The Egregious Affair of a Cold-Hearted King (prequel) (book 1.5)

Chapter Three ~ Desperation

The candlelight lasted mere moments after the two men left Nadia's cell. Its brevity reminded her of human life—how quickly they appeared and blipped from the world, leaving her in the endless darkness...

She thought of the young boy who wasn't yet king. She wondered when he'd be crowned and if she'd ever see him again, if he'd learn of her purpose and demand her to give him his earned curse.

Her hand slid against the cold rock floor, just barely able to fit beneath the iron bars of her cell. Fingers latched around the thin handle of the silver pricket, then pulled the tray into her stone-walled room. The candle was long-gone, leaving an oily residue from the tallow from which it was crafted.

It had probably been a week since the princeling visited her. She recalled his deep brown eyes, sparkling behind the light of the thin candle. It had been a while since she saw someone without a hint of revulsion in their gaze.

She smoothed her thumb over the edge of the metal tray and nestled into a moth-eaten blanket in the corner of her cell, next to stones and other things she'd collected over the years.

Her thoughts briefly held to the hope that the boy would return so she could set her plan in motion—to finally leave this place. But those thoughts extinguished when she fell into a deep sleep, where her dreams were never-changing—memories of screaming elven men, of the fairy king's murder, of human kings demanding her to cast curses upon her own kind. She only awoke when her dream self held a dagger over her own heart, moments before the blade punctured flesh.

˖✧ 🗡 ♥ ✧˖

After three months, Nadia stopped keeping track of time. This was routine—she'd see someone, then tally the days until she saw another again. But after centuries without seeing a face, she'd fallen out of the habit.

There also wasn't much room left on the walls of her cell to fill; the ridges from her tallies overlapped one another like ripples in sand.

Time became a concept once again. That familiar, biting cold of loneliness consumed the elf queen.

She spent five or ten years in solitude—she'd begun to wonder how long she would have to wait—staring into the darkness. Picturing life beyond her cell walls. Reimagining her worst nightmares. Hoping the world was worse outside, so that she knew she wasn't missing anything in her isolation.

And then her cell door opened.

˖✧ 🗡 ♥ ✧˖

The prince had grown older, even wore a more impressive circlet in his wispy dark hair. He was alone, without a guard or soldier to accompany him. Not that Nadia had planned to do him harm.

He just stood there for a moment in the open doorway, velvet capes flung about him from pins on his shoulders. He hadn't just grown older, but harder. The naive light Nadia had seen in his eyes had left him, but at least the lines beginning to set in his features were kind. At least, the elf queen desired to see them as such.

The prince held a glass encasement of sputtering light. It impressively lit up the walls of Nadia's cell, glamouring the walls with sun. For a moment, the elf wondered if he'd brought the star with him. Maybe humans could now harness magic.

"Nadia," the man breathed. The sound of it was rough and filled with urgency.

The elf swallowed a dry gulp of breath, held it there, and waited for the prince to order her to do something evil. He'd be just like the rest. He'd order her to give him the unobtainable, to do something terrible.