What did you do? (Infatuated fae #2)

25. Present Day

25

PRESENT DAY

Caly

I watched the heavy rays of sun move through my cell and be replaced with the orange-red of Seelie dusk.

They would be coming soon, just like they had every night for the last several weeks. Goose bumps pricked up my arms at the thought. My dry, bloodshot eyes stared out into the sky, unable to blink. It felt like it had been forever since I’d started hearing the distant cries of the others day in and day out. Maybe today would be the day they actually came for me.

Sitting at the very peak of a beautiful mountain, high above the tallest tower, and nearly in line with the clouds, stood Malvar. The place I would breathe my last breath.

The opulence here was used to break your mind, to make you feel safe when you weren’t. My mind had broken a long time ago, accompanied by several other body parts.

The sun shifted again, and I knew it would only be a few more hours.

Malvar was not what you expected to find when you heard it was a prison for some of the most dangerous fae out there.

Gorgeous crystal chandeliers swayed slightly with the breeze that swept in from the open room. The cells were three sided. As soon as you entered a cell through the barred door of the hallway, you faced open sky. There was about twenty feet of polished marble flooring between the back wall and the edge of the room. It was completely open to the elements, and at various times of the day the sun beat down and cooked the room. At night the sun shifted to the other side of the mountain, leaving it bright but cold, but that wasn’t the worst thing that happened here.

I heard the tapping of boots on marble and tried to listen harder. It was the slower guards.

A beautiful feast of meats than I’d ever seen before, and refused to touch, would be brought in and set on the table next to a spread of fruits and cheeses. They did this every evening and left it until you couldn’t eat anymore.

When I had first arrived at Malvar, I thought there had been a mistake. How could this place be terrifying and bad? It was beautiful and almost cozy looking—if you didn’t look at the three walls of iron bars.

But like everything else in life, sometimes the most beautiful things are the most hideous.

The Seelie prison was set up in levels along the mountain. The worst and most dangerous of the inmates were placed in three-sided cells atop the mountain, where I was, while the rest were held in cells inside the bottom half of the mountain.

I didn’t understand why they put me up here. I didn’t feel dangerous anymore. I felt weak and stupid. How could I have let everything slip through my fingers when I was so close?

A breeze flowed through the open chamber, bringing with it the scent of rotting corpses.

“Hey, puddle,” whispered the familiar voice of my neighbor.

Just as every other time, I ignored him.

Since being here, the occupants of the neighboring cells had changed several times. With no real privacy, you could sit and watch the other person through the bars all day if you wanted to.

It irritated me when they tried to speak to me. It was a waste of breath to talk to anyone ever again.

I should have stayed in Unseelie. If I was going to Tartarus anyway, I would have preferred it to be at the hands of Mendax. I wished I’d stopped pretending and let the darkness consume me with him by my side. I should have trusted my gut and told him everything. He would have helped me—I knew he would have. I wished I could have told Eli the truth about everything also, let him know how much I loved him. I hoped Mendax had died knowing how much I truly did love him.

“Puddle, I have an idea.”

I had an idea too.

I rose from the floor where I sat, steadying myself against the bars at my back. The wind tickled hair across my face as I took a step toward the open edge of my cell. Another step and I could see what looked like a whole world below me. We were so high up.

“She moves!” came the high-pitched voice of my other neighbor.

Everything I had ever loved had hurt me in some way. Every time I was strong when I wanted to crumble, every time I fought when I wanted to cower… It was for nothing. I had been put here.

I had missed so many perfect opportunities to kill Saracen. I should have just taken one of them. I had planned on killing her at the ceremony, after she empowered me as an official Seelie and restored my heart. I was going to kill them all. I could have a million times over. Everyone but Eli. When I was thirteen, I swore I’d never hurt him. I loved him so much back then, it hurt. He was the only one who wouldn’t die. I should have done it without my heart—it’s not like I planned to be alive for long.

My tired eyes stared at the red-and-gold sky. Tears wouldn’t come anymore.

I missed Walter so much. Had he managed to escape the castle? He never even got to say goodbye to Mendax.

I took another step. Soft fur grazed against the sole of my foot; I numbly stepped over the large heap.

I was nothing.

Even science, the only thing that had kept me sane for years, now felt wrong. In fae realms, nothing acted with any predictability. Much like its inhabitants.

I had been holding on to the thought that Mendax was somehow still alive. I could only imagine how broken he must’ve been for them to have been capable of taking him down. He must have lost it seeing his mother’s dead body and knowing he hadn’t been there in time to stop it.

He’d been with me.

My throat tightened at the emptiness I felt from our bond.

I never should have fought myself about him—he was never my villain.

“Edin, I don’t like the way Puddle looks,” the male voice called to my other neighbor.

“Okay, ass,” the girl grumbled back.

I took another step, hearing the bones and tendons crunch and snap under my feet. Only another six inches or so left before the edge. The tangerine sun heated my skin as it moved, now nearly behind the mountain. Puffy white clouds passed just below the ledge, steadily moving as the gusts of wind propelled them. “Edin…”

“Even the animal power is too much for me. I will never make it to him, and I will never make it to her,” I whispered to myself. One more step and I would be done with all of this.

“Puddle, I have an idea for when they come tonight. Get away from the ledge—this will work. I saved broth from dinner. We will rub it on you. It will work—Edin!”

“You really that stupid?” the girl named Edin demanded. “You think you’ll die and plummet to your death if you step off that ledge? I don’t know what the hell you are, but you must not either. If they put you this high up on the mountain, you won’t die from the fall anyway and you’ll be back staring at the sky in a few hours.”

“I’m nothing,” I breathed.

“You know what’s so great about being nothing?” asked the man. “You can become whatever you want.”

I lifted my foot, fighting the suddenly strong wind.

Heavy footfalls rang through the hallway. They were here. I was too late.

“Edin!”

“It doesn’t matter anyway; they’re here,” she said with a shaky voice.

Giant white objects pelted into each of the cells. Blood-curdling screams ricocheted through the space.

My foot instinctively hit the ground as my head snapped to my right. The curvy, black-haired girl had been pinned to the ground by the creature.

Cries of pain made my head snap in the other direction, where a similar scene was unfolding. The brown-haired man who called me Puddle had been pinned by another of the giant birdlike creatures. Soul-tearing screams sounded from the rest of the cells around and below us.

My eyes flashed back to the sky, where the feathered monster flew straight at me.

I turned around and walked to the middle of my cell. The sound of screams and tearing flesh pressed into me from all directions. One thing I could never numb out was the unforgettable sound of flesh being ripped.

The monstrous birds mauled the people, each viciously fighting to rip out all of the prisoners’ internal organs, leaving pools of blood and bones in their wake. Soon, after having eaten their fill, the birds would fly off into the orange evening sky, their white feathers painted various shades from the blood of their victims.

The first hour of morning, the prisoners’ bodies would be fully restored, completely intact, left with nothing but the fresh memory of the carnage from the previous day. Then they would spend the rest of the day counting down the hours until another painful massacre that evening.

Angrily, I watched one of the large creatures land in my cell. They were mythical looking, like eagles with feathers as white as fresh snow and bodies the size of a train car.

The creature flared its taloned feet and skidded to a stop right in front of me.

I couldn’t take another one. Why hadn’t I just jumped? Even an hour away from this hell would have been worth it. Besides, it was possible that I didn’t have enough power to live through it. I still didn’t understand why the queen hadn’t destroyed the other half of my heart yet, and she most certainly hadn’t, or I would be dead.

Hot tears fell like rain down my face as I looked at the monster.

“Do it!” I shouted, feeling the spittle fly from my mouth.

Its sharp, yellow-and-black eyes softened as it looked me over. No longer raging and ready to shred me.

I lifted my tank top and uncovered my stomach. “Please!” I bellowed hoarsely.

The bird of prey lay down in front of me, bending its head and nudging my legs as I furiously shoved it, hoping to anger the feathered beast into attacking me.

My knees cracked as they hit the floor, and I tried with every fiber of my being to shove the animal away from me. The bird’s eyes flicked over me; the feathers of its head softened as it laid its body down, continuing to calmly nuzzle me.

Sadness poured from its concerned eyes as it turned their efforts toward tucking me under one of their expansive wings.

“Go, please! Please!” I howled.

Unable to see more than a white blob through my tears, my hands gripped its silky feathers.

The door of my cell opened. Breathless sobs shook my body. I reached as deep as I could and collected every bit of strength I had left to make the calm bird leave the cell.

Hollow bootsteps permeated my cell.

Commander Von.

My mind tried to black out, blurring and darkening at the edges, attempting anything to protect me from what it was about to see.

Orbs of light shot out from behind me with a whirring sound, hitting the creature just before it went limp in my arms.

The commander chuckled from inside the cell door.

“I suppose one way or another you suffer, traitorous bitch,” he chuckled as he closed the barred door with a loud clang. “You must’ve missed me a lot to have come all the way here to see me. Guess you didn’t mind my cock as much as you thought.”

I cried until morning, buried in the feathers of the slain animal, cursing everyone I could think of.

Every night, the creatures appeared from the sky, and then left after destroying their chosen inmates.

All but mine.

The beautiful creatures came every night, and every time, each and every one of them refused to hurt me. Eventually the commander or guards would enter, killing the animal and leaving its body in my cell. I would then spend the rest of the night and the following day using all of my strength to push its lifeless body over the ledge, only to repeat it all in a few hours.

Once they had discovered the giant, white birds wouldn’t touch me, they began sending in various other animals, and to my horror, not one would touch me.

So many animals had died for refusing to hurt me. The irony was, as it turned out, that was the worst punishment they could have crafted for me. Every part of me that could have possibly been broken had been.

It made no sense.

The creatures in Unseelie had had no problems hurting me. Why, now that I was locked in Malvar, had there been a change? Was it just the Seelie creatures?

I only had four months left to retrieve the other half of my heart before I would die anyway. Even if the queen didn’t destroy it, I was basically dead already.

“Puddle, are you doing okay over there? I thought of another idea…but I’m not sure if you’ll like this one,” my neighbor said in a low voice.

I didn’t bother to look at him; he had lasted longer than most of the prisoners in that cell, but it wouldn’t matter. Eventually, Malvar would weaken their magic, and their wounds would kill them—if they didn’t injure their head first. I learned that most of the more powerful fae, shifters, elves, and several others had to have a really severe head wound to die: something they couldn’t recover from, like a caved-in skull.

Most of the prisoners of Malvar would ram their heads into the ground or put a chair leg through their eye sockets.

I looked at several lionlike creatures lying dead and rotting a few feet from the corner I now sat in. They had been the hardest to stomach yet. Commander had allowed me hours with them. Buried in their soft fur, I had almost felt whole again, like I could actually do something and get out of here. Like there had to be a way to get to my father.

“Puddle?”

I moved a few feet, barely registering my surroundings. I was no longer alive even if I wasn’t dead.

I curled myself into the fur of the bloodied creatures, ignoring the stench of decomposition, and closed my eyes. I would lay here in the bodies of those who had died for me and silently try to coax Aether, the god of the Elysian Fields, to take me, even though I wasn’t Seelie.

Hot, almost scorching hands pulled at my forearm as another slid under my legs, lifting me up.

“Come on, Puddle. I’ll help you move them,” whispered the stranger.

I didn’t fight. I didn’t do anything. I just lay there.

“Edin—”

“I’m already here,” snapped the familiar female voice.

“Oh, shit,” replied the man, setting me back down on the floor in my corner.

“Why are we doing this?” asked the woman.

“Because I think she’s the one they are talking about. Look at her, she doesn’t even know what she is capable of. Come on, we were just like her once,” he said.

“Fuck. Fine, but only because I’m tired of smelling rotting animals.”

The bronze-skinned man bent slowly and put his oddly warm hand on my forearm again.

“Anything you want to do or say to them before they are gone? I don’t know what your kind does for burials,” he said softly.

For the first time ever, I really looked at the two strangers.

The woman stood impatiently with hands on her hips while she looked down at the animals. Her short, white hair—a striking contrast to her dark skin—was buzzed on the bottom, while the rest coiled in tight curls that stopped at her chin on one side. My curious eyes took in her curvy body before landing on her rounded ears.

“You’re human,” I whispered.

She snorted, revealing one of the brightest, most charismatic smiles I had ever seen.

“Once,” the man laughed. Standing back up to his full height and brushing his long, pin-straight, black hair over his shoulder.

“You’re human too,” I murmured, seeing his ears.

“About as human as a blowtorch,” said Edin with a laugh.

The man nodded at the woman, and they began to push the dead animals to the open edge.

“They didn’t deserve this,” I sobbed.

“Here’s a pro tip: the ones that deserve this are the ones that run this shit,” Edin grumbled, struggling to push the giant lion.

“The animals deserve more than just being dumped off the mountain,” I cried, imagining the sounds of their bodies hitting the rocks. “I don’t know what else I can do. It’s not like I can build a pyre in here,” I said with strangled sobs.

The two strangers abruptly stood to look at one another.

“Absolutely not,” Edin stated.

“It will take four minutes, and no one will know,” said the man gently.

“Sid, no. Ugh, can’t you follow orders for once? I knew I should have picked Roach for this,” she growled.

“Come on,” he pleaded.

After reluctantly agreeing to whatever the man was asking for, Edin walked over to the corner beside me.

“Okay, Puddle, why don’t you say a few words for the animals?” he instructed with a nod. The man stood over the largest animal, wearing only his torn and bloodied trousers.

Wait.

“How did you guys get in here?” I asked, suddenly feeling more alert.

“It wasn’t rocket science. We climbed around the bars,” Edin said as she played with one of the many earrings that coiled up her ears.

“Why would you risk—” I began.

“Okay, Puddle, words now, if you have any,” he commanded gently.

Not knowing what I planned to do but too tired to fight my own mind, I walked over to the lion and closed its beautiful eyes, planting a kiss on their head. I said the only prayer I knew. Something my mother had sang whenever one of our pets died or we crossed paths with a dead animal in the road.

As I sang the weird words under my breath for the first time in twenty years, I realized they made no sense, and I didn’t even know what they meant. Something about the words that flowed from my mouth felt right though, so I continued to say it to each slain animal. “Okay.” I nodded, beginning to push the large animal.

“Step back,” Edin said gently as she guided me to the back of the cell.

“I’m Sid by the way.” The stranger smiled kindly as sympathy poured out of his narrow-set brown eyes. He held out his palm and a bright, round flame rolled across it.

My mouth opened as I watched the athletic-looking man from my neighboring cell conjure flames. He kneeled before the animals and bowed his head, holding his arms out wide. Blue- tinged fire shot out from his body, covering every part of the ground in front of him.

Sweat beaded and rolled from my temple as the intense heat blew against my face and arms.

Edin put her arm out, pushing me as far back against the cell bars as the two of us could go.

The flames continued to grow, the blue tips licking the ceiling above.

“Sid, that’s enough,” Edin said cautiously.

The figure covered in flames didn’t move as the riot of fire began to spread closer and closer to us.

“Sidney!” Edin shouted, stepping in front of me.

The fire continued to rage, the tall flames pushing through the cell’s bars and crawling into the cavernous hallway, leaving only a small circle around us free from the blaze.

My old way of thinking tried to enter my mind, telling me I could close off the air supply to the flames or lessen the conflagration, but I pushed it out and away.

That me was dead in every way, and hopefully I would be too by the end of this.

“You motherfucker.” Edin grit her teeth as she moved toward the fire and Sid.

I didn’t care enough about either of them to do anything.

Edin wiped the back of her hands on the sides of her dirty beige shirt and stretched out her arms, opening her palms one in front of the other next to her mouth as if she were about to blow a kiss to Sid.

White speckles flew from her palms and over the flames in icy gusts.

My skin chilled instantly, sending a shiver through my body from my sweat that froze.

She moved, now directing the swirling snow not onto the fire that crept around us but instead at Sid.

Feeling the blast, Sid whipped around with wide eyes. The flames halted immediately, leaving only a few to dance across his hands and arms. He brushed the last few from his shoulders, shooting a sheepish look in Edin’s direction.

Only a handful of small flames remained on the floor, flickering across the piles of ash where the large creatures had lain only moments before.

Stepping aside with an exaggerated bow, Sid cleared the way. Edin’s chest rose before sending out a huge icy breath of wind and sleet across the cell, causing all of our hair to whip back while it took the piles of ash and flames off the ledge, into the crisp mountain air.

The pair smiled at one another, then they both turned to look at me. Their faces seemed full of life with a glow that wasn’t there before. Sid had a hint of pink deepening his warm skin, while Edin’s dark cheeks were now dusted with a frosty blush.

“So you’re definitely not human,” I said in awe. “What are you?”

Sid looked at Edin with a boyish smirk, turning his large brown eyes to me. “Lightmires,” he said just before he dropped his smile completely.

Lightmires… Why was that word so familiar? I couldn’t seem to place it.

“You’ve probably heard us referred to as the Fallen fae.”