Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“Hands down,” Ainmire said.
Bran blinked tears out of his eyes, head wrenched back, squinting against the light that haloed Ainmire.
His fingers caught on the smooth thread sewn through his lips, blood coating his teeth and tongue.
He wanted to gag but couldn’t, not if he didn’t want to choke.
He swallowed blood, the metal taste saturating his mouth.
Ainmire’s eyes narrowed slightly, and the next thing Bran knew, he was being shaken the way someone might scruff and shake an animal out of anger.
Because that’s what the Fae thought he was.
A pet.
Cillian never had, and he was—
He was—
Bran dropped his bloody hands to the floor, clawing at the hardwood instead of clawing at his mouth.
Pain throbbed through his lips and across his cheeks from the effort of trying to open his mouth.
Focusing on the pain was better than focusing on the horror rattling through his brain, the realization of what Cillian was.
The lie of it all.
Unbidden, his gaze went to the spot Cillian had collapsed on the floor before being dragged out by Etain’s Fae.
Cillian had sounded like he was dying from whatever magic Etain had performed.
Bran had yelled futilely with his sewn-shut mouth, kept in place by Ainmire’s hand while Etain peeled off Cillian’s skin one strip at a time.
Peeled off his glamour until he’d looked—like a Fae.
Like those Bran had grown up believing were the enemy, except this was Cillian.
This was his childhood best friend, his first love and first kiss and first broken heart all rolled into years of memories he’d never been able to let go, haunting him like a ghost. Years of growing up with him in Pelham, where he’d been human.
Mortal.
But when he’d fallen to Etain’s feet, Cillian had looked like all the other Fae in the room with them—an otherworldly, eerie beauty that had been hidden from view gilding his body, blazing blue-gray eyes, and pointed ears.
Bran didn’t want to believe it, but the truth had been peeled open—literally—right before his eyes.
Even knowing Etain’s title and the games Fae played, Bran had no doubt what was done was real and not a trick.
What use would they have for tricking him?
Bran was one witch, the last in the Gallagher coven, guarding some backwater way into the wyrding.
His wasn’t a coven with ties to the Council of Witches; he didn’t have any connections that would be of note.
There should be no reason he shouldn’t be dead, save for one.
Cillian.
Bran swallowed more blood, flinching from Ainmire’s grip or Etain’s attention; he figured it didn’t matter which. Not while he was on his knees, collared and bowing to the whims of whatever the Fae wanted.
All the teachings he had learned over the years, all the warnings he’d grown up with, had said to never trust the Fae.
That they were the enemy and always would be.
If Cillian was Fae, and if Bran was worth his coven’s witchmarks tattooed on his body, he’d find a way to escape and leave Cillian behind, exactly how Cillian kept asking him to.
He’d leave and hope Jupiter found him so he could track down Aisling.
But this was Cillian, and despite the betrayal, Bran couldn’t leave him here to some unknown fate.
Every other witch would, Bran knew.
Etain walked over to him, looking down her nose at where Bran knelt.
He stared up at her through the tears and the pain.
If this was the only way he could be defiant—to look them in the eye—then he would.
His heart rate felt too fast, chest aching with the need to gasp for air and being denied.
He tongued at the thread pierced through his lips, no gap between them.
“If you wish to keep Cillian in check, the pet needs to live,” Ainmire said in a bored voice.
Etain waved off his words. “He has no memory of us, which means he has no memory of his power. As for this one, you give it too much liberty.”
“As you deduced, they care for each other.”
“And I suppose you want it out of revenge for what Cillian did to your face? You still have not forgiven him for the scar you carry.”
“If the Dagda allows it, I want Cillian to know what I took from him when I brand his pet with the mark of my House right in front of him.”
Bran tried to still his breathing into something that was less panicky, hating how the Fae talked over him, as if he weren’t worth their time.
As if he were an object to be used and bartered.
Etain hummed, staring at Bran, before dismissing him with an elegant little shrug. “We leave for Murias tomorrow. Your pet may come with us.”
“And your threads?”
Etain snapped her fingers, and Bran couldn’t stop himself from screaming as the threads tying his lips together were practically torn free, leaving numerous tiny bleeding holes in his lips. He cupped a hand over his mouth, blood smearing over his palm and chin, saliva welling up around his tongue.
Ainmire’s grip on his hair tightened, and Bran was dragged to his feet by the Fae lord. Head tipped back, pressed up close against a body he didn’t want to touch, all Bran could see was Ainmire’s eyes.
So he spat in them.
Whatever smirking triumph Ainmire hoped to have over him was reduced to a backhand punch that crashed into Bran’s face.
Bran took it in the eye with a smile, pain spiderwebbing through his head from the blow.
He collapsed to the floor, catching himself on his hands, spitting out blood around a hoarse laugh.
“Would you like me to sew its mouth shut again?” Etain asked with an amused little laugh.
Bran turned his head so he could look up out of the corners of his eyes at Ainmire, watching the Fae lord wipe the spit and blood off his face with a handkerchief. The fury in his gaze was worth the throbbing black eye Bran knew would swell up by morning.
“Damarus,” Ainmire snapped.
“My lord?” Damarus said.
“Take my pet to his room.”
Hands dragged Bran back to his feet and spun him around, the other Fae’s hold as bruising as Ainmire’s as Damarus escorted him out of the great chamber.
“That was quite stupid of you,” Damarus said flatly.
“Not housebroken, remember?” Bran rasped. Talking hurt, his lips still bleeding and swelling up, but he wasn’t going to take their words like barbs when he didn’t have to.
“You will be.”
The threat made Bran want to close his eyes, but he still needed to watch where he was going and what Damarus was doing.
It was a matter of minutes for Damarus to bring him to the door of that horrible little room with its false sense of comfort.
Bran couldn’t help the way he dug in his heels, just for a second, the weakness something he couldn’t help after everything.
But Damarus was stronger, and it was no great effort for the Fae to shove Bran through the doorway and slam the door behind him.
Bran stumbled over his feet, and here, at last, he let himself sink to his knees on his own accord, pressing his forehead to the thin area rug, gasping for air and wishing betrayal didn’t hurt so badly.
Cillian was Fae.
Bran was a witch.
He couldn’t reconcile the two just then, not after a lifetime of knowing what he stood against, what he stood for.
Bran wanted to scream out his horror and shame and anger, but he refused to give the Fae the satisfaction of hearing him break down.
Sniffling through a swelling nose, Bran lifted his head and crawled across the floor to the bed. He leaned his back against it and stretched out his legs, shaking hands resting on his thighs. He stared blankly up at the wooden ceiling, aching and hurting, but his heart was the worst of everything.
After all these years, this wasn’t the answer Bran was looking for when it came to Cillian.
But even knowing what Cillian was, Bran couldn’t leave him behind.
Didn’t even want to.
He laughed, the sound ugly and bitter-tasting, before it turned into a choked sob. Bran scrubbed at his face, flinching when he pressed too hard on the wounds there.
He was losing everyone in his life who had ever mattered.
He might even lose himself.
“Mother, guide me true,” Bran whispered, praying to the deity his coven had followed and the one he hadn’t yet had a chance to bury.
Bran stayed there on the floor through the night, unable to sleep, staring out the window at the darkness that slowly lightened as day approached. For once, he didn’t want to see a sunrise, but it came anyway, inevitable in its breaking dawn.
Sometime later, when the light outside was clear and bright, the bedroom door was unlocked and opened. Damarus stood in the doorway, long hair falling loose to his elbows. He was dressed how he had been for the forest, the outfit meant for a day of riding.
“We are leaving,” Damarus said.
“What?” Bran asked, voice raspy and coming out of swollen lips. His entire face felt hot and sore from what he’d endured yesterday. “No breakfast?”
“You haven’t earned it.”
Bran slowly got to his feet, still in yesterday’s clothes.
The bloodstains down the front of his shirt and coat had dried during the night.
The sleeves were stained as well from when he’d tried to wipe his face before giving up.
He knew he looked a mess, and he knew no one would care.
Witches weren’t worth such compassion, not here in the Otherworld.
“Where’s Cillian?”
Damarus laughed at the question, gesturing for Bran to leave the bedroom. “Here I thought you would want nothing to do with him now that you know the truth of his skin.”