Claiming Crystal by Kayleen Knight

would make the men suspicious of her true intentions, Crystal had a good excuse readymade to assuage their worries. ‘I have overheard that the criminal who stole into my ceremony is locked away there,’ she admitted. ‘I wish to see him and renounce his advances. I also wish to see what happens to fools who act in ways they are not supposed to act.’
    One of her maid mothers would not have bought the story, but the guards were all too easy to sweet talk. ‘I'm glad you have finally come to your senses,’ one of them said, as though he was personally exasperated by her rebellious spirit.
    She knew her father and family would hear of this, but she did not care. Two guards formed a protective line in front and her and then led her out of the corridors of her prison and into a more literal sort of prison, walking downstairs into the shadows of the stockades, where noble people of the kingdom took routine adventures to stare at all the horrible people who had surely committed exactly the crimes they were accused of, and imprisoned without trial.
    ‘You will see that the sorry man you thought to choose is no different from the other beggars,’ one of the guards noted mildly.
    ‘ And I wish only to see that,’ Crystal replied coolly, having regained the icy disposition of her place as the crown jewel of the kingdom. She did not tell the man that she intended to see what she could do about setting the rogue free.

III
    ‘Are you alright, my lady?’ the guardsman asked.
    ‘ I'm quite fine.’
    ‘ Are you sure?’ he pressed.
    Crystal needed only to look at the man to silence him from further meddling.
    The soft silk of her bedroom gown looked out of place as the surrounding keep became danker, darker and less hospitable, with stacks of stone and brick; the yellow dyes which blended her cloth with brightness and wealth contrasting sickly when the windowed sunlight vanished to favor the flickering illumination of torches. She felt her mouth dry up and her nerves pluck like the string instruments the famed musicians played when they came to serenade her family (hoping that their talents would fetch them some favor in the years to come). She caught herself blinking more than usual, as if her eyes were in danger of receding from the sights back into their shells, to hide away from the grim realities underground.
    When another guard asked if anything was the matter she was startled, but quickly recovered by excusing her behavior as the sickness of the meal she had used as an excuse to avoid the old suitor who still roamed the hallways outside her bedroom like a horny haunt. Crystal understood how to maintain the continuity of her lies with the same deftness her mother showed for the very same thing. Politicking, it seemed, was a family habit, and Crystal was almost disappointed with herself to find that the trait had lived on in her without remorse.
    But she did not feel bad for lying to these men. She noted one of them glancing down the blouse of her gown, and wondered if she could remember the bland set of his face enough to report him to one of her servants the next time her quarters were cleaned. One of the few powers Crystal had as an object was the power of offense. Because these people surrounding her were expendable in ways that she was not, it was not uncommon for Crystal to feign offense against any particular person for a variety of different reasons and take some small and wicked delight in watching them carried off to be banished, imprisoned, or sometimes even beaten. If she had her mother's penchant for lies, it seemed that she also had some of her father's perversion beating in her heart and blood.
    ‘ What is your name, guardsman?’ Crystal asked of the offending man.
    He did not seem to put two and two together himself, and hitched his pants in the anticipation of receiving some special regard for the kindness he believed he had showed her when gracing her bosom with his eyes and her mood with his prying