Chapter 11 #2
He had no choice but to let the servants scrub him clean of the dirt and grime accumulated from trekking through a forest and dragging himself through the wyrding.
Every time a sponge ran over his sore ribs, he winced.
Bran made sure his bracelet didn’t come into contact with any Fae’s skin.
The water in the tub became dirty, and he was made to stand so clean water could be poured over him by copper pitchers filled from the spigot until the Fae were satisfied he was clean.
He stood there beneath Damarus’ gaze as the servants went about drying and clothing him in an outfit that was several centuries out of date from where he came from.
The pants, buttoned-up shirt, and coat weren’t as elaborately embroidered as Damarus’, but neither were they the servants’ drab clothing.
When the servants finally stepped aside, Damarus came forward, circling Bran like one would circle an animal for sale. The Fae reached out and adjusted the way the coat sat on his shoulders, poking and prodding until he was satisfied with the job the servants had done.
“Acceptable,” Damarus said, turning on his heel. “For a pet. Follow me.”
Bran had no choice but to obey, not if he wanted to keep Cillian safe.
Not knowing what was happening in the cells left him to fill in the horrors of it on his own, his stomach roiling into knots.
A faint tug on his bond with Jupiter came away with a vast silence of a kind he’d never felt before in all the years she’d been his familiar.
She wasn’t dead, only—far away. Bran didn’t know if it was this place messing with their connection or something else, but her absence left him adrift in his mind when he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
Damarus led him through the mansion with the expectation that Bran wouldn’t try to kill him by way of magic. Funny how Bran wore no chains and yet was so incredibly bound.
He was taken to a drawing room on the first floor, where Damarus left him under the watchful eyes of the surviving guard from the forest for several hours.
Sitting in silence, with only his thoughts for company as he watched the late-afternoon sunlight darken to twilight through a window, left him feeling anxious and out of his depth.
Damarus returned for him when the sun had fully set, and Bran’s stomach felt as if it was trying to eat his spine. The Fae had changed clothes from the outfit he’d worn for his ride in the forest into a court suit of maroon satin. “Did the pet act out? Cast any magic? Soil the carpet?”
“I’m not a pet,” Bran snapped.
“No,” the guard replied, answering Damarus as if Bran hadn’t even spoken.
“A pity. I’d be well within my rights to cut him if he had.” Damarus gestured at Bran with a bored expression on his face. “My lord is ready for you now. But do tell me if you’ve decided to deny him your company.”
“If it gets my friend and me fed, I’ll sit at the table,” Bran said, slowly rising to his feet.
“I know your companion’s name. Refusing to speak it won’t remove it from my tongue.”
“How do you even know English?”
Damarus waved aside the question, as if it were beneath him. “Come with me.”
Damarus led him out of the drawing room and to what felt like the other side of the mansion.
They passed more servants on the way there, none of whom looked twice at Bran even as he stared at them.
Most of them were Fae, but there was one who made Bran do a double-take and nearly miss a step because that was a human with rounded ears in a silver collar inlaid with tiny emeralds.
Her black skirt fell to her ankles, and the wide corset belt she wore without a blouse put her bare breasts on display.
Her hair was twisted into a knot at the base of her skull, so it was easy to see that the lacings of the corset were threaded through small silver hoops pierced through her skin and running the length of her spine.
Bran slowed his pace long enough to watch the human servant draw a witchmark and cast it into the empty glass sphere of a sconce.
Magic flared brightly for an instant before falling into sparks that shimmered as they danced in the air.
The witch who was a servant never acknowledged his presence, but that didn’t stop Bran from turning on his feet, trying to engage with her. “Hey—”
Damarus grabbed him by the arm, the Fae’s silkily amused voice filling his ear. “Pets know better than to get distracted from their work.”
Bran tried to wrench free, but Damarus was stronger than him. “She’s a witch. What did you do to her?”
Because no witch would willingly support the Fae like this.
It had to be a trick—maybe it was a Fae glamoured to look like a mortal—but even as Bran desperately tried to think of a reason for that witch’s existence here in the Otherworld, he knew it was a lie.
Witchmarks were used solely by witches. The Fae didn’t cast magic that way.
Bile crept up Bran’s throat as he realized whoever that witch was, they’d been broken and changed into this blank-eyed servant using their magic for the Fae’s pleasure.
A pet.
Damarus hauled him around and dragged him the last bit of the hallway to the closed door at the end.
Damarus opened it, leading Bran into a large dining room meant for grand parties, not the three place settings taking up space at the end of a long mahogany table.
Grand paintings of beautiful Fae in all manner of dress and locations hung from the wooden wall on his left.
A huge mirror was set over a long fireplace that wasn’t lit, while chandeliers with those odd glass globes of illumination lined the ceiling.
The wall to his right held windows instead of paintings, the curtains drawn shut for the evening meal.
“The witch is displeased with the tasks you give your pets, my lord,” Damarus said as he shoved Bran toward the table.
“Is he now?” Ainmire replied, staring at Bran from the head of the table.
The Fae lord wore in an all-black ensemble that should have made him appear washed out but didn’t.
The coat was tailored to emphasize the breadth of his shoulders.
A gold ring with a large cabochon emerald was his only piece of jewelry.
He looked powerful and alluring seated there, and some part of Bran was fascinated by Ainmire’s unreal beauty.
The rest of him wanted to stab the Fae lord in the face.
“I thought you killed witches?” Bran asked through clenched teeth.
Ainmire arched an eyebrow. “Would you like me to kill you?”
Bran chose silence over answering, letting Damarus prod him into the empty seat to Ainmire’s left.
Both Fae seemed amused at his reluctance to open his mouth.
Bran fisted his hands on his lap and stared at his gold-edged empty plate, water and wineglasses filled but no food on the table yet.
That changed the moment Damarus took his seat.
A different door was opened, and a line of servants entered, each carrying a serving dish.
A roast was set down first, with other dishes arrayed around it: glazed carrots, roasted potatoes, fresh bread, half a dozen different sauces, and a tureen filled with a cold soup in deference to the summer day that had ended.
Bran’s stomach growled at the smell that wafted up from the dishes as they were set on the table.
Damarus chuckled at him, and Bran tried to ignore the flush that came to his face.
He wouldn’t apologize for being hungry when the Fae were the reason for it.
“I wonder,” Damarus mused. “Do you believe in those silly stories that you mortals can’t leave the Otherworld if you eat or drink our food?”
Bran’s gaze snapped up at the question, flicking between the two Fae. “And if I do?”
Damarus’ smile was as sharp as his knife. “Then I suppose you will never leave.”
Bran watched the servants fill all their plates and bowls with servings of the food.
Ainmire and Damarus began to eat after the servants stepped away from the table and retreated from the dining room, giving them privacy.
Bran still hesitated, but it was the thought of Cillian going without that forced him to pick up the silver fork and knife to cut his slice of the roast into bite-sized pieces.
He was starving, but he ate at a regular pace, savoring the taste of everything and hating that he liked it.
Bran didn’t want to like anything in the Otherworld, especially not something given by a Fae lord who kept calling him pet.
He ate what was on his plate, hoping none of it would trap him in any way, and didn’t reach for seconds.
He ignored the wineglass in favor of water.
It tasted clean, and he finished the entire glass in a couple of swallows.
When he set it down, he found Ainmire studying him in a way Bran didn’t care for.
“I have questions that you will answer,” Ainmire said.
“And if I don’t?” Bran asked carefully.
Ainmire smiled slightly, as if he were amused by Bran’s pushback. “Then I take it out of Cillian’s skin.”
Bran wondered if he’d be able to fight against a Fae lord and win, but even as he thought about the odds, he knew they wouldn’t favor him.
Bran was a strong witch, and his skill lay in the casting of witchmarks and building up intricate spells, but the more powerful spells were written in his coven’s grimoire, and it was missing.
Of the hundreds of witchmarks he’d memorized over the years, none could save them unless he first got Cillian out of what passed as a dungeon in a place like this.
Bran leaned back in his chair, putting his hands on his lap so he’d be less likely to give away his true feelings. He glanced at Damarus, who seemed as interested as Ainmire, but made no attempt to speak, leaving the interrogation to the Fae lord. And that’s what this was—a deadly game of words.