DAY 52-3: GO FISH

Her imminently haughty composure does little to affect him. Mainly because Rhett doesn’t accept her superiority at all.

Balling his fists and exposing his assortment of criss-cross stitches and rings, he parts his lips, letting out a cry on a calibre she’s never before heard, “Guards!”

His shout is comparable to a screech—as irksome as fingers being drawn along a chalkboard. But when nothing but silence encompasses the room, he looks more and more on the verge of exploding. Either from immense embarrassment for things not escalating into a typical movie-scene where a swarm of men haul her off to who knows where, or frustration.

“Are you perhaps calling for those men in armour?” Smirking, Leda tsk-tsks under her breath. “Even I could tell they were occupied running around. There a search party going on or something?”

She expects the strange man with the bird nose to attack her like a feral beast. Even stomping up to her and dragging her off by the hair like some contemptuous kidnapper. Which is why when the man ultimately drops his hands to his sides, shoulders slumping as if from defeat, Leda watches in undeniable confusion.

Rhett’s bright green eyes fix themselves onto her, callous features and silk garments fortifying his upper status. Chin high, he releases an exhausted breath. “Your species is truly...”

Leda flutters her eyelids, the dots in her mind remaining unconnected. If he truly isn’t going to attack her, then can she have hope that he isn’t as evil as she predicted? Well, she was honestly waiting for him to charge at her so she could strike him down with the gun—granted she got the aiming part right—so this kind of anticlimactic reunion only works to instil a sense of unease through her.

As the man bends over to collect the books sprawled across the glimmering floorboards, he pays her no mind. Instead, he strolls toward the massive bookshelves, casually placing them into their required positions.

His untimely poise succeeds in rubbing her the wrong way.

Is he underestimating her as a threat or does he honestly not care about her existence as a whole?

Before she has the chance to ask, the large doors to the top floor of this tower swing inward.

In enters Nia who performs a mannerly curtsey, head cast low. “Master Rhett, I’ve spoken with the guards and they still haven’t been able to locate Sir Orian.”

All means of calmness Rhett is emitting vanishes. He swerves her way, large red coat blowing after him.

“That idiotic wolf!” The scrunching of his features only works to diminish his handsome looks. “Hiding upon learning my plans...!”

“I apologize,” Nia mumbles. “If I had listened and chained him down in the cellars like you advised.”

“Chaining him down would have amounted to nothing,” he responds, perfectly arched eyebrow twitching. “He’s smart enough to find a way out. Next time, we need to chop off one of his legs to keep him from running entirely.”

“How morbid,” Leda speaks up between bites of the meat. “Even if he is a wolf, amputating his limb is a little harsh.”

As if recalling her presence, Rhett rounds and glares at her in utter disgust.

Nia raises her head as well, but unlike Rhett’s hostility, she’s hit with a wave of shock. She gawps as if she’s seen a ghost. ”You— I left you back in the cage!”

Ever so nonchalant, Leda lowers her legs and recrosses it over the other. “Nia,” she drawls, reclining further into the comfortable chair, “I tried speaking to this Master Rhett guy but he still hasn’t answered any of my questions. This is seriously annoying. Can one of you elaborate and extinguish my curiosity already?”

Nia’s mouth flaps wordlessly, keen on understanding how Leda could have stole the keys and found her way here. Amidst her full-on panic attack, Rhett shoves the last of his books into the shelf.

“Nia, summon the guards.”

She hears him, but that doesn’t erase her wide-eyes. “Wh-what about Sir Orian—”

“I’ll drag that wolf to the pits of the Rehte by the ears when I get a hold of him.”

The cocking of a gun leaves a hollow quiet in the air.

Rhett pauses before shifting his gaze to the gun Leda extends toward him. “What are you implying?”

“Russian roulette. Life or death.” Licking her fingers clean of the meat she’s eaten, she rises to her bare feet. She neither loosens her grip of the gun nor misdirects the barrel. “It’s the gamble you used against me. I’d be correct in assuming this gun also contains more than one bullet, right?”

“What do you want?”

“Answers, if possible,” she says. “I’m a fragile nineteen-year-old girl who’s living a fantasy I thought only my imagination could conjure. I ain’t complaining, but stuffing me inside a cage, butt-naked, and without any revelations is a little rude, don’t you think?”

“Master,” Nia says.

Rhett stops her with the wave of his hand. His beady eyes are cold and impassive—identical to a bird’s. “You aren’t bright are you?” he finally says. “You’re going to shoot me?”

“Nia works, too.” Leda pushes to her tip-toes and taps the metal against his temple. “Your decision, Toucan Nose.”

“It is Rhett.”

“Hmm?”

“My name is Rhett.”

As if to catch her off guard, he seizes her wrist. He sweeps her off her feet, and she teeters. Before she can fall to the floor, his arm snakes around her waist, keeping her propped. Leda finds herself once again staring into his entrancing eyes and tracing the contours of his striking face.

“You said you desire answers, correct? The reason you are here now—and the only answer you will require henceforth—is that as of today, I am your master.”

“My... master,” she echoes, eyebrows creasing together. “Are you okay, Toucan Nose?”

His mood takes a foul twist. “It is Rhett."

“Ain’t that what I said, Toucan Nose?” She smirks upon his heave of exasperation. Using that, she promptly clamps his beak of a nose between her finger and thumb and yanks at it. “Now take off this stupid prop and tell me what’s really going on.”

Rhett emits an honest exclamation. He releases her and she fumbles as he goes to clasp it in pain. She stabilizes her balance, bug-eyed.

No way. But it can’t be real. Not that beak.

In that exact moment as her confusion twists like a ball of yarn, the gun in her hand is pried away. Her head jerks right, but it’s too late. She’s grabbed by the arms. Then, lifted off the ground by two giants in eerily identical armour and helmets shielding their faces.

The third—the one who’d swiped the gun from her—proceeds to hand it off to Rhett. And it’s at the doorway that Nia performs a polite bow. Somehow, she’d gone and summoned them.

Leda wrangles for freedom, but with her feet hardly touching the ground, her efforts prove feeble. Even kicking one of them in the shin sends surges of pain up her entire leg, leaving her hissing like an idiot.

She let her guard down. She’s been captured.

“We shouldn’t have given a creature like her the fairy meat until we established her submissive role in this tower,” Rhett mutters, nasally, as he sets the gun on his desk. He lifts the keychain and tosses it across the room. “Make sure she remains in her cage this time. Post some guards outside her door. I will address her after properly capturing that imbecile wolf.”

“I apologize, Master,” Nia says, catching the keys in time. She bows repeatedly. “This always happens with her kind because I keep messing up. I— I’m hopeless.”

Her kind...?

But with the wave of his hand, the guards haul Leda off, Nia hastily following. They drag her like a limp rag doll all the way down the cobblestone steps, back into the room she’d initially escaped.

She’s mercilessly tossed into the cage. Scrambling to her knees, she ganders up at Nia. “Any chance you can reconsider—”

The bars slam on her face.

She inwardly jolts. Lips primmed, she nods. “I didn’t think so either.”

Nia holds her gaze, a glassy layer of tears filling her eyelids as she fumbles with the lock. “I-I’m sorry. I do not wish to lock you in here either, but I require this job. So please do not escape again. Please.”

She tucks the keys back into the same place as before. The guards manoeuvre outside. As Nia grapples the floor to rise to her feet, Leda’s gaze is glued to her wide-open apron, begging for a peek inside.

She discreetly slips her hand through the wide enough bars, fishing.

Once she regains her footing, a finicky Nia snuffles her way outside in a hurry. She shuts the door, and this time, Leda hears another click, issuing she’s been locked in here for sure. There are guards lounging there as well, so there’s no hope for another escape.

Leaning back on her palm, Leda raises the assortment of keys to her eyes for the second time.

Well, stealing them again had somehow proven easier—more than she imagined possible. Nia seriously is too honest-to-goodness.

After unlocking the cage yet again, Leda ambles onto the cold floor and stretches. Instead of heading to the door and risk getting caught by the guards waiting for her there, she instead glazes over the petite room and obscure designs. She heads past the small bed toward the glassless window. Propping her elbows on the windowsill, she peers out at the view below.

There’s very little to make sense of. Plains stretch far beyond what the eye can see, hills high as the clouds. Along with bushes bearing odd fruits, large trees of a variety of colours hover over her in all directions with a strange boy dangling off one of the branches. Even the sun’s rays are beating down through the canopies, giving off a brighter shine than thought possible.

Leda blinks. Then, ever so slowly, she returns her gaze to the tree. Primarily, the individual hugging it for dear-life.

So there is a boy with a white mask covering every inch of his face suspended from the tree directly across from her.

Okay. Totally normal.

Silence ensues.

“Hi,” she eventually says.

But as if he’s spotted a ghost, he lets out a girlish scream loud enough to pierce her eardrums. He unhands the tree at once and tumbles through the myriad of branches to the ground.

Leda cranes her head, noting the boy’s sprawled limbs across the flowerbeds below. His mask has slipped off with the fall, giving her a full-view of his fiery red hair and twitching puppy-dog ears situated at the top of his head.

Her face washes completely blank.

...Where exactly in the world has she ended up?