“As soon as I get supplies, I’ll make something for you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said, then she kicked up into the air and floated into my hair. “Now, let’s go and wait for your roommate.”

  Nodding, I stepped out of the bathroom and found my way back to the bedroom Tellren had pointed out for me. Voices floated up from the level below, Mareen’s being the loudest. She and a few of the remaining contestants were lounging around, drinking wine and eating grapes like Greek Goddesses.

  I wanted nothing to do with that.

  Keeping my head down, I hurried to what would be my room, remembering that Mira said I’d be receiving a couple of items from her pretty soon. With any luck, she’d be able to get me a sewing machine and some materials to use, but she also had a potion for me—one that would extend the effects of my glamor, just in case she wasn’t able to get to me every morning before I had to face the world.

  Knowing now that I’d be sleeping next to another contestant, I knew, I’d need that potion more than ever. There was also Gullie to consider. Though she slept in my bed, she didn’t sleep in my hair. If my roommate woke up in the middle of the night and happened to spot her, then what?

  One problem at a time.

  Opening the door to my room, I was surprised to see someone already inside. Melina turned around to look at me, a slightly perplexed expression on her face. “Oh… it’s you,” she said.

  “Hello…” I said, “Does this mean—?”

  “That we’re sharing a room? I think so, and thank the fates. I’m not sure I would have lasted a night if I’d been made to sleep next to those other girls.”

  “I don’t think I would’ve made it either. Actually, I’m kind of relieved it’s you.”

  “Relieved?”

  I shrugged. “I guess you seem a little less… mad… than everyone else.”

  “Because I’m not rich and uptight?”

  I paused. “I didn’t want to say it.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She glanced at both beds. “I’m taking this one, though.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  Melina sat down on the bed she had chosen. Bounced on it. “No, I don’t think so. I just wanted to assert my dominance.” Her lips pulled into a smirk.

  I rolled my eyes. “Please don’t be one of those people who has to turn everything into a competition?”

  “Everything is a competition. We’re literally in one right now.”

  “Yes, but my bedroom is meant to be my… quiet space. The place where I can be myself.”

  “Who says you can’t?”

  If only you knew.

  I sat down on my bed, lightly bouncing on it the way Melina did. It was soft, and comfortable, and plush. The blanket was heavy, and woolen, and the floors were also lined with thick, deep blue carpeting. It meant I could take my shoes off and not worry about my toes freezing as I tried moving around the room.

  “Okay, this could work,” I said.

  Melina narrowed her eyes. “That depends. Do you snore?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sleep talk?”

  “Sometimes…”

  “Do you make any other sounds while you sleep that could awaken a light sleeper such as myself?”

  My eyes widened. “Not that I’m aware of. And what exactly is that supposed to mean, anyway?”

  Another smirk. “Nothing. I really am a light sleeper, though. These ears are sharp. Unless someone’s knocked me out, I’ll usually wake up at the sound of… anything.”

  I nodded. “Good to know.”

  That means I won’t be able to talk to Gullie.

  Shit.

  I looked around, spotted the wardrobe on my side of the room—there were two—and walked over to it. It was empty. “Do you know when our stuff is meant to arrive?”

  Melina stood. “Oh, that’s right; Tellren said something about knocking on them.”

  “Knocking?”

  “Yeah, watch.”

  She walked over to the other wardrobe and opened it. Like mine, it was empty, so she closed it, then rapped a light pattern on it with her knuckles, waited, and opened it again. This time, it wasn’t empty anymore. There were outfits hanging on the rack and bundles of personal belongings, even weapons, arranged neatly underneath them.

  “Okay,” she said, “That is impressive. You try it.”

  Turning around to face my own wardrobe, I shut the doors, tapped it in exactly the same way Melina had, and then I opened the doors again. Thinking about it, Tellren had tried to explain something to me about my belongings, but I hadn’t been paying attention earlier. I liked to think, with good reason.

  There wasn’t much in my wardrobe; not as much as there was in Melina’s. A sword, a dagger, my suit of armor. That was all in there. As were a couple of plain looking dresses I didn’t recognize; possibly dresses I should be wearing to future events.

  A smug smile swept across my face as I laid eyes on the bits and bobs under the clothes on the rack. My sewing machine was there, as were a number of rolls of fabric, a tray of threads and tools, and a couple of boxes with more esoteric materials for me to use in my projects. Among the neatly packed tailoring supplies I also noticed a jar filled with a light, almost silvery liquid that I suspected was the potion I should drink—and a note.

  Dahila,

  I’m not jealous you get to sleep in the palace. Rest well, trial tomorrow.

  Mira.

  Mira had come through for me, and that was something to be happy about. Something else to be strangely happy about was the news that, after my walk with the Prince, he’d left the palace. Nobody else had gone on a tour of the balcony with him. Just me.

  Huh.

  Figure that.

  Mareen was fuming, so I decided to give her plenty of space after that, choosing instead to spend the rest of the day in my own room with my thoughts, and my surprisingly quiet new roommate. Tomorrow, I was told, there’d be a new trial. It was probably smart to save my energy for that, eat, and have an early night.

  My first night in a shared place.

  Please don’t suck.

  Chapter 10

  I woke up with a start, a hand wrapped around my mouth. I tried struggling, but someone else was pinning my shoulders to the bed. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t see very well, but I could hear the stifled laughter of people trying very hard not to be heard.

  “What are you waiting for?” someone whispered, “Put her under as well.”

  “No,” Mareen said, as she came into view above me. She was the one with her hand around my mouth. I could barely see her face, but those eyes were unmistakably hers. Her lips parted, revealing an ear-to-ear grin. “I want her to experience all of this.”

  I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but the hand around my mouth made it difficult to speak. So, I bit her instead, clamping hard on the soft flesh of her hand. Mareen yelped and yanked her hand out of my mouth, my teeth failing to grip hard enough to keep her from pulling away.

  “Bitch!” she hissed.

  “Melina!” I yelled, turning my head to the side, but Melina was fast asleep. No, she was under. They’d done something to her, Mareen and her trio; some kind of sleeping spell to keep her from waking up during all the commotion.

  Mareen slapped me hard across the face and then cupped my cheeks together with her other hand. “You’re going to pay for that, you worthless little rat,” she hissed. “But we’re going to have a little fun with you first.”

  “We mustn’t linger!” said the other girl pinning me down. “What if Aronia wakes up?”

  “She won’t,” Mareen said, “That woman eats like a giant and sleeps like one, too. Verona, help Kali pick this thing up. And I warn you… if you scream, we will make things infinitely worse for you.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” I asked, forcing the words through my squished mouth.

  “We’re going to run a little trial of our own. Pass, and you’ll have our respect. Fail and, well… you’ll see.”

  Mareen released my mouth, giving me the ability to scream if I wanted to. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. They wanted me to scream, to beg, to plead and bargain. I wasn’t terribly athletic, I wasn’t a great fighter, and I didn’t have any magic skills, but I did have one thing; a gift given to me by my mothers.

  I had integrity.

  They wanted me to break, but I wasn’t going to. I hadn’t broken the last time they’d set upon me in the library; I hadn’t even ratted them out to the Prince after—even though I suspected he knew what had happened. Instead of screaming, or begging to be released, I struggled, trying to release myself as best I could.

  One woman had my arms, another had my legs. Though I struggled, getting out from under them was difficult. I managed to throw them off balance once or twice as they dragged me out of my room, but it became pretty clear I wasn’t going to shake myself free anytime soon.

  Even if I did, they could just blast me with magic and put me under the same way they had Melina. At a certain point I had to accept that this was happening, and that there was no way out of it but through.

  Gullie.

  I had no idea where she was. Maybe she’d transformed herself into a tattoo on my skin, or maybe she was hiding under my bed somewhere. I had no way of knowing exactly where she was, but I knew she wasn’t with Mareen. Had she been found I would’ve known about it by now, especially considering the way that Mira had reacted to Gullie’s presence the first time they’d met.

  Between the two of them, Kali and Verona dragged me out of my room and down the corridor. They were chuckling the whole way, doing their best to keep their voices down but unable to fully contain their giddiness.

  They loved this.

  This was absolutely hilarious to them; Mareen included. I couldn’t keep my eyes on her from the angle I was in, but whenever I did catch a glimpse of her, she had one hand constantly stuck in front of her mouth to keep the laughs from spilling out.

  All this while, I didn’t know where they were taking me. For all I knew, they were about to throw me off the side of the palace like a sack of trash. But they wouldn’t, would they? They wouldn’t. Surely, they couldn’t just outright kill me. Contestants in the Royal Selection were meant to be protected and kept safe at all times.

  But then… someone had died before, so it wasn’t impossible for these women to kill me, if that was what they wanted. And it wasn’t like there was anyone around me to help if I got into some kind of trouble I couldn’t get out of.

  Would anyone even know what had happened to me if they hurled me off the edge of the palace? How long until anyone found my frozen body, buried in the snow? These thoughts only served to whip my heart into a near-total panic.

  I could feel my throat closing, my eyes watering from the stress of having to hold the oncoming panic attack at bay. I tried kicking again, to throw Kali off balance; and this time, it worked. She dropped my foot, and when she scrambled to try to pick it back up, I kicked her square in the nose.

  The moment of contact was painful, but exquisite. Something had crunched under the force of the hit, and she’d dropped me altogether.

  Kali brought both hands up to her face. “My nose!” she yelled through her hands, “I think she broke it!”

  “I thought I told you not to struggle!” Mareen hissed.

  “You told me not to yell,” I said.

  Verona wasn’t much stronger than I was, and without Kali to hold my feet, she couldn’t keep me totally under control. I started kicking and jerking, bucking like one of those mechanical bulls trying to free myself. Mareen came around in front of me and tried to grab one of my legs, but I wouldn’t let her.

  Eventually, I managed to work my way out of Verona’s grip and fall to the floor, on my back.

  “Useless!” Mareen said, “You’re both totally useless!”

  I scrambled to pick myself up, but it was hard to find purchase on the solid, smooth marble floor. Mareen wound back her arm, and in her hand grew a ball of sparkling blue light. Not wanting to get hit when she hurled it at me, I rolled behind one of the couches in the main room, making it behind cover just as she managed to hurl the bolt of magic in my direction.

  I heard it strike the couch, I felt the vibration coming up from the floor. A moment later, the couch started to float, rising inch by inch off the ground as if it had suddenly learned to fly. Across from me, Verona came into view, the other minion charging a spell of her own in her hand.

  My eyes widened, and I started scrambling again, on my hands and knees, keeping my head below the level of the table that stood between the couches. Bolt after magic bolt sailed towards me, one striking the table, a further one hitting the levitating couch again and sending it hurtling toward a wall.

  When I finally got on my feet, I started running full-pelt in the only direction available—forward. Ahead of me were three doors. One, I knew, led to the dining room where we’d had breakfast, and another led into the corridor that connected our little villa to the rest of the palace.

  Both doors were shut, and I wasn’t sure whether they’d open when I reached them. The third door, however, was open. I wasn’t sure where it would lead, but going through it beat getting blasted in the back by fae magic.

  Sprinting, I headed for the open door just as more bolts of magic sailed in my direction. I could hear them go whizzing past my ear, above my head, in front of me. For a bunch of well-trained fae, their aim was absolutely crap.

  I barged through the slightly open doorway with my shoulder and kept sprinting. I was in a glass tunnel, the Arcadian heavens unfurling above me like a beautiful piece of art. I had never seen so many stars in the sky as there were out here. Millions of them; billions of them, all in one eyeful, illuminating a night sky that wasn’t too different to ours back home.

  Ahead of me, more glass doors.

  This is the aviary.

  I couldn’t hear any birds chirping back there, but I remembered seeing it from the outside as Tellren guided me to the palace. Maybe there was another way out through there; a way to get away from these women without having to turn around and face them—because that was the only other way out of this mess right now.

  Miraculously, the door to the aviary was open just enough for me to get through it and closed it behind me. Drawing the beam behind the double doors locked them shut, sealing the entryway. It was only made of glass, but unless they wanted to destroy part of the royal palace, it would hold them.

  I stopped to catch my breath, panting so hard I was fogging the glass panes even from a distance. Behind me, and all around me, stood a little forest of trees. Most of them were black, and tall, with fluffy white leaves. Other trees were so large they reached the tops of the glass domed ceiling, most of them were covered with little flowers that pulsed with soft, blue light.

  From the tree nearest to me, a small flock of startled birds took flight, snatching my attention for a moment. I backed away from the door, but when the girls started laughing from the other side, I turned to look at it again. They weren’t running toward me anymore; they were meandering toward it, all three of them in absolute hysterics.

  I rushed up to the door again and pointed at the beam keeping it shut. “Good luck getting in!” I yelled.

  “Oh,” Mareen paused to laugh. “We don’t want to get in. In fact, I should be wishing you good luck trying to get out.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “There’s no other way out of there than through this door, and unless you haven’t noticed, we don’t cage our birds.”

  I hadn’t wanted to recognize it, but in the silence after Mareen had spoken, I could hear a babble of noise starting to rise from… everywhere. It was slow, but steady; a bunch of chirping, and screeching, and squawking I didn’t care for. I darted toward the door, grabbed the beam, and went to pull it up, but with a flick of her wrist, Mareen enchanted the beam so it wouldn’t move.

  I was locked in here.

  She turned to each of her cohorts—one of which was still holding onto her bleeding nose. “If you would please do the honors?” Mareen asked.

  Kali grinned through the blood. “Gladly,” she said, and with a nod to Verona, both fae conjured a swirling mist of turquoise magic between them and sent streaks of light shooting past the door, past me, and into the depths of the aviary.

  Instantly, the babble of noise grew into a deafening cacophony. The trees started rustling, the bushes around me came alive, and suddenly the brightness of the heavens above me started darkening. But it wasn’t magic dimming the light from the stars overhead—it was birds. Screeching, screaming, frenzied birds.

  The fae howled with laughter. I could see the absolute mirth in their eyes. And when the birds descended on me and started nipping, and scratching, and clawing at my flesh, their laughter only grew. I couldn’t stay by the door, I couldn’t open it and go back the way I came, and I didn’t think I would be strong enough to break it open—not without severely injuring myself.

  The only way to go was through.

  Again.

  Covering my head and my face with arms that were already getting scratched and cut, I fled into the darkness, running blindly through all manner of foliage. The plants and bushes, it seemed, were in competition with the birds to see who could cut me up the hardest.

  The birds never let up, determined to swoop and attack me even as I pushed deeper into the trees. I couldn’t see where I was going, I couldn’t hear myself think, and my body was screaming with pain. It wasn’t until I tripped over a root and found myself staring at an opening in a fallen, hollow log that I figured out how I was going to escape the birds.

  Crawling, hand over hand, I tucked myself into the log. I didn’t know where Gullie was, I had no way of getting out, and the world itself seemed to be screaming at me. Covering my ears with my hands, I finally gave Mareen what she wanted—even if she wouldn’t be able to hear it.

  I screamed until my throat went hoarse… and my voice shattered glass.