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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
publish date:
2025-08-31 20:02:55
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Bewitched CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The ball had always been an obligation.He knew it even before the torches of Cromwell’s palace burned into sight, before the heralds announced the Four Courts assembled, before his father’s hard stare pressed against his skull like a weight he had long grown accustomed to carrying. The Winter Court had no place for excess or spectacle; their halls were narrow and plain, their feasts measured in silence, their festivals solemn meditations beneath a sky of unbroken darkness. For them, beauty was not a thing to be flaunted but endured—the glimmer of frost upon stone, the sound of snow cracking beneath boots, the stillness of a frozen lake.But here, in Cromwell, everything gleamed. Candles spilled their light across honey-gold walls, ribbons shimmered from the rafters, and servants scurried like well-trained doves with their trays of wine. It was unbearable in its brightness. To August’s eyes, it seemed almost mocking.His father, however, reveled in it. The King of Winter smiled when h
Bewitched CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There had been a time when hopelessness wrapped itself around me so tightly I thought I might suffocate. It was not here in this prison, not even when the wardens’ hands bruised my arms and their chains carved into my skin, but long before. It was when my father—my father who once told me stories of my mother as if they were sacred relics—stood before the court and placed Tremaine at his side. I remembered that moment as clearly as though it had just passed. The chamber had been filled with whispers, the kind of silken murmurs that rise from curiosity and hunger, and in the middle of it all, I stood still as stone, watching my father vow himself to another woman while my mother’s memory still lingered like incense. I had opposed it. I had spoken, argued, pleaded. But my voice was as dust against stone walls. And when my father’s gaze slid past me, when it favored Tremaine’s jeweled smile instead of his daughter’s trembling hands, I knew something within him had changed forever. His lo
Bewitched CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The chains bit into me like fangs. Every movement pulled against the stiff iron circling my wrists and ankles, sending jolts of spasms through my limbs until the pain forced air out of me in ragged bursts. A sound, half-snarl and half-sob, escaped from my throat. The cell was more nest than prison, an ancient stone cavern draped in webs of rust and rot, as though spiders had claimed dominion here long before wardens ever had. The floor was matted with hay, its sharp ends poking into my skin wherever I shifted. The itch it raised was unbearable, but the shackles ensured I could not scratch. I forced myself to look outward, peering through the narrow cracks in the iron bars. A faint glow shimmered at the far end of what seemed like a tunnel, too dim to promise freedom, but enough to suggest a direction. Beyond it, who knew? Another chamber, another trick of stone. For all I knew, this was not a castle at all. I had awakened here without memory of the passage—dragged, bound, half-conscio
Bewitched CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The night had been cruel to me. I had not truly slept, though I had tried. Perhaps I drifted once or twice into that shallow kind of rest that only mocks the body with its pretense of peace. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw it again—the warped reflection in the mirror, the grotesque thing that answered Tremaine in whispers. Each time I let my mind wander, I felt the beating of wings and the snap of talons from the dragon, as though it hovered still above the roof, waiting to tear us apart. No bed could protect me from that kind of remembering, and certainly not the splintered chair I had chosen to sit upon until dawn. When the first line of sun broke the forest’s edge, the air shifted. A light breeze brushed through the half-rotted shutters of the old house, and I stepped outside to meet it, hoping it might clear my thoughts. For a moment, the world seemed merciful: the leaves whispered against each other as though exchanging confidences, birds scattered notes into the still air, and
Bewitched CHAPTER TWELVE
The thing drew closer with each breath we wasted. Its shadow swelled between the trees, a living darkness that creaked the forest floor beneath its weight. Flynn and I inched backward, every step an effort not to snap twigs or draw its eyes. When the creature shifted, the faint gleam of its claws caught the moonlight, razors of ivory longer than my arm. That was all it took—my legs moved before my mind could stop them. Flynn seized my wrist, dragging me faster, and the forest came alive in our flight. Branches whipped against my skin. Roots clawed at my ankles. The leaves overhead shivered violently, as if the canopy itself were warning everything that lived beneath it. The animal’s howl split the night—a shriek that rattled bone and terrified both bird and beast. Owls scattered. Crickets fell silent. Even the air seemed to quake with the sound. It was behind us. Too close. The earth cracked as its claws tore into the soil, uprooting entire trees as though they were nothing more tha
Bewitched CHAPTER ELEVEN
The descent back into the cellar felt like stumbling into a coffin. My hands, damp with sweat, clutched at the splintered banister, guiding my trembling legs down one step at a time. My lungs burned from the sprint; each inhale carried more heat than air. Yet the cold of what I had seen upstairs had not left me. It clung to my skin like damp cloth, a reminder that I had been inches away from something inhuman, something grotesque enough to tilt my world off its hinges. The door flew open under my hand, the hinges crying out as if to betray me. Flynn jumped to his feet at once, startled, his eyes sharp in the half-light. For a heartbeat he looked at me as though I’d brought the devil itself back with me. Perhaps I had. I tried to speak but words broke in my throat. The picture of her — that woman in the mirror — refused to loosen its grip. Her hair a mass of filth, her nails hooked and twisted, her eyes like twin caverns of tar. I had not even been face-to-face with her, yet the memor
Bewitched CHAPTER SEVEN
For a brief moment, Flynn drifted away from me. He muttered something about fetching what we might need, and from the way his eyes had swept over me earlier—half critical, half calculating—I guessed he meant clothes. The thought of him disliking what I wore left a dull sting, though I knew it wasn’t
Bewitched CHAPTER SIX
The forest is darker than I imagined it could ever be. We step out of the meadow, the brittle stalks crunching under our boots, and at once the world narrows to black trunks and shifting shadows. Pines rise like pillars into the haze, their spires so tall they might spear the stars themselves. The s
Bewitched CHAPTER FIVE
I’m not sure what unsettles me more: the thought that I am willingly about to work with someone from the neighboring kingdom I’ve been raised to loathe, or the heavier truth that I am placing my trust in him—a thief, no less. His sudden admission of where he truly comes from rattled me more than I’d
Bewitched CHAPTER FOUR
The mornings never come gently to me anymore. I used to think the sun’s arrival should feel like a blessing—its warmth, its promise, the quiet reassurance that life continues even after a night of terrors. But in this house, dawn has become the herald of dread. Daybreak means demands, punishments, r
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