14. Chapter 14
Chapter 14
I t took another month for me to be able to walk. Too much of that time spent in and out of unnatural sleep. The Bandrui would come to my side every now and again and bid me drink a healing draught. She never told me what was in it but was always very sure to tell me that it would make me sleep, explaining she needed to perform some surgery. I hadn’t gotten the full accounting of all my injuries. No one seemed willing to tell me the whole list. All I got was bits and pieces here and there, softened with a cube of sugar, telling me what was healed more than what was still damaged.
I would sleep for a day or two, waking to either shuddering, screaming nightmares that left my chest hollow of breath or with a soul-deep aching that made me want to claw at the fleeing dreams and drag them back to me. I never remembered exactly what I had been dreaming, only bits and pieces. But there was always a single image that hung in my mind, the night sky dusted with a radiant collar of diamond stars being chased by the new dawn. It sat in my soul and got cozy there.
My jailer had taken to stitching me into the woolen blanket to keep me stationary, but today, I was not content to allow a few hastily woven pieces of thread restrain me. I needed to move. I wanted to move. It was an insistent itch that crawled over my skin and pushed me from the blanket around me.
I slithered out like an exceptionally awkward caterpillar and pushed it away from me. The fact that it plopped when it slid over the edge of the stone platform that I had been forced to convalesce in sent a full body ick shiver through me. Blankets were meant to gracefully pool at the foot of a bed, not plop loudly on stones.
I was unsurprised I was still naked under the blanket. What was the point of clothing when you were stitched into your bedding in the back storeroom of a temple whose only true visitors occupied the great chamber? I hadn’t been able to move outside of this room since I came here, but Violet had been kind enough to describe to me where I was. The not knowing of it all made me uneasy and, according to her, a bitch of a ward to deal with.
I had grown to like Violet, as she came as often as she was able to and kept me company. We had talked long into the nights when the Bandrui was either sleeping, conveniently ignoring the conspiratorially hushed whispers in her storage room, or otherwise occupied. Violet was like me, world-weary and cautious about everyone. The difference between us was that I kept hold of my caution as my only defense.
Violet, on the other hand, had been in one place long enough to have found ways to protect herself. Life was not easy for a woman her age in the body she had been crafted into. Unlike me, whose alterations had been, for the most part, skin deep, Violet’s were much deeper. She had told me it took them two months to finish crafting her. She estimated that she was three to four times larger when she had been kidnapped into Magh Meall. Everything about her human anatomy had been altered. She wasn’t exactly sure how they had managed it, as there were few like her, but she had no need to eat or sleep. She didn’t sweat, didn’t cry, couldn’t spit. She had lamented over long about how she missed a good morning shit and had us both cackling.
But today, I was all alone in the dark supply room. The bare rafters above me, where Emerald would hide, were empty. The corner that Green Man liked to lurk in was empty save for the cozy shadows that curled up in its depths. Now was as good a time as any, where there were no prying eyes and no judgmental, empathetic sighs to coddle me.
I was going to test out my legs. Many of the Bandrui’s surgeries had been to improve them, as they had been damaged the most. She estimated that they would be good enough, and I would be able to walk again.
The first kiss of cold stone on too-tender feet had me hissing with discomfort and then delight as the sensation filled my senses. You would never truly understand how disconcerting it was for your feet to forget how to feet. The sensation of weight pressed against them felt wholly new, confusing and thrilling all at once. I idly wondered if this is what babies felt when they first started walking. The strange awareness of every single bit and grain of dirt on the floor. The sensation of stone. The chill and the feel of your body heat leeching out of you. It was all so sharp, and I had the unmistakable feeling like I’d never noticed any of it before.
I scooted, inch by inch, pressing more and more weight onto the wobbly lumps that had once been fully functioning feet. My old feet knew how to feet. They knew how to hold up my graceless body.
As I eased myself off the stone platform, I teetered, feeling weakness where I had taken for granted the ability for the sticks at the end of my torso to hold me up without thinking of it.
“Come on, assholes. You did this for over twenty years. You go on a little vacation, and suddenly, you forget that you’re feet? Come on now, ankles, no sleeping on the job,” I whispered.
“Do you make an occasion of chastising your body parts?”
The soft rumble of his voice from what I thought was an empty shadow washed over me, and my feet remembered how to feet, and my ankles woke up.
“Only when they’re being lazy,” I huffed. How dare he spy on me! “Where’d you come from?”
“What a deep question. I didn’t know you had it in you to even wonder, Cricket.”
“Why do you keep calling me that when you know it’s not my name?” I spread my arms out wide to balance and took a tentative step.
My leg felt like a log connected to a rusty bike chain with only half a memory that it used to be able to move .
“It’s considered rude to call even a daoire by their true name. And a threat of violence and animus to a Fae.” His body materialized as he moved forward into the warm amber light of a sleepy brazier. His shirt was rolled up around his elbows, the fading brand of my bite mark a distant dusting on the skin, the laces to its throat haphazardly untied and untucked from his breeches. The forest of his eyes were locked on me. “You’re doing good. We hadn’t expected such progress.”
“There’s no one here but you and me. No need to worry about being rude. I won’t.”
“I’d ask nothing less of you.”
“You come to gawk?”
“At what, exactly?”
The question was lobbed back at me with a cool casualty that made me want to bite him.
“Your handy work?”
I might as well have reached out and punched him in the face. Pain, anger, and regret trampled over his handsome features and transformed into a soft sympathy in the glade of his gaze.
“If I had laid my hands on you—”
“It would have been the last thing you ever did.”
“Do you think so, Cricket?”
“Probably not, but it felt good to say it.”
“I don’t think you’re entirely wrong.” A soft creak came from the chair he was in, and he came around to me, stuffing his hands into his gloves before extending his hand to me.
I glared at him like he had shit in my cereal. “I don’t need your help.”
“I assure you, you do. Your legs have been shaking for the last minute, like they will give out at any moment. I thought distracting you would help, but you’re ignoring your body’s signals. Take my hand, Cricket. I will not coddle you. You will earn your steps, but I won’t let you do it alone and hurt yourself.”
I searched his face for any sort of game he might play, watched the way those arboreal greens, doe browns, and golds swirled together in his eyes as they watched me .
I had never particularly cared for direct eye contact. It made me uncomfortable. It felt like someone was too close, too intimate, and in my personal bubble when I wanted them ten feet away. His eyes connecting with mine didn’t immediately make every nerve up my spine prickle with discomfort, though. There was a distinct lack of physical reaction, which shouldn’t be something to remark on, but with my history, it was as big as one could truly get.
His eyes held a certain sincerity and earnestness that didn’t make sense, though. This man had held me down while Rictus was trying to sell me. He had kept me in a cage for several days, covered up like a canary when he so desired. He had lit my brain on fire for some reason. He had watched me bathe and had watched me give his king a blow job.
He had watched me be beaten to near death—should have been to death. I had never heard of someone having chunks beaten out of their skull and surviving, for the most part, unscathed. His litany of sins against me bordered on maniacal, yet he looked at me with such tenderness that it almost made me stop counting the tax on each one of them.
He was right, though, I could feel the stamina of my pride giving way to the atrophy of my joints, and my hips were wobbling under my weight. If I didn’t take his hand, there was no chance I was going to make any of the five circuits around the room I had challenged myself to. The only place I would be going would be down on my face and into the dusty stonework.
My gaze fell to his outstretched black gloved hand, and I watched it, like a dog waiting for its master to strike it the moment it leaned in for a cuddle.
“It’s your decision, Cricket. You can take my hand or not. I can’t force you to do so. But if you fall, I will not ask permission to catch you before you break your fool head on the stones.”
“Wouldn’t want that. Someone paid good money to have that head intact. ”
A wry smile full of secrets and something else I couldn’t quite name pulled plush lips dusted by dark stubble doing its damnedest to claim his face.
“They did indeed.”
He didn’t move his hand an inch, not even a fraction of an inch, until my own rested fully in one of his. Only then did he slowly close his fingers around mine, as if giving me all the opportunity I needed to snatch my hand back.
I couldn’t help but lean into the additional support while his other hand offered to take mine. His grip on my fingers was gentle, like he was holding back the delicate wings of a dove that could be easily crushed by carelessness.
His tenderness, his careful, measured approach grated on my nerves. Not because it wasn’t the right thing to do. Not because I didn’t need him to show me that, unlike his king, he would not harm me but because I needed exactly that. I knew deep in my bones that the moment he twitched wrong, the moment he jerked or made any sudden movement, like a spooked horse, I would bolt. What irritated me more than him knowing intuitively that I needed that was that I actually did need it.
I had always prided myself on adhering to Rule #10. No one sees your tears. That meant weaknesses, too. No one got to see me battered, bruised, and broken. He had seen me in all of these states. He had seen my weakness, and I feared what he would do with it now that he had. I feared that I had let him in, even by necessity of circumstance, even a little. And as I slid my hand into his other hand, I was letting him in even more. I was letting him support me, both physically, and if I was truly honest with myself, a little emotionally as well.
“Thank you for trusting me, Cricket,” he whispered and took a step back to give me room to step forward.
“I shouldn’t,” I murmured as I shifted my focus away from his beguiling face and back down to my feet that I was trying very hard to convince they were, in fact, feet.
“Shouldn’t you? ”
I didn’t manage to pick the foot up but was able to lean on his steadfast hand and slide it forward. It felt like a monumental victory. It was not that I couldn’t move my legs and feet but that they had forgotten what it meant to be told to move. It was as if they had forgotten how to speak the same language as my brain and weren’t hearing the request. Even when they did hear the request, acting on it was difficult.
I had imagined it would feel like an especially harsh workout, that my muscles would ache and hurt from the strain of weakness, but it was the opposite. It was the complete lack of any muscle sensation at all.
“How long?”
I didn’t raise my head from my task, sliding one dead foot forward and him stepping back. His arms never lowered nor gave under the pressure I was exerting on them.
“Have you been in bed?”
“No. How long did you let him beat me for before you bothered to get off your fancy ass to help me?”
I felt his wince all the way down my arm and let it sink into my shoulders like a solid metal bar.
He let me take two more steps before he drew in a slow breath and exhaled it into his words. “Three minutes.”
No excuses. No justifications. No request to be forgiven. No hollow apology. Just a resigned accounting of the facts.
“And did you escort him down from the throne room the other times?”
That was the first time his fingers moved. They twitched, and I could tell he had caught them from gripping me in anger. I was already mid-rearing back before he let them relax.
“I will not ask you to believe me, Cricket. But know that I have never and would never lie to you, and I swear here in the Temple of the Ascended on Feidlimid’s own hand that I do not lie to you on this. I did not know he came to you afterwards.”
When I lifted my head to measure him for any potential lie, he was staring directly at me. Our eyes locked, and for a single moment, I fell into his gaze. A flash of dawn breaking over green mountains and chasing the night from the land settled into my mind, and his words dulled the edge of my ire.
“Swear on whoever you want. They’re just statues. It means nothing.”
My words should have been biting, sharp, cutting, but they had all the slice of an ancient butter knife.
“You’ve so much to learn about Magh Meall, Cricket.”
“What, they don’t have liars here?”
“Oh, no, on the contrary. Everyone here is a liar. If someone tells you the sky is blue, dip your head out the window to check.”
“Then, why would I believe you?”
“Because I swore it on my god’s name.”
“I swear to god all the time. Last I checked, no lightning bolts showed up when I lied.”
“That’s because your god is just that, a statue on a bunch of wood. The Bandrui says that, after his ascension, he was killed by his own people for being an evil spirit. He rises every now and then, usually in times of great peace, and walks among his people again. But he’s trapped in a cycle of being slain by those same proclaimed followers.”
I’d long ago forgotten about trying to walk, but this would have stopped me in my tracks anyway.
“Hold on. You’re telling me that a bunch of fairies believe in Jesus Christ?”
“Fae.” He smirked a roguish smile at the flash of spunk. “And why wouldn’t we bunch of Fae believe in another magical creature? There are hundreds of different types of us wandering this world and yours. We’re not the exclusive heirs to magic. We live at its source and are its direct offspring. Unlike the jealous god of Abraham, we don’t demand that anyone believe in us or our gods. It’s rather convenient to our way of life that humans don’t believe in us anymore.”
“Ah, yes, makes kidnapping them for daora much easier, I assume.”
“It does, yes,” he said with the conviction of a wet tissue.
“You know that’s deplorable, right? ”
“To whom? To you? I would imagine so. I won’t defend the practices of the Fae. I won’t lie and say there is some greater reason or meaning to why they keep daora. It is an ancient practice that was different before the Ard Rí took the throne. It has become . . .” He turned away from me as if to hide his shame while the realization that he had been an active participant in this fell over him. “It was never like this before. With a new Ard Rí comes many changes, though. This is but one of them.”
“Of course. Understandable. We should all easily understand that, right? It’s so simple. It was just a change of Ard Rí that changed it. None of you are awful, evil creatures that steal innocent people from their loving families, mutilate them, and force them to suck your cocks before you beat them near to death. Just a simple change of the Ard Rí!”
“Innocent people? Loving families?”
Anger flared in his eyes, and he stepped into my space, his chest and thighs pressing against me. His body radiated warmth that seeped into mine.
I craned my neck up to stare him right in the eye as he glared down at me.
I wanted to crumble under the weight of his wrath. Images of the King’s twisted, laughing face as he hunted me flashed through my mind, but I stood strong.
“Where was your family, Cricket? Hmm? I’ve been to your little hovel to ensure that you were not missed, and you know what I found? Hmm? Nothing. Not a single photo. Not a single missed phone call. Not even letters gathering in the box to get rid of. The only person who missed you was your greedy landlord who asked if I was your boyfriend. Tell me, Cricket, were you fucking him for the rent? Is that why your icebox was leaking water all over your kitchen floor into the same black mark that showed it had before? Are you just as terrible as a lay as you are at sucking cock?”
“You went to my house?”
The violation was too much. How fucking dare he. No one went into my sanctuary without my expressed permission .
“Of course I did.” He growled, backing me up by pushing forward into me. “Do you think I would trust Rictus to ensure that the daora he sold were, in fact, castoffs?”
“You had no right!”
I ignored the latter part of his statement. He wasn’t wrong. I was a castoff.
“I had every right. Did. You. Fuck. Him.”
The gentle rumble that was usually his soft baritone had turned dark and ugly.
“Every fucking night. I rode that old man’s dick every fucking night and made him scream my name. And when he came inside me, I let him. I fucking loved the way it leaked down my thighs as I walked down the hall to my free apartment.”
I hissed back the lie easy and just as vile as what he was accusing me of.
Storms gathered in the forest of his eyes. The steel band of his arm snaked around the small of my naked back, and he lowered me down to the stone platform I had been resting on. Despite the rage that blew through him, he handled me with the tender care of a museum curator, nestling a holy relic into its protective case.
“Go to fucking sleep, Cricket.”
“I’m not a fucking child,” I yelled to his retreating back.
He paused, turned sharply on his heel, and was right in my face again. “No, what you are is a beautiful little fucking liar. Or at least you had better be.”
He was halfway across the small room before I found the next thing to volley at him. “Or what?”
Ah, yes some of my finest work. Eloquence, thy name is Cricket.
“Or you’ll wake up with a bouquet of roses made of his flesh and a footstool of his head.” He growled before slamming the door to the storeroom behind him.
The small room felt smaller without him in it. It was tiny and cold and empty without him filling up the shadows and without him filling me up with his soft smiles .
“Do it, then! Bring me my flowers, Raven! And don’t forget the chocolates!” I screamed at the closed door.
Why did I feel like I had been in a lovers’ quarrel? Why did it feel like he had just walked out on me, and I’d never see him again?
I lowered myself down onto the icy stone bed and stared at the corner he had been sitting in. The lonely chair whispered recriminations at me for the outburst. He drove me crazy, though. There was something about the way his lips always seemed to be laughing at me and the sparkle in his gorgeous eyes that made me want to punch him.
I had to remember that I had nearly died because of him. I just had to remember that, every time we are in the same room for longer than a few breaths, I can’t help but stab at him. I just have to remember that, no matter what, he was the reason I was lying in this dirty little room, in a place I hadn’t even seen the outside of, where I was worth nothing to no one but the rest of us worthless.
I couldn’t remember the way he had given me choices. I couldn’t remember the way he held me. I couldn’t remember the way his voice softened into a gentle rain when he spoke to me. I couldn’t remember the way those leather gloves felt against my skin. I couldn’t remember the way he hadn’t leered or ogled me even though I was more naked than he’d ever seen me before. His eyes had never left mine a single time. And I couldn’t let the fact that it felt a little sweet infiltrate my heart.
“Fuck you, Raven,” I whispered to the bundled-up roll that had acted as my pillow for who knows how long.