The dice rolled, stopping on a one and a six in the center of the table.
Perivale's cheeks were deathly white now as he shook his dice and released them onto the table. They crashed into Ember's own dice before settling on a three and four.
"Second round goes to the king!" Filton announced, "Perivale to roll!"
Both men grabbed their dice and Ember felt the corners of the wooden cubes biting into his palm as he squeezed them a little too tightly.
This is it, Ember thought grimly. If he did not match Perivale's dice, he lost, and the lord's bride would be fair game to do with whatever he pleased. No doubt he would simply sell her to the highest bidder in order to live out his exile in comfort.
The king held his breath, watching as Perivale cupped both hands around his dice and blew on them before rolling.
What a fool, Ember thought, watching on grimly.
The entire room seemed to be holding its breath as the dice landed on a pair of sixes.
What are the odds? Ember asked himself. He knew it didn't really matter. It was all down to fate. Shaking the dice in his palm just as he had before, he allowed them to roll across the table.
They rolled and rolled and seemed to roll on forever, until they reached the very edge of the table. One teetered just shy of falling, but the second toppled over, and in the dead silence of the room, it clattered loudly onto the marble floor.
Ember joined the rest of the room, holding his breath as he saw that the first die on the table had landed on a six. Unable to see the second die on the floor, he could do nothing but wait.
Several gasps erupted from the other side of the table where the dice had landed, but it wasn't until Filton skirted around to it that the verdict was announced, "It is a six! The king wins!"
Chapter 1 - Iris
It had been weeks since Iris had slept properly. In fact, she couldn't remember the last decent night's sleep she'd had.
Perhaps it was a month ago, before her father had announced that he had sold her to the highest bidder. Or perhaps it was even before then, when her mother had taken her own life, choosing to fly out to sea rather than go on living as the wife of a seemingly respectable businessman who beat her every evening for things as small as burning his food, or allowing her daughter to make too much noise.
They had found her a week later, washed up on a local beach, her wings no match for the high winds or the distance it would have taken her to reach sanctuary on the mainland.
Iris often lay awake at night, especially now, wondering whether one day she might follow in her mother's footsteps. She often wondered when her mother had reached the point of no return and how close she could possibly be to it herself.
She was laid awake, staring at the open night sky through the skylight in her new bedroom—or prison—when she heard a carriage door slamming outside the villa.
Normally, she would have ignored it and simply rolled over in an attempt to feign sleep when he came knocking, but tonight her skin tingled with something more than disgust. Anticipation clawed at her stomach. She wasn't entirely sure what had changed, but something had.
Her brute of a groom did not bother with the stairs as he usually did; an odd form of respect to a bride who wanted nothing to do with him. Instead, he flew directly from the courtyard, through her open balcony archway and landed unceremoniously on the floor beside her bed.
The sickly-sweet scent of honeysuckle wine was like a cloud all around him and Iris had to hold her breath just to stand it.
"Guards!" Perivale yelled loudly, and instantly footsteps began to clatter up the steps. "Seize her!"
"What? Why? I have done nothing wrong!" Iris wailed as the guards barged through the heavy wooden door and instantly descended upon her. They dragged her roughly from the bed, one man even knotting the roots of her hair around his fist.
"You can't do this to me!" she screamed. "Get your hands off me!"
Frantic with fear, she fluttered her deep purple wings in an attempt to escape. They were quickly pinned back against her back, folded so awkwardly that it soon became painful, and she could do nothing but go limp in the arms of her captors.
"What do you wish for us to do with her, my lord?" The head of the household guard, a man who Iris had once thought kind, now seemed stone faced and distant, utterly unreachable with her weakening pleas for freedom.
"A carriage awaits downstairs," Perivale announced, "Throw her in and lock the door."
Iris gulped past the lump in her throat. Her bedroom in Perivale's villa had seemed like a small cage, but a carriage would be smaller still.
"Where are you sending me?" Iris called over her shoulder, but Perivale did not answer as the guards dragged her from the room wearing nothing but a sheer slip of fabric for a nightgown.
She had believed that Perivale's nightly visits were bad enough with his wine breath and his forcing himself upon her, but the terror she felt now, faced with the unknown, was twice as bad as anything he had done to her thus far.