show people transforming into beasts and monsters-the ones I'd learned of in my lessons. The shifters that roam the northern mountains. But I'd yet to see them depicted in such a way-in light and color as opposed to the sharp dark images I was familiar with in Seelie's history books.

The tapestries make them appear less monstrous, and moreheroic. I don't have long to ponder this, because there's a clinking of metal to my left and I turn to take in the sound.

There's someone in the chair beside my bed. An older woman leans over, her long fingers wrapped around a pair of wooden knitting needles. It's rare to meet someone who's aged as much as this woman appears to be. I watch mesmerized as she winds the yarn around the needles and she works the yarn into thick twined knots.

When she notices that I'm awake, she rises from her chair, gray cotton dress swishing around her legs. Without a word, she meanders slowly to a door hidden among the stone wall and gives a few sharp raps against the wood. I'm so shocked to see her there that all I can do is watch her as she adjusts her knitting under her arm.

Not a moment later, the hidden door swings open to make way for the tall, imposing figure of the shifter's stony-faced King. I have to blink back my shock, unable to help but notice how differently he looks in this room as opposed to how he appeared in the dungeon cell. His black hair is damp as if he'd just finished bathing. It's been slicked back away from his face, but a few waves droop onto his forehead-a stark contrast to his starlight-pale skin. Among those subtle differences, there's something else that's changed about him since I saw him in the dungeon-something that I can't quite put my finger on.

His tall, powerful frame is clad in a pair of soft-looking black pants and a long-sleeved shirt that's only halfway buttoned up, exposing a deep v of skin at the top of his chest. My breath catches in my throat as I'm unable to keep my eyes from dipping to those exposed defined muscles as large strong hands deftly weave their up the fabric to finish closing up his shirt.

His black eyes dip down to the slight, elderly woman who had knocked on the door, "Thank you, Mitra," his voice is as dark and smooth as I remember, "You may go." My hands unconsciously clutch at the thick blankets as the frail woman gives a narrow curtsey and exits through another door without a word.

As the door clicks shut behind her, King Lothbrook's heavy dark gaze lands on me. A small part of me wants to shrink away at the intensity of that gaze, but I force myself to meet his stare calmly. His full lips twitch at the corner, hinting at an amused smile, exposing the white flash of a sharp fang, "Well, well-The sleeping beauty awakens at last."