Hidden Game, Book 1 of the Ancient Court Trilogy Read online

  Receive. Opportunity. He spoke of it like it was some kind of privilege instead of the perverted thing it was. It wasn’t a gift. It was a tragedy. They’d be forcibly impregnated and forced to carry and deliver babies without knowing what was happening to them, without even knowing who the father was.

  I knew one thing for sure—it wasn’t going to be me. If they wanted a sire for their slave race, they’d have to look elsewhere because this guy wasn’t going to play any part in their sick game.

  And I’d argued with Macy when she said she had a bad feeling about the fan pods and Dr. Schmitt. Now I felt like a sucker. Or actually, come to think of it, I’d voluntarily remained ignorant of what was really going on inside the Ancient Court, retreating within myself and filling my time with mindless distractions to soothe my own disappointment over the way my life had worked out. There were much more important things at stake. Like Macy’s life.

  Thinking of her there in the fan pod quarters, powerless, vulnerable, I was overtaken by an urgency I’d never experienced before. I had to get her out of here, not tomorrow, not later, now.

  I stood, forcing my face into a calm façade. I was good at it by now. “Very well, Papà. Whatever you need me to do. When am I to see the doctor?”

  “As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, I would suspect. He was disappointed not to find you here yesterday. He said several of the girls are at the perfect time in their cycles for the procedure.”

  “Very well. I’ll go and see him in the morning.” I started toward the door, fighting back an upsurge of bile that threatened to expose my true feelings about Papà’s wonderful plan.

  “Nicolo—what about what you wanted to tell me?” he asked, his voice demonstrating his confusion. “What was so important it’s causing me to miss my fireworks?”

  I turned to face him again, casting about for something to explain my insistence earlier. “I saw Romigi. He is dying. He doesn’t have much longer to live.”

  Father’s face showed no concern, no sadness for the man who’d tended his vineyards—and his young son—for so many years. Only a trace of annoyance creased his brow. “Oh. That’s inconvenient. I’ll assign someone to hire a new vine master. I don’t want to lose any production time or income from the winery. Thank you for the information.”

  I nodded and turned to go. “Enjoy what’s left of the fireworks. I’m going to my room. I’m tired.”

  Rounding the corner, I broke into a run—not toward my room—but to Macy’s.

  18

  Macy

  Two hours earlier

  I stepped into the common room of the fan pod quarters, working hard to wipe the sappy lovesick smile from my lips. Who would have thought when I’d left here two days ago that I’d return completely in love with my “captor?”

  Now to find Olly and give her the good news that Nic would help us both escape. I’d have to warn her not to react openly and take the chance of revealing our escape plans too soon. It wouldn’t do to clue Dominique in and have her running to Nic’s father with her suspicions. He was probably suspicious enough already that his son had taken off with a fan pod girl, when according to Nic, he’d never even messed around with one before.

  Surveying the room, I did not see her. A cold fear crept across my heart as I walked from room to room, scanning for the top of her little blonde head. Where could she be? The girls weren’t typically allowed to go back to their rooms during the day. Now I knew that was so they could be guarded and kept from escaping or wandering the household and learning more than they were supposed to know about their “hosts.”

  Was she sick? Had she somehow managed to escape on her own? I spoke to a couple of the other girls, hoping to get some information. They smiled at me wanly but didn’t act surprised to see me again or particularly curious about where I’d been for the past couple of days. And no one knew where Olly was.

  “Macy.” The shrill voice sent jagged chills down my back, like fingernails scraping a chalkboard.

  I turned to see Dominique stalking across the room toward me. “There you are. Come with me.”

  She reached me and grabbed my upper arm, sinking her strong fingers into flesh that had just begun to heal from the bruises she’d inflicted earlier in the same spot. I winced but forced myself not to fight back. I was supposed to be swayed. Revealing my apparent immunity to the mind-numbing power might lead to questions, and at this point in the game, questions were bad.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see the doctor. You are the only girl who has not yet been examined.”

  Fear spiked in my gut, making my feet stop involuntarily. Bad. Keep walking. I started moving again. “But I’ve been with Nicolo already—”

  “I know where you’ve been, girl,” she barked. “Now we must make sure you have not infected him with something.” It was a lie. I knew that now. Nicolo was not only perfectly healthy, but it was literally impossible for him to contract any sort of infection from a human.

  “It’s late. Isn’t it past office hours or something?” I asked, attempting to stall.

  Our footsteps echoed through the empty corridor as we marched toward the clinic. I cast a futile glance around, hoping beyond hope that maybe Nic would appear and intervene. I still wasn’t sure what happened behind the doors of Dr. Schmitt’s clinic, but I didn’t want any part of it.

  “Dr. Schmitt is very dedicated,” she answered with a sneer. “He keeps long hours.”

  As we passed the large floor-to-ceiling French doors that opened to the courtyard, I saw a large crowd gathered outside. Lanterns hung from the trees, and candles burned atop tables that had been set up around the fountain and across the lawn. It was a party.

  That must be where he is.

  Everything inside me wanted to make a break for it and throw myself out those doors, run and find Nic and hide behind him, letting him shield me from this woman with his body the way he’d done the night we first met. He would, too. I had no doubt of it. He loved me. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.

  Not if he knew about it, anyway.

  No miracle occurred. Nic did not appear. And when we reached the clinic’s heavy wooden door, it was not closed for business. Dominique turned the handle, and it swung open to reveal what appeared to be a rather ordinary waiting room.

  No one sat at the desk or in the few chairs lined up against one wall. And Dominique did not ring the small bell that stood at the edge of the desk. She marched me straight to another door that opened to a long hallway of more doors. Opening the first one we came to, she pulled me inside and ordered me to strip.

  “What? All my clothes?”

  “You may put this on.” She thrust a thin hospital johnny at me.

  That’s when I realized there was no getting out of this, whatever this was. It was happening.

  “What’s going to happen to me? What will the doctor do?”

  She blew out a beleaguered breath. “A simple exam. A blood draw. You want to see Nicolo again, do you not?”

  She had no idea how much. I nodded.

  “Well then take off your clothes. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

  She stepped out of the room and closed the door. And locked it.

  Oh God. What was going on in this place? What kind of doctor’s office had locks on the exam rooms? Nicolo had been so sure the doctor was here for our benefit, that he wouldn’t harm us. He was wrong. I knew it. If only he knew it. If only he’d come rushing through that door and get me the hell out of here before the good doctor crawled out of his foul dungeon laboratory or wherever he was lurking and showed up here.

  I jumped at the sound of the door unlocking. It opened, and Dr. Schmitt stepped through, smiling at me, a sight just as eerie as the first time I’d seen it.

  “Ah, the elusive Miss Moreno. We finally meet.”

  He stepped forward and adjusted the stethoscope that hung around his neck. “I see you have not yet had a chance to disrobe. My apologies. No worry, though.
I can work with what you have on.”

  I glanced down at myself. I still wore the short sleeved dress I’d been wearing earlier when Nic and I drove back here from Florence, when we’d stopped for a roadside picnic and kissed. Oh Nic. Where are you?

  Dr. Schmitt lifted one of my bare arms and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around it. In spite of his icy appearance, his hands were hot, like Nic’s. Was that an Elven thing? I’d forgotten to ask Nic about it earlier.

  “Oh, my dear. You are trembling. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Do you normally have anxiety about visiting the doctor?” he asked, studying my eyes now.

  Could he tell by looking at me I wasn’t swayed? I was nobody’s idea of an actress, but I tried my best, responding in monotone with a lie I hoped would convince him.

  “Yes. I’ve always been nervous around hospitals and medical facilities.”

  Then it occurred to me—what was his glamour? Could he tell whether someone was lying to him? If, like Nic, he could see into someone’s heart and know their deepest desires, he’d know what I wanted most in the world right now was to punch him in his smug, symmetrical face and run for my life. It must not have been either of those because he seemed to buy my story.

  “Well, this is a very normal routine visit. I can already tell you are a very healthy girl. Very healthy, indeed.” He gave me another of his chill-inducing grins. “You shouldn’t need any sort of major medical interventions. I’m just interested in determining your full potential.”

  Full potential? That was an odd thing to say. Did he somehow know about my past in gymnastics competition? Did the Elves have some sort of interest in making me compete again?

  Tying a rubber tube around my arm, the doctor tapped the inside of my elbow, searching for a vein. On the table beside him lay a syringe and several small glass tubes. None of them viable weapons. I knew it would be futile to attack him anyway. Nic had told me Elven people were much stronger than humans. And this guy, like all the Elven men I’d seen, was big.

  All I’d accomplish by fighting him was reveal my unswayed condition and perhaps ruin my chances of leaving here tomorrow with Nic. I would just have to endure it and trust in Nic to get me out of here before anything truly bad could happen. There were worse things than a blood draw.

  “This will smart just a bit,” the doctor said as he inserted the needle, then taped it into place and proceeded to fill three tiny tubes.

  “What are you testing for?” I asked.

  The doctor glanced up from his task of labeling my blood samples to regard me with curiosity. “You ask a lot of questions, my dear.” He chucked me under the chin to lift it so I was staring him in the eyes. “You won’t ask any more.”

  Okay, so that was it. Now he thought he’d swayed me. I’d just have to grit my teeth and get through the rest of the exam without asking anything else, without protesting. Surely we were about done? He’d listened to my heart and lungs, palpitated my belly, checked my back for scoliosis, questioned me about my typical diet and exercise regime.

  “Okay then,” he said, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. “Remove your underwear and slide back on the table.”

  Reaching down on either side of the table, he pulled a pair of retractable metal stirrups up and locked them into place.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Hmm… I did not check your hearing, but I think I need to. Remove your underwear. I’m going to do a pelvic exam. You’ve had one of those before, haven’t you?”

  “Um, yes.” My mom had taken me to her OB/GYN as a baseline visit my senior year.

  “Then you know the procedure. Quickly now. I haven’t got all night.”

  When I’d said there were worse things than a blood draw? Yeah. This was it.

  I hadn’t exactly enjoyed my first exam last year, and that had been with a nice lady doctor with a nurse in the room. As a rule these things weren’t exactly a day at Six Flags. But this—this was… what had I gotten myself into by coming here?

  Not having any real choice, I followed his instructions and tried to think of something else while he performed the exam, forcing my mind back to the delightful garden maze in Tuscany. It worked so well, I didn’t feel anything at all. And then it was over.

  “You can sit up now,” he said, turning away and scooting his rolling stool over to the trash can where he deposited his gloves.

  “You,” he said with a little smile when he spun the seat back around to face me. “Are in perfect health. An excellent candidate. I’m really looking forward to seeing your blood work.”

  What did one say to something like that? Thank you? Have fun? My mind wasn’t at its sharpest right now.

  “Um, okay,” I mumbled.

  I was still kind of in shock at what had happened—and that I’d allowed it. Numb. Disconnected. I felt like maybe I wasn’t actually in this room, but having a bad dream, or perhaps watching something I’d stumbled across on television that I wanted to turn away from but couldn’t seem to. But something about his words reached through the fog and tickled at my brain, ringing through my mind in a repeating cycle. An excellent candidate. An excellent candidate.

  An excellent candidate for what? My brain turned the question over with a sort of cold detachment. I couldn’t ask it out loud, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. What I wanted to do was stand up, walk straight out the front door of this castle, and never look back. At the moment, it didn’t seem particularly important that I’d never see Nic again if I did that. For the first time since I’d met him, thinking of Nic produced no feelings whatsoever.

  “Someone will escort you back to your quarters in a few minutes,” the doctor said, standing and walking to the door. “And I’ll be seeing you again very soon.”

  There. There was a feeling. Nausea. A swell of bile rushed up my throat. It wasn’t that the doctor’s tone was sexual. It was… gleeful. Predatory. As if he'd found the perfect little lab rat and couldn’t wait to get to work making it run through mazes and administering shocks when the poor rodent made a wrong turn. That’s what I felt like—a helpless mouse trapped by a gigantic human with size and power and weapons far beyond my own ability to even imagine such things.

  I numbly restored my clothing and sat on the exam table until the door opened again. It wasn’t Dominique who escorted me back to my room as I’d expected but one of the silent male guards who always seemed to be nearby. I had no idea whether they spoke English because they never said a word in any language, but I didn’t even try to make conversation with this one. I didn’t feel like talking. I just walked silently along, counting the steps back to the fan pod wing.

  Once inside my room, I closed the door behind me and let out a long breath. I’d made it through the exam. No mystery surgeries. No torture. Well, maybe some of the mental variety, but I was alive, and I’d stay that way as long as Nic got me out of here. I kept waiting for some kind of feeling to return. But there was nothing. No anticipation at seeing him again, no anxiety over whether we’d be caught trying to leave the castle together, no worry over the fact I still hadn’t seen Olly tonight.

  It was only when I’d undressed in preparation for a shower and saw my unclothed body in the bathroom mirror that it hit me—Olly.

  Dominique had said I was the last girl, the only one who hadn’t been seen by the doctor yet. That meant tiny, thirteen-year-old Olly with her straight, flat, childlike body, had already been through what I’d just endured.

  And that was when I lost it.

  The tears came not in trickles but in streams. And when the dam broke, so did the mental shield that shock had erected around me for the past half hour. I cried for Olly and the fear she must have felt at being alone in the exam room with Dr. Schmitt, forced to endure the humiliation and probably physical discomfort of an exam like that.

  I cried for me, too, because now I felt his touch—invading my body, disregarding my wishes, my privacy, my rights, my dignity.

  Still blubbering, I turned the shower faucet as hot
as it would go and stepped under the rushing water, scrubbing my body and face and hair again and again, using up the last of the body wash we’d been provided.

  Finally, when the water started running cold, I left the shower and wrapped myself in a thick terry robe. Then I climbed into my bed and pulled the covers around me, shivering all over. It probably would have been smart to get my pjs out of my drawer and put them on. I did have a warmer pair than the nightgown I’d taken on my trip with Nic. But I just couldn’t get out of that bed. In spite of the fact the room temperature couldn’t have been lower than seventy-two degrees and that I was covered in several layers of bedding, I was freezing.

  Suddenly, the door to my room swung open. I scrambled backward in the bed, my back pressed against the headboard and clutching my blankets up to my neck.

  It was Nic. He stepped into the room, his eyes going wide at the sight of me. “Macy?” His voice was soft.

  I didn’t move. Didn’t respond.

  He took another step inside and closed the door behind him. His face crumpled in concern. “Macy, are you okay?”

  And I burst into tears once more, utterly unable to control myself. Nic rushed to my bed, dropping onto it and pulling me into his lap. He held me tightly against him.

  “What happened, piccola? Can you tell me what happened? Did Dominique hurt you again? I will fire that bitch tonight. She is gone.”

  I shook my head, my face rubbing against his chest and wetting his shirt. But I was unable to get out more than a blubbery, “No. Not her. I have to leave, Nic. I have to leave tonight. I can’t stay here. Olly can’t stay here.” Increased crying stole any further words. I was on the verge of hysteria.