7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
T he night was cold. I had slept in cabins in the Michigan woods with drafts in the dead of winter and had spent one particularly chilly spring on the streets of Detroit in a tent. I knew cold intimately. She and I were old bedmates.
But this was the type of iciness that sank into the very marrow of your soul and leeched away any hope, desire, or joy. I felt it pouring out of me into the dead air all night. It was a night damp with unshed tears and regrets. I had no more to give to the dungeon-like warrens I would call home. All I had to give its ravenous need for sacrifice was the twitching of my flesh and jerking of my exhausted muscles.
The tiny flame of the candle I had been afforded warred with the gloomy ice, but it was a losing battle. The damp and cold was too mighty of a foe, and it, too, finally succumbed to the bone-rotting frigidity sometime in the night. With its dying gust of smoke, I also fell to my battle with exhaustion and chill. I felt every cell in me, heavy and hanging, from my new body as sleep claimed me.
It wasn’t a restorative rest. I’d slept better on dirty concrete than I had on that cot. It was the sleep only someone familiar with emptiness could truly understand. It was the body surrendering and dismissing the ghost of a fight for survival. A sleep that never fully guaranteed the dreamer would wake in the morning.
When I woke, though, it was to the scent of cloves, cardamom, rosemary, cedar, campfire smoke, and the scent of clean, masculine skin with warmth radiating from my body and returning to me. I shot up, fear lancing through me, ready to claw the eyes from whomever owned the small quilt that covered me.
There was no one, though. Just the dozing black cat curled up at the entrance to my small cell. The smoke of the candle lingered in the still air as if it had just been snuffed. I could have sworn I had watched the flame die at my back, its light waning smaller and smaller on the wall before me, until it finally welcomed the void.
I glared down at it, the cooling wax winking back at me with a brassy star bead.
“You know, for a guard cat, you’re doing a pretty shit job,” I whispered to the cat as I plucked the bead from the candle and turned it over.
It was a simple thing. Just a fingernail-sized brass bead with a hole down the center. Tiny bits of rope clung to small burs in the metal from where it once hung on a string of some sort.
“Not meant to be a guard to keep others out,” a small whisper replied.
I nearly jumped out of my skin, whipping my gaze to the still sleeping cat. “The fuck.”
“Not the kin’tha,” it said. I looked up to the top of the rudimentary wall of my cell where the leaf man’s face was barely visible over the edge. “The kin’tha is there to keep you in, not others out.”
“Whomever is paying me the compliment of assigning me my own personal jailer needs to work on their romancing skills.”
The leaf man snorted a laugh and disappeared from the edge of the wall and appeared again, stuffing a thread bare shirt into a pair of breeches. “Trust me, if you are ever so unlucky as to have The Raven romancing you, you’re better off embracing the kiss of a dagger than his.” Our gaze went to the giant cat, who was stretching from his long nap. We both frowned. “I’m Green Man.”
“The names are a bit on the nose, don’t you think? The Laundress probably does the washing. Violet has purple eyes. You . . . well, you look like a bush.” I tucked the blanket around me, savoring in the duality of the biting chilled air and the warmth against my skin .
“Why waste a perfectly good name on a daoire? Just one more way they remind us that we are nothing to them,” hissed the soft whisper of Violet, as if I had summoned her. She cast her gaze around our little trio, taking in each, as if catching the measure of them for the morning ahead. When her gaze settled on me, I felt the weight of an elder’s appraisal and wondered how I’d ever mistaken her for a simple little girl. “As for you, you’re being taken up today. You’re going to be taken before the Ard Rí, I would wager. I couldn’t get much from the guards. The fact they are tight lipped about what is intended for you isn’t good. Be alert. Be smart. Listen. And remember, the stakes here are higher than back in Human.”
“Right. Twenty-one.” I sighed and pushed up from my cot. “Do I at least get a bath before I have to go shit on a King?”
The corner of Violet’s rosebud lips twitched as if she were fighting a smirk. “Of course not. You’re to be presented as the filth you are.”
“Boring,” I quipped and stretched, cracking my spine.
I didn’t have long to wait, but while I did, I pored over what I had learned. The Laundress, a shit stirrer. Need to keep an eye on that one. Violet, old timer and the best informed of the lot. Keep both eyes on that one. Green Man, sweet—maybe a bit too sweet. The emerald-skinned one hadn’t told me what her name was, cautious. The rest of them milled about and went to and from the main hallway where the ramp up out of the warrens were.
When they came for me, I was expecting to be taken in the kin’tha, but all it did was follow me closely, a mere six inches from my back heel.
The guards who walked me out of the warrens were tall, near twins of each other, with a head full of dark red braids that reminded me of the atrocity I now shambled around in. I had almost forgotten for a few blissful moments that the body reflected in the mirrors we passed was mine. I longed for the simple sight of something familiar in those reflective panes and turned my head away when I could no longer stand the strange set of turquoise eyes flashing in them.
They didn’t acknowledge me beyond the occasional flick of an eye over their shoulder to ensure that I was, indeed, following. Follow, I did, doing my best to memorize each turn and twist as we navigated the seemingly unending labyrinth of corridors, passageways, and staircases. Rule #17: Always have an exit plan.
But the more I tried to focus on the mental map I was trying to build, the faster it fled from my mind. I clung to it desperately, tried to hold on to it. Left, left, right at the column of carved dark-brown-almost-black glass with the tiny gold stars. Or was it right at the painting of the snowbound castle? Shit! It was like trying to hold on to dandelions in a tornado.
The moment I saw other Fae, I pulled years of armor around me. Imagining them solidifying out of thin air to mimic the suits of metal of my guards, minus the rich kelly-green tabard sporting a sword pointed at their throats and a sprig of nightshade, meadowsweet, and foxglove bound over it. Mine was made of stars, twinkling in my mind’s eye, the cold vacuum of space lending me its icy chill. My back went rigid, and my chin tipped up enough that I could look down on the otherwise taller people who gawked at the pearly daoire swathed in a sheer bloodred nightgown.
I was surprised to see the two I’d spoken with at the Night Market in the ranks of Fae we passed as I was escorted into what I could only imagine was a throne room. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. I had always known the world was smaller than we liked to think, so what made me think this hidden society was any less tiny?
He was there, of course, wrapped in conversation with a woman with roses woven in her dark hair. He did not look my way, did not even acknowledge me, and that sat sideways in my throat. I wanted to spit in his face like I had Rictus. I wanted to scream at him he owed me all his attention for what he had done to me.
But what had he done to me? He hadn’t put me here, and he hadn’t forced me into slavery. All he had done was bought me and given me a blanket. He owed me nothing, and I owed him nothing, so I turned my iciness on him as well.
Let them all wither in the arctic.
I caught pieces of the conversation he was having with the beautiful rose-bedecked woman.
“And who, dear Raven mine, have you absconded to your bed this time? Which court will be before my brother next month when you tire of her and her lord comes to the King demanding your head?”
Her laughter was light and airy, familiar with him.
“A surprise, My Lady Oaken Rose. You have seen her. Though not as I have.” He leaned into her, a solicitous whisper loud enough for others to hear, his tone lecherous. “The sight of her splayed out across the bed would shame the stars in the night sky.”
I should have kept walking. I should have kept following my guard. Perhaps it was fate that I did the exact opposite and turned on my heel to face him fully. After all, the kin’tha was already turning before I was.
“Tattooing stars on your palm and calling it a ‘her’ doesn’t count.”
Shocked gasps of outrage echoed in the otherwise dead silent chamber. The woman he was speaking with turned slowly, rage crackling in her well-practiced, passive features. A slow smile crept across her face like a spider.
Heat banked in his eyes as they connected with mine and held them.
Had I not been busy staring at the shifting spires of a forest within his gaze, I might have seen the hand aimed for my face. I barely noticed until the crack of her palm against my cheek snapped me back to her.
“A daoire does not speak in the chamber of the Ard Rí unless ordered to do so.” She tossed a glance to the guards. “Be sure that she is beaten and then remove her tongue.”
“Now, now, My Lady, your brother and I might want to use that tongue this evening. Perhaps tomorrow, the guards can deliver it to you if we find it unpleasant. ”
His soft baritone split velvet like a razor as his gaze raked over me, hungry and molten, before he turned back to his whispered conversation with the woman.
Leather-clad fingers dug into my shoulders and forced me back toward the carpeted path I had been heading down.
You fucking idiot. I chastised myself. Survive, eh? That was not surviving. That was stupid.
I bit down on my tongue and began tracing a two and a one into my thigh as I neared the grand dais before me.
I had seen many movies and TV shows with thrones, but I was not prepared for the splendor of this one. It was otherworldly. A pair of intertwined trees, boughs heavy with leaves grew straight out of the stone wall behind it. At the center of its branches was a stained glass window, casting shifting rainbows of colors between the graceful arms. Below it, its trunk had grown into an ancient-looking seat polished by who knows how many asses. Flowers, ferns, and herbs grew along the tiled floor in a carpet of pure green shot through with a riot of color. And at its center stood an enormous man who towered over the others, a crown of golden foxgloves woven into his rich blonde hair. If I didn’t know this was the Ard Rí, a kidnapping slaver, and a bastard by any measure, I’d have called him stunning. But all I could think of was that old saying that even the devil is beautiful.
His head was tipped down in conversation with another man, whose black hair danced with the shimmering corona of stars at midnight. The tips of pale ivory ears adorned with a golden wire-worked cuff that bore two raw amethyst points broke apart the night sky his head was wreathed in. The contrast between his hair, inky garb, and pale skin that shone like the face of the moon was disarming.
Every one of the Fae who gathered in the grandeur of the throne room was, on their own, a glimmering jewel of otherworldly beauty. As a whole, in a single place, dressed in their best courtly glory, it was almost too much to bear to look at. Each one wore caps on their ear tips, some gold, some silver, some bejeweled ivory, some carved and polished wood, yet all wore the riches of their station plain to see. Nightmares, dreams, angels, demons, and everything in between glittered in the dappled light streaming in from the windows that towered above us, and I felt myself getting drunk on the beauty around me.
As if following the notes to some unheard tune, The Raven of the Dawn appeared before me, the wide plane of his back naked of armor this time. I was treated to watching the expanse of his muscles up close as his breath drew in and out, stretching the velvet of his tunic as he gave a deep bow at the waist toward the two chatting men.
“Great Ard Rí, Glory of the New Dew, I come before you as your humble servant to present a gift.”
The deference in his voice sounded odd. I barely knew this man, but I had listened to him say only a handful of words and already knew that the flavor of submission was one that sat on his tongue like rotten meat. His voice was meant for whispering the foulest of depravity and for singing the lullaby of death across the battlefield. It was not meant to be contorted into a statement of humbleness.
It didn’t seem to bother the Ard Rí, though, who turned away from the man with the midnight sky for hair. I didn’t expect the shrewdness in his bright cornflower-blue eyes. I didn’t expect him to take my measure in half a second and then land his gaze on The Raven not a breath between. I expected that at least more than a half glance would be spared for a nearly naked woman surrounded by guards and escorted by a massive black cat. When dancing among the constellations such as his court was, I guess a single pearl was nothing but a passing fancy.
Thunder rolled in his tumultuous gaze but for a single moment before the clouds were broken by a false smile that stretched easy and with well-worn practice across his features. “The Raven has returned from his flight! Rise, brother! Your King would acknowledge his oldest friend.”
The two chuckled, clasping each other in a hearty embrace. The court looked on, doting at the display of comradery.
Not me, though. I had seen this same scene play out in a simpler arena. I had seen the way two children who secretly hated each other with every molecule in their little bodies would embrace in front of parents who yearned for them to get along. Neither of them willing to be the one who soiled the fantasy of a utopia’s blended family, they would hug and smile fake smiles. I had been both the hugger and the hugged too many times to count, only once was a hug this laced with venom and animosity.
So, the Ard Rí and The Raven secretly hated each other. I could use that to my advantage some day. I tucked that little bit of information into my imaginary file cabinet and watched quietly as the two split apart.
“What have you brought me, Raven?” The two turned to me, and lecherousness seeped into the sky of the King’s eyes. “You always bring me the most beautiful gifts.”
“Fresh, too, Majesty. Rictus had just brought her off his ship—he hadn’t even had a chance to pull her from her kennel before I snatched her from his greedy little hands.”
Our eyes locked again, my lower lid fighting the urge to narrow in a glare as the Ard Rí walked around me, inspecting me like a Christmas ham.
“Rictus? This is Rictus’s work?” The King paused behind me, and I felt the heat of his body too close to my own as his hand weighed the heft of my new breasts.
It was easy not to react since they were not truly my breasts. It was easy to dislodge myself from ownership of the flesh that had been molded into what I was housed in.
“It is, Majesty.”
The slightest hint of anger flitted into those three words. There one second and then gone the next.
A guffaw of amazement and wonder gusted out of the King as his hands wandered the slightly rounded plane of my stomach. “I don’t believe it. He crafts beasts of burden, but this? This is a masterpiece. Have you tasted her yet, Captain?” His fingers were too close to a part of I hadn’t been able to truly divorce myself from. I felt the callouses along the bridge of his palm pressing into the hollows of my hip bones, fingertips playing at the top of my seam as if it were nothing more than a fidget toy .
I wanted to scream, wanted to fight, wanted bite. My teeth itched, and if I were the cat who was cleaning his paws at my ankle, I’d have bent into a hiss.
“If her pussy is as venomous as her tongue, brother, you’re more likely to be dead in your sheets by morning.”
Had I really wanted to claw that woman’s face off? Her intervention saved me from making a fool of myself by attempting to reach for the dagger at the King’s waist. With all the open steel on display on every hip man and woman alike, it would have been suicide.
The Ard Rí spun away from me.
The Raven never lost eye contact with me, and I could see the nearly imperceptible way his muscles unclenched as the King did so. “Is that so, sister?”
I was lost in the forest of his eyes, dancing between fir trees and pines while the Ard Rí and his sister discussed the litany of my sins against them. It didn’t matter to me. They were a thousand miles away, and all that was present was the pooling sunlight between me and The Raven.
I had lovers before, but never had I stood fifteen feet from a man and stared at him as he stared at me and felt my entire body attune to his. I barely knew this man, and everything about him sent my nerves singing with delight and set alarm bells ringing in my mind. From the moment he touched me and I felt my mind and body awash in electricity, sparkling with an effervescent living arc, I hated him. I didn’t want to be sucked into his orbit. I didn’t want him sucked into mine. He stood as an immovable object in the path of Rule #21, and I could not afford to allow that.
Fingers grasped at my chin, brutally ripping my attention away from The Raven, and sky-blue eyes were all that took up the field of my vision. “Did you hear me, you filthy fucking daoire?”
Pain bloomed along my jaw. It dug deep into my flesh and scratched away the enchanted forest that had been before me.
“What?”
“Did he craft its ears poorly, Raven? Did you bring me a defective doll to play with?” He roared directly into my face .
He might be wreathed in the bounty of nature, but his breath smelled like the place where that bounty went to die.
“Jesus, fuck, my guy. Are you at war with toothpaste?”
“What?”
His question was soft, deadly, and was a dagger at my throat that was being encircled by the King’s massive, calloused hands.
“I . . . I said, your breath smells as sweet as your voice.”
I was never great at flattery. I hoped he was too busy trying to cover his ego to allow the easy out to go unaccepted.
A gloved hand extracted me from the King’s grip, the leather of it flexing against my arm. “She talks too much, brother. I didn’t have the magic left after the auction to enforce her tongue lock. You know how these humans are so stupid that, without a tongue lock, they don’t know how to keep their thoughts from spilling out.”
The King looked from The Raven, who was crushing my arm in his leathered grasp and then back to me several times as if measuring his next move.
The laughter that exploded from him might as well have been a fist to my stomach, knocking the wind straight out of me. I was stammering, clamoring for air to fill lungs that felt as if he was squeezing them.
“Of course, of course, Captain. I’m sure Rictus extracted every drop of your stores to allow you to secure this gem.” He was turning to another woman, this one just as stunningly beautiful as his sister.
She wore a velvet dress of rich purple and black, bisected directly down the middle. Silver coronas burst from the seams of her gown, shimmering beads dusting the purple half.
He tucked the black-bedecked arm into the crook of his elbow and then turned thunderous, dangerous eyes to me. “What do you think, my love? Should I cut her tongue out or her mind?”
Her gaze was soft, doting, and easy. There was no venom in this woman. I’d be surprised if there was even a thought behind those pale jade eyes. “Exalted Majesty, if the sound of her voice is turned in treachery against you, pluck it from her. Keep her tongue, though. You’ve always loved plowing the rivers of a daoire’s throat. ”
I blinked, staring at her. The fuck did she just say?
The King laughed and kissed her on the temple before turning back to me. “What is her name, Raven?”
The Raven hesitated and then leaned over, whispering into the King’s ear. He nodded and smirked to me before leaning forward and whispering for my ears only. “Sóna Mac Raith, when in my presence, from now until the day you die, no words or sounds will pass your lips.”
Fire licked between my cells and ignited an inferno in my blood that was quickly extinguished, leaving me panting for air.
“The gift is lovely, Captain. Thank you. Take it to my chambers and have it bathed and dressed in something befitting its station.” He turned back to the woman on his arm and patted her hand like a cherished lapdog. “These humans, they wander into Fae, and we must house them, feed them, and teach them manners. They are all but wild animals!”
“You are most gracious and benevolent, my love,” the woman purred as she and the King retreated from me.
Fuck you! I screamed . . . Only the sound did not come out. I pushed and clawed at my throat, trying to force the words free. Air rushed across still vocal cords that refused to vibrate the smallest bit. I had been making sounds every day of my entire life, yet I couldn’t fix my lips to even scream. I curled in with the power in which I tried to yell at the retreating back of the King. My nails dug into the tender flesh of my neck, pushing, scraping, begging for anything to happen at all.
It wasn’t until the doubleted back of the King and the velvet-clad shoulders of his woman disappeared beyond a dark wooden door that my voice returned, and when it did, it came in a rush. The scream poured out of me like a flood, drowning everyone around me and beating great drums in my ears. I shredded my impertinent vocal cords against the power of my impotent rage until I could feel blood vessels popping in my head and eyes.
Steel bands wrapped in velvety silken fur encircled my shoulders, drawing me prone, and held me against the polished wood of the throne room floor. Another banded across my mouth and robbed me of everything. I hated this. I hated being weak and at the mercy of everyone around me. I needed to find my own power, before the only power left to me was carving my own flesh away.
Dark-brown leather boots came into view and then a black-swathed knee. “Calm yourself, Cricket. Or this will get more unseemly. Go, take your bath and get dressed in real clothing.”
A leather-gloved finger tucked my long hair behind my pointed ear. “I will come to you before you go to the King. Would you like that?”
I tilted my head up as much as the kin’tha would allow me, my nose dominating my field of vision as I tried to level a deadly glare on him.
“Touch me again, and I’ll tear your fingers off with my bare teeth,” I snapped into the muffle of the fur around my mouth.
He grinned, a slow devilish thing that promised he would enjoy my attempt, even if it would be just an attempt. The kin’tha raised me slowly, long enough that, when he bent to whisper in my ear, it was easily missed by others. “Before long, Cricket, you’ll be begging for me to do far more than touch you.”
The evil bitch my body had been sculpted into clenched at the image of me begging him to touch me.
Thankfully, at least for now, my tongue was still my own. “Hold your breath, Raven. Let’s see which of us last longer.”