Enslaved: A Kinky Adult Fairy Tale (Bedding the Bad Girl Book 3) (2 page)

“I am
not
an affliction!” Her voice echoed out of her cell into the vast underground dungeon. She was shaking now, her hands clawing at the air in front of her face as if she could shred the voice with her mangled nails.

Then prove it
.
Free yourself
.
Cast
,
Calliope
.
Cast or die

Calliope squeezed her eyes closed. “No.”

Cast
,
daughter
,
cast and live
.

“N-no.”

Fool
!

“I am not a fool. I have memorized every spell you ever taught me. My mind is not lame, my magic is.”

What
’
s the difference
?
You
’
re still a waste
.

“Stop it!”

Pathetic
,
absolutely
—

“By the Goddess of good and old,” Calliope keened over the voice that tormented her, “magic do as you’re told. Liberate me in my time of need, ease this heart and set me free.”

A sudden wind swept through the cell, the first breeze she’d felt in the weeks she’d been confined, and Calliope knew the spell had been cast.

What consequences it would bring, however…

No matter how well spoken or intentioned, her magic had a way of doing as it
would
, not as it was
told
.

Some spell
…
doesn
’
t even
…
of the
…

Her mother’s voice was weaker now. Calliope easily pushed it away as she rolled back to the ground.

She was exhausted, half starved and as miserable as she had been in those dark days before her mother’s death, when Heliotrope’s bitterness had been at its greatest, poisoning her as surely as the disease that ravaged her body.

“Goddess, protect me,” Calliope murmured as she closed her eyes.

She was too tired to stay awake and unwilling to part with the last bit of bread she’d tucked into the pocket of her nightdress to set other bait for the rats. She would just have to trust the Goddess to keep her safe while she slept and pray the spell would achieve her goal, without anyone getting hurt in the process.

CHAPTER TWO
Aaron

Aaron, King of Outer Kartolia, was royally
pissed
.

He’d only been in Kingdom City for two months and
this
was what he returned to find.

Johann was lost to the enchanted castle north of their lands—his journey a stunt to punish Aaron for missing his younger brother’s sixteenth birthday, no doubt. And Henri, Aaron’s royal advisor, had taken the law into his own hands. Now, there was a pixie or a fairy or whatever she was locked in the dungeon he hadn’t used in the four years since he’d taken the throne.

“We have a perfectly serviceable jail, Henri,” Aaron snapped, quickening his pace down the stairs to the dungeon. “I can only assume you were indulging your flair for the dramatic.”

“Never, Sire. She practices the black arts, she had to be detained in stone,” Henri panted, already out of breath.

“That’s a myth, Henri.”

“I must disagree, Sire. She hasn’t cast a single spell. The stone has kept her powerless.”

“Or her own restraint has kept her from turning you into a toad. I would not have been so kind if I had been locked away in such conditions.” Aaron couldn’t look at the man who scurried along beside him or he would truly lose his temper.

How
dare
Henri do this? It didn’t matter that he’d been a royal advisor since before Aaron was born. Henri knew how Aaron felt about these barbaric practices. It was this kind of behavior that gave Outer Kartolia a reputation as a wild, untamed land not fit for tourists.

He’d just spent eight weeks judging a ridiculous reality show in Kingdom City to help promote a more positive image for his country. Now, as soon as word of the fairy’s time in the dungeon hit the news, that effort would be wasted.

And it
would
make the news. Aaron wasn’t the king that his father had been. He didn’t believe in scaring his people into silence. If the fairy wanted to tell the world she had been treated terribly, he wouldn’t lift a finger to stop her.

But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it…

“Where is she?” Aaron asked the guard at the bottom of the stairs.

The man scrambled to his feet, wiping his grimy hands on his shirt as he moved. “At the end of the hall, Your Highness. Last cell to the right.” He picked up a large ring of keys. “I’ll take you back.”

“Really, Aaron, there’s no need for you to be down here,” Henri said in a winded voice. “I can have the girl brought up to the throne room. You haven’t even had time to change out of your riding clothes. Surely you must be tired. The journey from Kingdom City is a long one and—”

Aaron cursed as he stopped in front of the thick black bars, bile rising in his throat as he took in the state of the cell. “Who has been tending this prisoner?”

He hadn’t thought the dungeon would be a comfortable place after so many years of disuse—it hadn’t been designed for comfort and neglect had made it even worse—but he hadn’t expected this. Rats scurried into the walls, fleeing the light of the guard’s lamp, and an overflowing waste bucket sat in the corner of the room. Clearly no one had bothered to empty it in the weeks the prisoner had been confined. The smell was horrible, but that wasn’t what turned his stomach.

It was the sight of
her
that did it. She lay on the stones, without so much as a blanket, either unconscious or dead, he couldn’t be sure. What had obviously once been lovely, long blonde hair was matted with dirt and tangled around her face, her nightdress was torn and filthy and she possessed nothing but scraps of fabric tied around her feet to serve as shoes.

“I asked
who
has been tending this prisoner!” Aaron shouted.

Henri jumped at his side, beginning to babble. “Sire, I had no idea the creature was housed so pitifully. This was none of my—”

“Creature? You call this girl a
creature
and expect me to believe you meant for her to be treated well?” Aaron turned on the shorter, aging man, for once not caring that Henri had helped direct the course of the nation when he had still been in diapers.

“She’s not a girl, Sire. She’s Fae, and the fairy responsible for your brother’s loss.”

“Johann is responsible for his own loss for being fool enough to venture into an enchanted castle. Just as
you
are responsible for torturing this woman.”

Henri’s rheumy eyes grew wide as he realized the depth of his mistake. “I gave orders for her to be secured, Sire. Not treated like an animal. I swear it.”

“You were in charge of this country in my absence and you failed me, Henri,” Aaron said quietly, his rage cooling into a cold knot of certainty inside his chest. “Your services are no longer needed. You are relieved of your duties.”

“But, Sire!”

“You have a week to vacate your chambers.”

“Surely you’re joking, Prince Aaron,” Henri said, anger creeping into his tone.

“I am not joking and I am no longer a prince.” Aaron’s hand came to rest on his sword. “I am king, a fact you would have done well to remember when you were making decisions as if the crown rested on your own head.”

“You won’t last a year without my counsel,” Henri sputtered, his jowls trembling. “You are not the king your father was.”

“No, I am not,” Aaron said in a soft, dangerous voice. “Be thankful for that, Henri, or I would indulge the urge to slit your throat.”

“Well, I-I never!” Henri turned with a huff and hurried away down the dark hall. The guard attempted to follow, but Aaron stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Open the door to the cell.”

“Of course, Sire.” The man fumbled with the keys, the trembling of his hands betraying his fear.

Good, let the man fear him and let him share that fear with the rest of the castle guard. Indulgence had won him few allies among the militia. It was time to see what friends terror might win for him.

As Aaron entered the cell, cool air puffed gently against his face, a sweet breeze that carried none of the stink of the waste bucket. It distracted him as he knelt beside the woman, making him unprepared for the face he revealed as he brushed her hair from her face

Dear God, she was stunning. Perfect. Heartbreaking. Looking at her, he could scarcely remember how to breathe. It wasn’t simply that she was beautiful—though she was, her delicate features achingly lovely even smeared with dirt—but that she was so…familiar.

He felt as if he knew her, had always known her, as if the woman of his dreams had suddenly been made flesh and blood.

But that was ridiculous, of course. He didn’t have a “dream woman.” Johann was the one who fantasized about a beautiful young woman locked away in a tower, asleep until he braved great hardship to rescue her. Aaron preferred more down to earth women, ones that he could dismiss from his bed in the morning with a kiss and a fistful of coins.

Still, just a few days ago, he had asked one of the contestants of the reality show to come home with him and consider life as his queen. He hadn’t thought she would accept the proposal, but he’d wanted to get to know the fiery redhead more intimately. He’d been intrigued by her in a way he wasn’t by most women.

But intrigued didn’t begin to describe how he was affected by the woman he gently lifted in his arms. He felt possessed, driven to protect her, care for her, liberate her from something that had tormented her for much longer than a few weeks. He was smitten, and as swept away in a hero fantasy as his younger brother had ever been.

It was time to consider that he might be losing his perspective where women were concerned, but contemplation would have to wait until he’d righted a few wrongs.

“Fetch the waste bucket,” Aaron snapped at the guard as he emerged from the cell, his attention fixed on the woman’s face and the small flutter of her eyelids. She was definitely breathing and wasn’t too desperately thin. Hopefully there was nothing wrong with her that a bath, food, and care couldn’t mend.

Aaron waited until he heard the guard grunt as he bent over to pick up the bucket and then kicked the cell door shut.

“I trust a few days in there will teach you to take better care of those in your charge.” Aaron shot the guard a cold look before turning to leave, not surprised to hear whimpering coming from behind him.

The biggest bullies were always the first to break. But the sound made him wonder how long the beauty in his arms had wept before she succumbed to such a hard sleep that her eyes remained closed as he carried her out of the dungeon, up into the light.

It was a question that had no satisfactory answer.

CHAPTER THREE

Calliope

Calliope drifted in and out of a beautiful dream, her mind so far gone that every imagined wonder seemed heartbreakingly real.

She could feel the soft hands of the women who bathed her, taste the soup they spooned between her lips, and caught glimpses of kind female faces in the moments when a soft breeze touched her face, making her lift heavy eyelids, only to close them once more as she was lured back to sleep by the blissful softness beneath her.

She’d never felt a bed so soft in all her life. It was hard to believe even
her
vivid imagination could create something so lovely.

Once or twice, in the hours or days in which she drifted, she awoke screaming, battling the voices in her mind, but there was always some imaginary friend there to soothe her. And eventually there was a woman with crushed herbs to place beneath her tongue. Calliope opened her mouth to accept the paste, which smelled similar to the mixture she used at home.

But as she settled back onto the riot of imaginary pillows, she caught the dark eyes of the man who stood behind the healer and shivered.

It was the king, looking at her as if he cared for nothing more than her well-being and safety.

Calliope squeezed her eyes shut again, willing herself to sink into a sleep too deep for dreams. Her fantasies had been easier to believe before royalty made an appearance. Now there was no doubt that every comfort she felt was a lie created by her mind to ease her terror.

Even as I go to sleep on these soft sheets
,
in the real world rats could be nibbling my toes
.

With that warm and fuzzy thought, Calliope fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Aaron

Aaron didn’t know what possessed him to do it.

Maybe it was simply frustration with waiting for her to wake up and stay awake. In three days, her eyes hadn’t remained open for more than a few minutes at a time.