The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) by Cassie Alexander

brow.
    For one sharp moment I felt like this must be what it was like to have a King at my side. Then he stepped back, shaking his head. “Where is the door?”
    I pointed. It was set into the chamber’s far wall, as tall as the ceiling and inset with jewels. He ran over to it, searching for a handle with his hands, then finally throwing himself into it bodily, but it didn’t move.
    “What kind of joke is this?” He whirled on me, his braid whipping behind him.
    I shook my head. “It isn’t a joke. That is the door.” It was the only way I had seen anyone enter or leave the Feather Palace for my three hundred years – and suddenly I understood his problem. “It only opens from the other side.”
    He made a strangled sound, then hit the door with both his hands. When he left the room this time, I did not chase after him.

Chapter Five
    Twenty-thousand years.
    I had never heard anything so absurd, not even in the stories the
varjans
told me as a child. Who was that woman, and why did she look so much like Airelle?
    My footsteps echoed in the empty hallways that seemed to never end. Would I have to count out twenty-thousand steps before I found an escape from this accursed place?
    There had to be a way.
    I stalked down halls, looking for doors or windows, waiting to feel a swirl of fresh air. Any window I did see was an accursed Rix-made screen – I took great pleasure pulling these off of walls, but there were no windows hiding behind them, either.
    What hell was this that I was trapped in? And how could I get out?
    I found a place where animals were all in cages. Some of them I recognized – the number of feet were the same, though the markings on hides and feathers different – but there were others I’d never seen. I stood outside the cage for one of these. It had fangs as long as my hand and a body that wove sinuously through the brush of its habitat. I paced outside its range, a double series of bars keeping me from it and likewise, and felt it stalking me as I tried to think.
    That girl who called herself a Queen – hardly. She had none of Airelle’s fire or strength. I had watched Airelle tame and ride a
raguin
in one afternoon, without magic. If that girl saw a
raguin
, she would faint, and then the
raguin
would eat her.
    The stone was supposed to be for a season, or at most, a year. Until our spies had figured out how to make Rix-machines work for us. It was never meant to be an eternity.
    I put a hand to my mouth, where that strange girl’s blood was still on my lips. No matter how quickly I’d tried to spit it out, I’d swallowed some of it.
    She did wake me. And now I was bound by her blood, not the blood of my beloved.
    I whirled and beat my hands on the nearest bars. “Airelle!”
    The creature inside the cage took its chance, flinging itself at me claws out, mouth open, and rebounded off the cage the same as I did.
    “Airelle!” I shouted again, as if shouting could erase the passage of time and bring her back.
    The growling of the beast inside the cage was the only thing that answered.
    #
    I returned with Joshan and Beza to my chambers. Beza looked up at my neck. “May I bathe you, my Queen?”
    I touched my neck and flaked off drying blood. “Please.”
    Together, we walked to the pool. Usually, baths were a time for silliness and merriment and kisses on wet skin. Today, however, I was in no mood. I settled into the water and swam back and forth.
    I would have to call and tell the council – I already knew Railan would be upset, and Yzin, and all the other councilmembers, and even unknown, unmet celestitians. I’d ruined everything. I supposed the only thing left to figure out is if things could be fixed.
    I rose out of the water and let Beza towel me off, then sat down so that she could stroke a comb through my long hair. Her comb stuttered, so unlike her that I looked up. “What are you thinking?”
    “I am afraid if he lays down to sleep, the zoomers will get to him, my