CHAPTER 3: THE MAD KING

KATHLEEN

I swallowed hard and lifted my gaze to meet his. "I don't want to be here. I want to leave."

The words came out louder than I meant them to, edged with panic I could no longer hide.

He let out a long breath, his shoulders sagging slightly. "Even if you'd gotten through that door, you wouldn't have lived to take two steps past it."

"Why?" My voice dropped to barely a whisper.

"Because warriors are stationed just outside, specifically to kill any slave who tries to run." He said it plainly.

The word ‘Slave’ made my blood run cold. He just saved my life, whether he meant to or not.

"I don't want to be anyone's slave or surrogate," I said, shaking my head, my stomach turning at the thought of carrying a child born out of nothing but obligation and fear. "I just want to go home."

He offered a faint smile, one that never came close to reaching his eyes, and began pacing slowly in front of me. "Do you know why our King needs a surrogate in the first place?"

I shook my head.

"He needs an heir." He clasped his hands behind his back again as he spoke.

"It started seven years ago. Our Queen couldn't carry a pregnancy to term. Three times she conceived. Three times she lost the child."

I listened closely, something in my chest going quiet and still despite everything else happening around me. It was a devastating story, one I understood more than he probably realized.

My Aunt Emma, she’d gotten pregnant not long after her divorce. By morning, it was gone.

I still remembered the sound she'd made that night, like something inside her had been torn out along with the child — like the world itself was ending.

"So why did the King go mad?" I asked the one question that had been sitting heaviest in my mind since we'd arrived.

"He was cursed. By his own brother, Casper." Lord Tarry's jaw tightened slightly as he said the name.

"Since the Queen couldn't produce an heir and her health had only worsened, Casper saw an opening. He cursed the King into madness, hoping to seize the throne for himself while everyone was too distracted by grief to notice what he was doing."

‘What kind of brother does that?’ I thought, something sick twisting in my stomach.

To hurt your own blood, drive him insane, all in pursuit of a crown that wasn't even yours to take.

"So that's why he needs a surrogate," I said slowly, piecing it together out loud. "To secure an heir before Casper can take the throne."

He nodded, then stopped directly in front of me, his expression darkening.

"The King has refused to mate with any woman brought to him so far. Every single one who's gone into that room has come out dead."

A chill ran straight through me, goosebumps rising across every inch of my skin.

"So we're being walked straight into our deaths?" I asked, disbelief cracking through my voice.

"We're simply searching for the right candidate," he said, flatly.

He was already turning to walk away, as though that answer should have been comforting. "Go back and rejoin the others. You'll all be called soon enough."

I swallowed hard, understanding exactly what waited on the other side of that sentence.

I glanced once more at the door in front of me and shook my head. I can't risk it. Not now. Staying alive matters more than one desperate escape.

I turned and made my way back toward the room, resolved to settle the cold and heavy in my chest.

I slipped back inside quietly. The crying had stopped, but the silence that replaced it was worse — each girl sitting locked in her own private grief.

The door burst open, and a woman strode in. Her face was cold, and emotionless.

"Everyone, strip," she barked.

We obeyed instantly, fear stripping away any hesitation along with our clothes. A fresh wave of sobbing broke, one by one, onto a table to be checked for purity.

The first girl climbed up and spread her legs, trembling. The woman inserted two fingers without warning, clinical and rough.

"She's a virgin. Take her to the King," the woman announced.

"I'm my mother's only child," the girl wept, her voice cracking apart as two attendants dressed her hastily and dragged her from the room.

The woman moved on to a girl with pale blonde hair. The moment her fingers moved to test her—

"I'm not a virgin," the girl blurted, voice shaking violently. "I'm not qualified. I've — I've slept with my boyfriend. Many times."

"Only the King decides who's qualified," the woman snapped, and gestured for the girl to be taken away regardless.

Not even admitting the truth spared anyone.

One after another, we were tested the same way, and when my turn finally came, I was no exception.

The moment her cold fingers touched me, Troy's voice rang through my head, unbidden and cruel.

‘That little red cherry between your legs.’ Everything I'd guarded for years, meant for someone who actually loved me, about to be taken by a monster instead.

Tears slid down my face as I pulled my clothes back on with shaking hands.

Then the doors opened again, and attendants filed in carrying the girls who'd already been taken — laid out, one after another.

Their bodies were still, drained of color, soaked through with blood.

A guard stepped forward and shook his head at the woman. "None of them survived."

My breath stopped entirely. I staggered backward, clamping a hand over my own mouth to keep any sound from escaping, though sobs shook through me regardless.

Fourteen. I counted without meaning to — fourteen girls, cold and lifeless, laid out like something already forgotten.

Am I next?

Is this really how it ends for me? Sam alone, with no one left to sit beside her, to lie to her about how my day went, to hold her hand when the pain gets bad?

‘Mother, wherever you are, please. Please protect me.’

I prayed silently, the sight of those bodies carving itself permanently into whatever was left of my composure.

The woman turned and pointed directly at me. "She's our last chance tonight. Also a virgin. If she doesn't survive either, prepare for another hunt."

Before I could form a single word, hands seized my arms and pulled me from the room.

I didn't fight them. There was no point left in fighting.

My mind had already gone somewhere distant and numb, turning over every possible way tonight could end, none of them kind.

"So I'm going to die too?" I asked the guards outright, already certain of the answer before I finished asking it.

They said nothing, only kept dragging me forward.

Sweat had already soaked through my forehead by the time I heard it — a low, guttural rumble echoing from somewhere ahead.

A growl, deep and wounded, like something caged that had stopped being an animal a long time ago and become something else entirely.

I don't even know what to pray for anymore.

Death, to make it quick? Or acceptance, so I could crawl back to Sam in one piece? I needed to see her again. I needed to survive this, whatever it cost me.

We stopped in front of a massive door, and the guards who'd dragged me there suddenly released my arms and ran off.

I stood there shaking, certain in that moment that I'd actually wet myself in the same lingerie I'd worn for Troy hours earlier — a detail so absurd against the horror of everything else that it barely registered.

The door swung open, and my eyes came in contact with a blood-shot eye monster inside the room.

Instinctively, I took a step back. Before I could process any of it, Beta Fin emerged, his face streaked with fresh blood.

Cuts ran along his jaw, still bleeding, and it hit me all at once — this was how he'd gotten every scar on his face.

Not from battle. From this room. From him.

He looked at me for a long, silent moment, and roughly dropped the tray—untouched, clearly rejected, and stormed past me without a word.

I watched him disappear down the corridor as two more guards stepped up to take his place at the door.

Something told me exactly what they were really waiting for: my body, to be carried out and laid beside the others.

"Go in," one of them ordered.

I flinched at the sound of his voice, and my hands trembled violently as I reached for the door. My eyes caught on the tray still lying on the floor, food scattered and cooling.

"What are you staring at? Don't keep the King waiting," the other snapped.

I nodded numbly, then knelt down and gathered the tray back together, setting it right without fully understanding why I was bothering.

The two guards exchanged a look. ‘What is she doing?’

I straightened and stared at the door ahead of me.

So even beta fin, couldn’t even feed him?

‘He hasn't eaten in days,’ I thought. ‘Maybe that's why he's like this. Maybe — just maybe — if he eats, something in him settles.’

The image of Beta Fin's bloodied face flickered behind my eyes.

My heart slammed hard against my ribs as I forced every last thought of it behind me, gripped the tray with both hands, and pushed the door open.