Page 55 of The Broken Elf King
Thick trees for as far as the eye could see. No homes, no villages, just a mountain miles away.
“I’m a prisoner,” I breathed.
“You’re safe,” Magda said.
I spun on her, eyes wide. “I’m in the middle of nowhere! I’m trapped. How could he do this to me?”
Her lips pursed and she motioned that I go inside. “We will do a lot to keep those we love safe.”
Love?This wasn’tlove. He wasn’t even here to tell me himself.
Holy Hades. The king dumped me and then made me his prisoner. Never in my wildest nightmares did I think he was capable of this.
* * *
Five days.Five days living in the woods with Magda was all it took for me to go insane. I was grieving the loss of a relationship I’d barely had, and a man I loved who’d clearly never loved me back. I felt trapped in the woods with no one to talk to but Magda. She wasn’t so bad, she was pleasant.Too pleasant. She just smiled and said nice things all the time. There was no fire in her.
Me: “I hate it here!”
Her: “I’m sorry, dear.”
Me: “I want to speak to the king.”
Her: “You can’t, dear.”
Me: “I’m leaving this place, screw Raife!”
Her: “You don’t know where we are, you’ll die in the woods. Just lie down and I’ll braid your hair and then make us some blueberry muffins.”
She was a pleasant captor but a captor nonetheless.
Today my new reality started to set in. The king was going to tell the realm I died, which meant my aunt was still stuck in Nightfall with her medications running low. Raife had thrown me to the dogs and hidden me away like a problem. Well, screw that. I wasn’t going to live out in this cottage for the rest of my life.
“Magda, I was wondering if my slave master sent any hair dye with our last shipment for me?” I asked her.
She didn’t like me calling Raife my slave master, but that’s what he was at this point.
Twice a week, a trusted Bow Man brought in fresh fruits and vegetables on horseback. Yesterday it was Cahal. He didn’t meet my gaze as he handed Magda the food. When I asked him to take me back to the castle with him so I could speak to Raife, he simply spurred the horse and rode off.
Bastards. All of them.
Magda sighed. “What do you need hair dye for, my dear?”
Because I want to run away and not get recognized. Having all white hair with one brown chunk as a rumor of a blessed swirled around wasn’t ideal.
“I don’t like this look. I want to look like myself,” I told her, grabbing the ends of my white hair.
She pursed her lips. “Would it make you happy?”
When I got close to her I could feel her desire for me to be genuinely happy. She pitied me and how the king left me here after I’d saved his life. She took her charge as my healer very seriously.
“It would,” I informed her. It was half true. I didn’t care what my hair looked like but being one step closer to breaking out of here would make me happy.
“Alright, I’ll be right back, then.” She moved to grab a basket and a knife from the kitchen and I frowned.
“Where are you going?”
“The king didn’t send hair dye, but muska root is a deep reddish brown that’s as close to your old color as we are going to get out here. I can boil it and make the dye myself. My mother taught me how so we could hide her grays.” She winked.
