Chapter 9: I Do Hope You're Well-backed For Us

The sun had long since disappeared behind the palace walls, and with it, Morgana's last fragile hope.

She sat on the bed in the white cloth Agnes had given her, her feet not quite touching the floor, her hands pressed flat against the silk beneath her. The fabric of her body covering was so thin it was practically gossamer...a breath away from transparent. She could feel the air on her skin, could feel how exposed she was, how utterly defenseless.

The room was beautiful in a way that made her want to scream.

Golden light from candles cast everything in a honeyed glow. There were fresh flowers in vases on the table by the window. The bed beneath her was so soft it felt like drowning. And none of it mattered because she was about to be devoured by three Kings, and the beauty of the room was just a prettier cage.

Morgana counted her breaths.

In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.

It was a trick her mother had taught her once, years ago, when Morgana was small and afraid of thunderstorms. Count your breaths, love. The world will still be here when you're done counting, but at least you'll be calm when it arrives.

The world was arriving now.

She could hear the palace settling around her. The distant sounds of servants moving through corridors, preparing for the night. The crackle of the candles burning down. The sound of her own heartbeat, which seemed impossibly loud, as if it might give away her terror to anyone who got close enough to listen.

They would get close enough.

They would get so close that there would be nowhere left for her to hide.

Morgana's hands shook. She pressed them harder against the mattress, trying to stop the trembling, but it was no use. Her body knew what was coming. Her body was terrified. Her body was going to betray her, she was certain of it, and that thought made her want to crawl out of her own skin.

The sky outside the window had turned deep purple, then black. The stars were beginning to show themselves, tiny pinpricks of light in an infinite darkness. Morgana watched them and thought about her cottage in Thornwick. She thought about the small room where she'd slept. The oven where she'd baked bread. Her father, passed out in his chair, oblivious to the fact that he'd sold his daughter to pay for his addiction.

That life was gone now.

There was only this room. This bed. This white cloth that covered nothing and exposed everything.

The sound came first as a vibration through the stone floor.

Footsteps.

Multiple sets of footsteps, moving with the kind of deliberate pace that belonged to men who owned everything they walked through. They were close now. Morgana could hear them in the hallway. Could hear the soft murmur of voices. Could hear what might have been laughter, though it was too distant to be certain.

Her breath caught in her throat.

This was it.

This was the moment the cage closed completely.

The footsteps stopped outside her door.

Morgana's entire body went rigid. She sat perfectly still on the bed, waiting. Waiting. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought it might split her ribs. The white cloth suddenly felt like it was suffocating her, pressing down on her skin like a shroud.

The door opened.

He filled the space.

Not in terms of size....though he was tall, broad-shouldered, carved from something that wasn't quite human, but in terms of presence. The moment he stepped into the room, everything else seemed to shrink away from him. The candlelight bent around him. The shadows deepened. Even the air seemed to hold its breath.

Silver eyes. That was what Morgana noticed first. Eyes the color of moonlight, cold and calculating and absolutely certain. This was Theron. The eldest.

He didn't speak. He simply looked at her, really looked at her, like he was memorising every detail, every tremor, every evidence of her terror, and then he moved to the chair opposite the bed. He sat down slowly, deliberately, arranging himself with the kind of precision that belonged to someone used to being obeyed.

He looked like a king about to conduct a trial.

Then the door opened again.

Calen entered with a whistle.

It was a low, appreciative sound, and he was smiling, a smug, satisfied smile that made Morgana's skin crawl. His brown eyes swept over her in a way that felt like a violation even before he touched her. There was possession in that gaze. Hunger. Recognition, though she didn't understand what he recognized in her.

"Well, well," Calen said, his voice soft and almost playful, "isn't this the debtor's daughter."

It wasn't a question.

Behind him, Sebastian appeared, and the moment he crossed the threshold, something shifted in the room. The air became heavy. Charged. Dangerous in a way that made Morgana's primitive brain scream at her to run.

Sebastian's eyes were electric blue, bright and glowing with an intensity that was barely contained. He looked at her like she was the only thing in the world, and that gaze was somehow worse than Calen's casual possession because there was no calculation in it. There was only hunger. Raw, primal hunger that didn't bother to hide itself.

"Yes," Sebastian said, and his voice was rough, like gravel and smoke. "The bread seller. I do hope you're well-backed for us to devour you this night."

He smiled, and Morgana felt her legs press together involuntarily. Terror and something else, something darker, something her body didn't have permission to feel....coiled in her stomach.

She looked up at them, all three of them, and tears filled her eyes without her permission.

"Please," she whispered, and her voice was so broken it barely qualified as sound. "I will pay back the debt. I can work in the kitchen, do laundries and..."

"You do not get to negotiate terms with us, Morgana."

Theron's voice cut through her plea like a blade. The way he said her name sent ice water through her veins. There was something in the way it shaped his mouth, the way the syllables fell from his lips with such precision, that made it clear this was not the first time he'd spoken her name.

She didn't have time to process that thought because Theron was speaking again, and his words were absolute.

"You are here to pay for your father's debt, and you will pay it in any way we deem fit. There is no point in crying, Morgana. Accept what we give you this night and in the nights to come. Your compliance is the only choice you have left."

Sebastian looked at his brother, and something passed between them, a conversation that happened in the space of a glance, some kind of understanding that didn't require words.

"Why are you still wasting your breath with negotiation?" Sebastian asked Theron, but his eyes never left Morgana. "Why not just make her break over our cocks instead of wasting time on words?"