“I’m taking your silence to mean you’ve agreed and are eager to do my bidding,” the prince drawls, his voice tinged with challenge.
“Of course, Your Highness. How exactly would you like us to help your guards with the selection?”
A lazy grin pulls at the prince’s mouth before he replies, “This year, you three will be tasked with making sureeveryeligible human female you can lay hands on is brought to me. I want them all. Every single woman who appears to be even remotely capable of bearing children to be presented to me. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Do not let me down. My patience has grown thin. This will be the year I sire an heir,whateverthe cost.”
We remain stony-faced and silent as his eyes roam over us. Finally satisfied that we will bring him exactly what he demands, the prince takes the goblet of wine and turns toward the balcony leading out from his bedchamber.
“Oh, and take care of that,” he orders, pausing briefly to gesture toward his bed. With that, the prince disappears from the room.
Turning back to the bed, my eyes land on a figure lying hidden within the mess of white pillows and tangled sheets.
Pierce makes a small sound of disgust next to me while Rykker stiffens.
Drawing closer, I pull back the sheets to find a naked woman, the sheets beneath her stained red with blood. Her eyes are wide as they stare unseeing at the wall across from her.
Wrapping her in the stained sheets, I lift her into my arms before turning back toward the others. Without saying a word, we all know who she is.
The previous season’s last human female.
Dead like all the others.
4
Rose
My eyelids are heavy as I lean against the wall at the back of the kitchen, hidden from sight for just a moment’s rest. The hours slipped by in a blur of severing ale and food, and avoiding wandering hands.
My anger has only lessened a fraction since this morning. Even now, as I stand here waiting for the day to end so I can crawl to my bed and pretend today never happened, my blood boils again.
Just a few minutes more, then I’ll have a few coins to my name. My stomach growls as thoughts of a warm meal before sleep fill my mind.
“Look lively,” Mary hisses in warning, pushing a few mugs of ale into my empty hands.
I straighten just as Mistress Wrotham enters the kitchen, the gleam in her eye telling me I can kiss my dreams of an early evening goodbye.
“Get a move on, girls,” she barks. “We’ve got new customers and mustn’t keep them waiting.”
Stifling a groan as she turns her attention to the cooks, I force my tired feet to carry me back to the dining hall. I watch with growing annoyance as several large clusters of men wake their way toward the tables. Raucous laughter fills the room again as they call out to one another.
Frowning at their overly joyful temperament, I hesitate.
“The beasts have come to claim their prey, and yet they’ll find few to whet their appetites here,” one of the men shouts to a deafening cheer.
“To daughters well-hidden and beasts left empty-handed!”
The men cheer once again, slapping each other’s backs in praise.
“Honestly, I had half a mind to offer up my own to the beasts, but then I realized she was worth more to me sold to the old man across the way,” another man hollers, eliciting riotous laughter.
“Don’t mind them,” Mary whispers in my ear, nearly causing me to drop the mugs of ale. “They’re fools. The lot of them. Just keep your head down and get through the task at hand.”
She slips into the crowd like a shadow, pouring drinks and serving food before anyone has time to notice she’s done so. Following after her, I frown as I approach one of the tables.
More men can’t seem to help bragging about what they did to hide their daughters, or worse, ruin them beforethose beastscould get to them. Between these men and the wolves that rules us, part of me wonders which is truly the monster.