Chapter 14 #2
“So despite knowing how fucking rare a fucking good night’s sleep is, you fucking woke me anyway.
“Uh…”
“It’s about Arienna,” I cut in. “Now sit.”
“Do you need me here?” Echo asks.
“No, Captain.” But I’m not about to kick her out of her own office.
“Good.” She stands with her bottle of tea. “I’m going to bed.”
Fabia curses even more colourfully than she has so far. Stepping out of Echo’s way, she skewers me alive with her eyes. As soon as the door shuts behind her, Jace snickers. “You called her Captain.”
“Sorry, uh, I… Do you want me to get it myself?” I deadpan.
“Fuck off, the two of you, and tell me why the fuck I’m out of bed. I just fell asleep.”
Marching across the room, Fabia sits in Echo’s chair. Her eyes drop to the photo and soften a bit. Then they rise to glare again at me.
I really want to ask her to turn the photo around.
But knowing Echo will notice it being a smidgen out of place, I don’t. Besides, that’s not why I’m here.
Sitting back down in my chair, I hold Fabia’s gaze. “I want to thank you for protecting Arienna all this time. She told me what you did to her grandfather.”
“Fuck.” Her anger draining into exhaustion, she runs a hand down her face. “The protection was mutual. She’s the only reason I’m ah… sane,” she says, then clears her throat. “So does this mean we’re also good on the whole poison thing?”
I smile coldly. “You know I can’t execute you.”
“No, but you can make Echo give me extra laps.” Her anger back, she scowls at me.
“I thought you wanted to fast track your training?” A smile twitches at my lips, but I’m not stupid enough to let it show.
Her eyes narrowing, she shoves to her feet. “Fuck. This isn’t just going to be a ‘thank you and go back to sleep’ convo, is it? It’s going to take all night.” Bending to open the mini fridge, she pulls out an iced coffee. I shiver in fear as I glance at the door behind me.
“Uh… I wouldn’t do –” Jace starts as he takes a step from the wall.
Glaring at him, Fabia uncorks the top, then glugs the whole thing down. Glancing at me, she re-corks the bottle, then puts it back in the fridge before grabbing another one.
Jace whistles. “You have a death wish.”
“She woke me up.” Dropping back into Echo’s chair, she snaps, “Get on with it then. I want to try to at least get a little sleep tonight. My squadron’s to be up at dawn.”
I lean forwards. “Tell me about life in Brownston.”
“Why?”
“Do you want this to take all night or not?”
Glaring at me, she uncorks her bottle and takes a drink. “It’s a cult. Follow all three hundred and eighty rules and don’t ever break them, or you’ll ‘be asked to come down to the station’, where you’ll then be ‘held’ until you apologise and promise not to do it again.” She snorts.
“That’s your punishment?”
She sneers, “How do you not know anything about us? Your trees literally surround us on all sides.” That’s not quite accurate.
We surround roughly half of the Brownstons.
The other Brownstons (for some dumbass reason, every town of theirs shares the same name, as does their kingdom) are to the south of us, well inside Alcara.
I deadpan, “Like you know all about us having slug dick gang bangs and pegging fetishes?”
“I researched that.”
“From what? The fiction section?”
She scowls. “Brownies don’t have a fiction section. We’re not allowed to lie.”
“Fiction isn’t lying.”
“Tell that to them.”
We stare at each other, her annoyance infecting me.
“I want you to start guarding Arienna come tomorrow,” I finally say, hoping that will appease her enough to get her to stop snapping at my throat.
“What?” Her tone is no less sharp. If anything, it’s more biting.
“With Saragese currently injured, perhaps dead –”
“You don’t know?” she cuts in, her eyes widening.
My jaw tics, and I glance away briefly. “I have not had the time to check in –”
“No one’s told you?”
“No. Her situation makes no difference to me.”
“No difference?” She looks at me as if I’m a piece of shit on her shoe.
Exhaling sharply, I try again as a thank you for all she has done for my wife. “I cannot change whether Saragese is hurt or dead. I’ve more important –”
“She’s a fucking person.”
“I am aware,” I bite out. “But I can’t see to everyone who gets injured or dies. We have too many casualties.” My scar burning, I take a gulp of my water. Aurelia saw to each and every person she came across – Razian or Vylian, it didn’t matter to her. A life was a life.
And that broke her.
“She isn’t everyone. She’s your guard,” Fabia pushes.
“Do you want the position or not?” I snap, not in the mood to be lectured by a brownie who knows nothing about war, about death and casualties, about what one has to do to stay sane in this fucked up world where you lose everyone you love one by one.
The silence thickens until I almost give up and leave.
“Why me?” Fabia finally demands. “I barely know what I’m doing. There are dozens of better trained recruits.”
“Because you know Arienna.” And if my queen has any chance of surviving here, she needs Fabia beside her. With Evangeline’s order to use her as both bait and a shield, she will watch me kill someone soon.
And when I’m down in the square publicly executing one of our enemies at a later date, she’ll be alone in her rooms. She’ll hear them scream, and I know she’ll be desperate then to leave me.
To leave this life and all the monsters in our kingdom.
So I’ll be even more vicious torturing the fucker in front of me.
Then she will scream louder. And it will be an endless cycle until she breaks.
“Will you take the job or not?” I ask tightly.
“Of course I’ll fucking take it. It’s why I’m getting my body broken every day by Echo’s fists.”
“She’s fighting you herself?” Jace asks. The last recruit Echo sparred with was Seqora, my older sister. She never bothers with those of normal talent – not even Evangeline got the honour (or the nightmare) of being her disciple.
Fabia snorts. “No. She throws me around like a straw dummy, and I struggle to breathe through my broken ribs. Thank gods for your healers. In Brownston, I would’ve died a hundred times over.”
“Echo hurts you that badly?” She’s a hard-ass, but she isn’t cruel.
She half-laughs, half-snorts. “No. There are no healers in Brownston, just wands, and if someone gets hurt without immediate access to one, then they get the healing rock.”
“The healing rock?” Jace says slowly. “Please tell me that is not what I think it is.”
She looks up at him, taking another sip of her coffee. “Do you think it’s taking a fist-sized rock and beating someone to death with it?”
“I didn’t...”
“Then it’s not what you thought it was.”
“Dear gods. I thought you all were supposed to be the peaceful ones?”
She shrugs. “There is peace in death.”
“Unless you end up in Tartarus or the bottom level of Niflhel or as one of the Hunted Ones in the Tech Duinn.”
“Those places are for bad souls. Why would they go there if they follow the rules like a good brownie does?”
“Because their ‘good laws’ support pedophiles and rapists.”
She places her bottle on the table, the chill from the fridge leaving a water ring on Echo’s desk.
Running a finger around its base, she frowns, her face draining of all her rage and exhaustion.
“There aren’t words for those things in Brownston.
I didn’t know that what Lief had done to me…
” She trails off, her blink lasting a second longer than normal.
Keeping her eyes on the desk, she continues, her voice a bit more shaken.
“A good brownie never says no, you know? For a long time, I thought the problem was with me, that I actually did something wrong that time… It wasn’t until we came here…
until I talked to Echo and she explained that my feelings, my rage and disgust were justified. ”
She looks up at me then. Her silver eyes glisten – not with pain but with anger. She breathes out slowly before saying, “They don’t know it’s wrong. Dab never would have gifted Arienna to her grandfather otherwise.”
“Dab?” The name carves itself into my brain. I will find her, kill her, then revive her to do it all over again.
Wincing, Fabia shakes her head. “She’s one of Arienna’s neighbours. She was a victim herself by him. He took her at five.”
“Richard –” Jace starts, but I ignore him.
Leaning forwards, I place my bottle on the desk so I don’t crush it.
My hand lingers on it, toying with it as I smile at Fabia.
She shrinks back slightly, her face going pale.
“Being a victim is not an excuse for making another victim,” I say softly.
“Her being born into a cult will not be enough to save her. I might not have known Arienna when Dab gifted her to her grandfather, but I will protect her now. So, Fabia,” I say, my eyes never leaving hers.
“Tell me again who Dab is because you’re a fucking bad liar. ”
Her voice shakes, mocking her front of courage. “If you hurt her, Arienna will never forgive you.”
“Only if she finds out, and I assure you, I know how to hide a body.”
Silence descends heavily between us, broken only by the harsh breaths escaping her lips.
“Tell me who she is, or I will kill every single one of them,” I say.
Her eyes fly to Jace, but whatever she sees there doesn’t reassure her. Her fingers shaking, she picks up her bottle of coffee and takes a sip, trying to still her nerves. “You didn’t want me to tell her about Lief because you thought it would break her, but now you want to kill someone she loves?”
“She’s fine knowing about Lief. And you said it yourself,” I say softly, recalling Jace’s debriefing after my queen fell asleep. “The connections aren’t real in Brownston. She will not mourn whoever dies.”
She flinches. “Dab is a victim.”
I twirl the bottle of water around its base. “You will find here, Fabia, that you must often make the choice of who to save and who to sacrifice. If you tell me who Dab really is, I’ll order my women to round up all the brownie children tonight. Think of all those victims you can save.”
It’s an order I’m going to give regardless, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“I will find out with or without you,” I push one last time. “All I need to do is ask any brownie who Dab is.” Including Arienna, but on the off chance that she does find out what I’ve done to this person, I don’t want her blaming herself.
“Then why do you want it from me?”
I smile. The bottle stills under my fingers. “I want to know you’ll kill anyone to protect her.”
Her eyes search mine, conflicted and in pain.
Then they shutter into acceptance.
“Dab…” she says strongly as she looks me in the eye, “is her mother.”