Arlo Blackwood
T here was comfort in the steady sound of routine, yet the thrumming pulse of it made her restless at the same time. It was like a heartbeat echoing the same tempo over and over. Camp was like that, and the things they did to survive had become an integral part of day-to-day life. Nothing was new except for the voices that belonged to the latest hazy faces, and even those faded into the background over time.
But never their stories. Never their fear. Never their need for vengeance.
Or their need for a good party.
She knew from the blur of running bodies, the drumming beat of footsteps on the ground, the raucous cries of voices, and the slightest hint of magical Fae wine bubbling through the air that they were preparing for a celebration. She knew the sight of it would surprise the captives they’d saved from the wagon, because they hadn’t contemplated their freedom before this moment. They were being greeted with it now, though.
Arlo said it helped them forget.
Bryson remembered her own experience from so long ago. She always bit her tongue when Arlo spoke about how the celebrations helped captives feel more alive . Back then, she hadn’t felt what he was describing.
She still didn’t.
Because the upbeat rhythm of the lute and pounding feet on the ground only served to bring with it flashbacks.
She’d clung to the remnants of her past long after her family’s bodies had gone cold, too afraid to stand up and face the darkness that plagued her vision. Blood streamed into her mouth, and she choked on it as easily as if it were tears.
Then there were shouts of rage, and humans dug through the rubble. Strong arms yanked at her fragile, aching body and she swung on instinct, too shocked to muster her magic so she lashed out with her fists instead. She screamed, flinging herself back down where their bodies lay.
She didn’t want to leave them. It was the cruel, twisting hand of Mana that had taken them from her in the first place. She swore she could hear death laughing somewhere, even as she begged to join them. Or maybe that sound she heard wasn’t death at all.
It was something far worse.
Her arms were nearly yanked out of socket as they jerked her backwards. She screamed as they manhandled her, swallowing a mouthful of blood in the process. They shoved her to the ground. Disoriented, her head jerked from side to side. She tried to sense them, but in her panic, she couldn’t focus, hone in on her magic. The pain and blood in her eyes blinded her and the ashwood in her nostrils choked through her lungs.
Her eyelids blinked furiously, trying to expel the shards of iron stuck through. Even as she felt them slide out, the blood didn’t stop flowing, and her vision didn’t return.
“Looks like we caught an injured one.” The unsettling voice slid down her spine as it approached. She scrambled away from it, but it was no use.
A collar went around her neck, snuffing out her magic completely. It didn’t matter how hard she fought, how loud she screamed, or how desperately she prayed.
They took her away.
Within moments, her entire world had upended. An explosion and iron shards had taken away something vital and precious from her. Her family and her vision. And when she suddenly found herself without both of those things, she’d been lost in her own paralyzing fear. It was all she knew at first. Disorientation in a world that wasn’t familiar, with sounds and scents that were cloying and almost impossible to weave through.
When they shoved her into the iron camps, it had been worse. It suffocated her completely and she wasn’t only struggling to try and see, she was also struggling to pull oxygen into her lungs. Blood spurted from her throat with every hacking cough until she was sure she would die.
But she hadn’t died then. Even when she thought infection and malnourishment would take her. When she was beaten by power-hungry guards and shoved into wagons for transport, she had not died.
She’d been saved, though she wasn’t sure if it was by the grace of Mana or...
“Bryson!”
.
He stomped loudly to get her attention, as though she couldn’t see his blurry figure approaching. As if the wind didn’t pull his essence towards her like the soft whisper of a warning. Sometimes, he still treated her like the young Fae with the broken sight he’d first pulled from that wagon. Not like the woman she was now. Healed, whole. Perhaps her vision would never be what it was before the accident, but at least she could see , at least she was alive, and that was more than she could say for others.
“Hey, Arlo.” Ev pulled away from her to meet Arlo in the middle and clapped him on the back.
“Any problems?”
“None. Bryson is a good shot,” Ev replied.
“The cargo?”
“Malika and the others are getting it organized as we speak.”
“Good,” Arlo muttered. “But tell me, why aren’t you helping them?”
There was a brief moment of silence in which Bryson almost flinched. She didn’t move, though. She kept very still. It was almost the norm that people treated her like she wasn’t there when they spoke. But if there was one thing they didn’t understand, it was that she wasn’t blind .
Nor deaf.
She wasn’t sure why they treated her like a piece of furniture.
“I—”
“No excuses, boy,” Arlo interjected. His tone wasn’t chastising, but nor was it kind. “Business first, celebration later.”
“Yes, Arlo.”
The subservience from Everette wasn’t surprising. Though a human, Everette was Arlo’s right hand and would one day take his place as leader of the camp. If he lived that long , a cynical and wretched part of her always thought but never voiced.
“Good. Now say goodbye to your girlfriend and see to your duties.” His tone mellowed out into a humorous one that made Bryson relax her shoulders a fraction.
Ev laughed. Then he rushed towards her. He didn’t say anything, though he didn’t need to, before he pressed a kiss to her lips then turned and jogged away.
It wasn’t until he was out of earshot that Arlo focused his attention on her. She always felt his stare like a heavy weight. What little she could see of it from a distance was piercing, calculating. Even through the blur, she could make out the black and gray of his hair and mustache, as well as the too-straight posture of his tall, wide body. A half-Fae, he had ears that were curved, but not quite as pointed as a full-blooded Fae’s.
Malika had often described him as, “Rigid, like he has a stick up his ass.”
Today, Bryson stared at the crooked nose that towered over the stern line of his mouth, with eyes bright like a hawk’s as he took her in. His hair was pulled back with a strip of leather, and if there was a strand out of place, she couldn’t quite make it out.
His clothes were clean. She always noticed he was too clean, and that was on account that her sense of smell was stronger than anyone else’s. She smelled the soap on his clothes, and the careful precision with which he tucked flowers into his pockets. None of that drowned out his own natural scent, though. Like sap and dry leaves and a vegetable garden.
“How was the hunt?” He stepped towards her.
That’s what he always called it.
The hunt.
Because they spent weeks plotting, tracking, and killing those humans. They would intercept them along roads as they transported Fae away to their camps and bring the bounty back to camp with them.
Arlo always looked at Fae like investments; his own commodities that he’d collected throughout the years since the war. Everything at the camp was based on give-and-take. Arlo rescued them, and so everyone had to give in return. That was probably a cold way of looking at it, but Bryson tried to be practical. Yes, while they were all a family, she didn’t delude herself to believing that Arlo didn’t benefit from them.
Especially her and Malika, as they were the only Fae there with gifted abilities.
“You heard Ev,” Bryson replied. “It went well.”
He was quiet, regarding her. “Will you help them find their place?”
Her shoulders lowered, and she hadn’t even realized how tense she felt. “Of course.” She always would. Perhaps she was not the best shoulder to lean on, but sometimes other Fae looked at her—at the scars around her eyes—and counted their own blessings.
She hated being treated like a simple attraction at a circus, but she was proud of who she was and her own survival. She wanted the others to be proud too, despite the scars or injuries they may have carried or garnered.
Bryson had her many uses, and this was only a drop in the cup, in Arlo’s opinion.
“Good. Go help Malika.”
Bryson didn’t wait for further instruction. She walked in the direction of the medical tents, where Malika had set up near the herbal garden.
“And Bryson?”
She stopped.
“When you’re finished, join the celebration. I know how hard days like this are for you.”
Her chest tightened with his words, while simultaneously something warmed within her. Sometimes, Arlo was very harsh. Others like this, he was almost fatherly in his affections. He wouldn’t show his feelings with a heavy-handed touch like Malika or gentle, clinging hugs and kisses like Everett. It was in other ways, like the softening of his voice to balance out his rough exterior.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
She walked towards the medical tent, and he didn’t call after her again. Not even to tell her that she hadn’t promised she would attend the celebration.
He was right. Days like this were hard for her, and instead of dizzying herself with dance and drink, she preferred to decompress in a quiet place.
“Brood,” Malika claimed. Perhaps that’s what it was. Perhaps Bryson wallowed. But it didn’t matter.
Because she had a job to do. And Bryson would do it.
Within the medical tent, the scent of herbs, oils, blood, and pain mingled.
And magic.
It bubbled through the enclosed space, sharp and biting and yet somehow soothing. Even the soft, suffering groans of the people clustered within brought with it a sort of comfort. Pain was good, Bryson thought. Pain meant they were alive. That they would heal.
Malika’s feet were loud as they rushed around the tent, going from tables of herbs and medicines and back to the injured. There were the softer tap-tap-tap of several other footsteps as well, followed by the chittering squeak of the voices of the camp brownies.
Bryson was careful walking in, weaving her way around bleary, small bodies. Back when she still had her full sight, when she still lived in Tir na Faie, back when they had their family manor, she remembered the brownies that scampered through the halls on thin legs.
She remembered how they all looked like small trees, with textured skin like bark that ranged from colors of white, gray, green, and brown, and dripped sap, moss, and magic. Their limbs creaked as they walked, and their excited chatter as they cleaned made magic burst like works of fire through the sky.
Brownies expelled magic through cleaning, and they loved to clean. Bryson could already feel the charge of magic in the air, and it gave her a small boost of energy as she followed Malika’s scent of lavender, ginger, and lemon over towards the table.
Bryson was careful not to touch anything, lest she knock something important over.
“What can I do?” Her voice was soft and cautious.
Even though she already had her purpose within the tents, Bryson still always deferred to Malika, as it was her domain.
Malika huffed a breath. Her tall frame towered over her worktable, muscular arms furiously whipping together her concoctions in her rush to heal the Fae. She used magic, of course, but because the price of using it meant her energy waned, she had to substitute with other methods as well, at least for the more minor injuries.
“Go ease some of the patients’ anxiety,” she ordered quietly. “The camps had them so screwed up that they think I’m going to be just like those ‘doctors’.” There was open disgust in her tone, and Bryson understood.
She herself had only been evaluated by a doctor once when she’d been at the camps. It had been to have her eyes looked over. They hadn’t been aware that she had magic because they couldn’t overlook her bleeding eyes and then lack of sight. Like because she had one fatal flaw, it meant she couldn’t possibly possess talent. People couldn’t see past what was right in front of them, and because of it, Bryson always felt like she was underestimated.
They’d taken one look at her and declared her defective, then tossed her into an iron cage. It’d been the reason she hadn’t properly healed, why she now had to squint to see colors and shades and figures and details, but at least she could still see . She hadn’t been so fortunate at the time.
Malika had had it worse at the camps.
Sometimes, Bryson could still hear the screams. Like the pain and suffering had followed her in her dreams.
“Okay.”
Bryson walked over, stopping just shy of the people to avoid startling them. She could see them recoil away from her as she got down to her knees in front of them. They made soft, whimpering noises that tugged at the strings of her heart.
She’d been there.
She knew the fear of the unknown, had lived it as profoundly as they had. It was one thing she realized about life; that even if they didn’t suffer the same experiences, they could still relate to the trauma.
Bryson didn’t understand the extent of Malika’s suffering at the hands of human doctors. But they’d endured camp together, gripping one another’s hands tightly through the tears and echoing shrieks of others.
Together they’d been abused, together they’d been tossed into an iron-barred carriage and taken away, uncertain of their futures. And together, they’d been saved.
She recalled it now. The way it felt like she was being choked within the confined space. The way the horses screeched and jerked to a halt, causing the wagon to teeter on its wheels. The sound of a door bursting open. The sound of death.
And then , with blood dripping from a sword and the scent of a vegetable garden and pine clinging to his skin.
So she said to them what Arlo had said to her. “You’re safe now.” The words rasped out of her throat.
“Are we?” someone in front of her snapped.
She didn’t know with absolute certainty. Humans were everywhere, and it wouldn’t be long before they caught on to what was happening there in Ielwyn. Before someone realized that the Fae they sent away were missing, the soldiers as well. Would they be safe then?
She wondered if those thoughts had gone through Arlo’s mind as well when Malika asked that same question right before they were pulled out to the light.
“I don’t know,” Bryson confessed. “But you’re safe for now, and unless you want that iron to embed itself so deep into your bodies that you end up—” She cut off what she was about to say, biting her tongue so hard she tasted blood. She hated that she was often invaded with cruel sentiments about herself, despite her self-confidence. She hated that she stooped herself so low.
But that was what Arlo wanted. He wanted her to lie, even if she didn’t feel the words that were spewing from her mouth. He wanted her to degrade herself, to act like she was ashamed of her poor eyesight and the scars marring her eyes and cheeks. He wanted others to see it. To say, “Poor, half-blind Fae. I don’t want to end up like her.”
It was Arlo’s favorite form of manipulation. Or rather, his way of convincing the Fae to stay in camp.
And because he’d gifted Bryson with her own freedom, she did what he bade.
There was silence as the Fae in front of her seemed to contemplate what she said—or rather, what she didn’t say.
“Does it hurt?” they whispered.
Her smile found the one who asked. “Not anymore.”
It hadn’t for a long time, but that didn’t mean that memories couldn’t ache. And hers burned . More than the scars ever could.
“Will you hold my hand?” the voice asked again.
Bryson expelled a breath and held her hand out. “For however long you need.”
It took minutes, though she didn’t count them, until a rough, withered hand closed over her own. It was wet and clammy, with disjointed fingers and missing stubs. And yet relief invaded her body through every crevice as she closed her palm over theirs.
The motion felt like a big step, but there was still so much more they would need if they wanted to heal. And it didn’t matter that Bryson’s stomach churned, or that memories of the past invaded, or that sometimes she felt like this was harder than killing.
Bryson had a job to do.
And so she would do it.