Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
Fenix
One hundred years earlier…
“Ineed Fenix,” Overseer Barnes says from the doorway.
I pause mid-pot-scrub and glance at the cook. A strange prickling starts at the back of my neck. This isn’t the usual time to feed the prisoners.
The cook nods—it’s not like she has any more choice in this than I do.
“Come with me, lad,” Overseer Barnes says before he pivots and strides off.
Great. Some new grim task likely awaits me. I wipe my hands on the rag tied around my waist—an apron of sorts—and hang it on the hook beside the sink.
When I get to the doorway, I pause and glance back.
Everybody has stopped and is staring at me… like they will never see me again.
It’s not like I fucking like the kitchen. We just toil from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed. Only this strange, mismatched lot has become a family.
I tear my gaze away and hurry to catch up with the overseer.
Questions burn on my tongue as I match his brisk stride. I keep them to myself. I may have grown over the last few months—be taller than him now—but I’m nothing but skin and bone, and he has hands like fucking shovels.
Still, my heart is hammering. Something about this feels off.
No—everything does.
“You’re to accompany the war party,” he says brusquely.
My mouth opens on an almost question before I can snap it shut.
He cuts me a glare. “Don’t ask questions, lad. Do what you’re told, when you’re told. Keep your fucking head down and your ears open.”
The fact that he says this much tells me my life is about to take a turn.
We enter the hall—the one I only ever come to for the inspections—to find it packed with guards and groups of servants. He cuts diagonally across the room to a guard with five servants gathered around him.
The guard looks me over, his lip curling like I’m not worth much. Finally, he lifts his chin at Overseer Barnes. “He’ll do.” Then to us servants. “Follow.”
He leads us along corridors and into parts of the citadel I’ve never seen before.
My stomach churns.
A war party, Overseer Barnes said. War parties go to war.
My eyes feel too damn wide as we cross paths with rushing servants and purposeful soldiers. We emerge through two great wooden doors.
A vast stone arena stretches out beyond them, the ground packed hard and sandy beneath my well-worn boots. High walls rise on every side, hemming it in, the stone dark and weather-stained.
At the far end stand two great pillars of pale stone, carved with strange markings. They loom over everything like they are waiting for something.
Soldiers line the space in ordered ranks, armor catching the light. Wagons with lines of servants busy filling them with sacks and crates. Scattered among it all are mounted dark fae cavalry, their horses beautiful, sleek, with rich, glossy coats.
We are directed to an empty wagon near the back and stacked supplies beside it. “Get to work,” the guard says.
We lug crates and sacks onto the wagon, stacking them under the guard’s watchful gaze.
A sudden boom shatters the air, followed by a flash like lightning. I duck, head swinging toward the sound. Between the vast stone pillars is a great, undulating oval that spits sparks of light.
A portal?
“Get back to work!”
A crop lands across the center of my back, jolting me out of my daze. I stagger to catch up with the line and drop my sack of grain into the back of the cart.
But the image is emblazoned upon my mind.
A portal.
One that will take this army somewhere else… maybe another world.
“Do you know what Fenix means?” My mother’s words return to me. “It means you won’t stay here forever.”
The last few sacks are stowed.
“Form up!” the guard calls.
The wagon begins to lumber forward. We cluster behind, following it toward the portal.
Rapid hoofbeats come from behind. A dozen fae soldiers in smart livery ride in. And in the center, General Adharde. To his right, a brutish rockling is collared and leashed. It trots alongside the general’s horse, towering, its heavy tread making the ground vibrate.
Being this close to one makes my skin crawl.
I have seen the before and the after.
I have heard the sounds that accompany the making.
But I’m distracted from my horror by the young girl upon a fine horse who sits to Adharde’s left.
She has the same vacant eyes as the rockling.
She is dressed in silk.
Gems adorn her hair.
Unlike the harsh, iron collar around the rockling’s throat, hers is delicate and gold.
Molly.
Just a different kind of pet.
I’ve never been outside before. The dreary strip of daylight as I walked between the kitchen and the pig pen was my lot. But in the many days since we passed through the oily embrace of the portal, I have come to understand the oppressive nature of my life.
How hard it must have been for someone like Molly when she was ripped from her home and taken prisoner.
I don’t want to go back.
It didn’t take me long to come to that conclusion.
Part of me wishes I’d never come out here. Never seen the wonder of a forest. Never heard a bird, nor the rustle of an animal in the undergrowth. Never felt the dappled sunlight against my skin.
But now I have, and it has broken me for sure.
I am older, if no wiser, for the experience, and when we return—as we will after this war party has done with its war—the oppression will cut all the deeper.
Thoughts of escape consume me as we follow the supply wagon through the forest.
In the evening, when we set up camp.
When I help prepare and distribute the food.
And when I scrub pots in a stream, where I used to scrub them in the kitchen.
A few days ago, somebody tried to flee. Not one of the lads with me at this supply wagon, but another wagon a little further along.
They were brought back to the camp and bound to a tree.
Then Adharde the bastard, as he is now known, took a blade and opened up his belly.
He screamed at first, then he went quiet.
He took a long time to die, and before he did, every slave in the camp was escorted past him so we might see our fate.
You would think such a lesson might deter me.
But no. It just makes me determined that if I’m going to run, I need to do it right. I will escape these sick bastards one way or another… and fulfill my mother’s promise when she named me.
“Halt!”
The long procession of soldiers and supplies comes to a grinding halt. It is early in the day for us to be stopping, and I am instantly on alert.
“What do you think it means?” Peter, a young lad in my party, asks under his breath. “Do you think another slave tried to escape?”
“No idea,” I reply. My stomach is not ready for another disembowelment. Knowing Adharde the bastard, he has some other creative way to make a slave die slowly to inspire fresh nightmares.
A mounted fae soldier gallops past with a leashed rockling… and then another.
“Stay with the wagon,” our guard says, fingers restless against the hilt of his sword.
A shadow passes overhead, blocking out the sun in an unnatural way.
“What was that?” Peter whispers.
“I don’t fucking know,” I say. “But it was big. And it flies.”
Another shadow passes over us.
Then another.
I subconsciously edge closer to the wagon like it might offer some protection.
This is a war party, I remind myself. It is the nature of a war party to go to war.
A great boulder suddenly drops through the trees, cracking branches and raining leaves down over us before it lands smack in the middle of the supply wagon.
BOOM.
The wagon collapses, ricocheting bits of wood and supplies everywhere.
I duck.
Then I run.
This isn’t me trying to escape. This is a primal instinct taking command of my brain and screaming DANGER.
Another mighty boulder is sent careening through the ranks of soldiers and supply wagons.
Stupid bastards are going to get us all killed.
A great screech rends the air.
I’m too busy running a zigzag path on my quest to get the hell away… and nearly collide with a rockling as it charges through the trees. A riderless horse careers past. I duck to the side, stumble on a root, and pitch forward at a dead run.
That’s when I realize the trees are running out, and I stagger onto the edge of a grassy plain… and stop.
Land stretches out before me, churned and trampled beneath boots and hooves.
War.
They meet in pockets: our soldiers and an unknown ground force in a simple livery of brown and blue.
Dark fae cavalry sweep across the field in tight formation, their sleek horses cutting through the chaos, armor glinting as they ride down anything in their path. Leashes snap free, releasing the rocklings to surge ahead, bearing down on the ranks of men.
My breath catches as I brace for the cavalry to smash through the battling human ranks…
Huge, winged creatures swoop down in a tight formation every bit as controlled as the fae cavalry. Sharp beaks. Lethal talons. The likes of which I have never seen. Griffins—some half-remembered tale gives them a name.
One plucks a mounted fae from his horse and sends him flying into the nearby trees—another launches at a rockling. The beast swings his club. Feathers burst into the air. Another griffin dives, his beak closing over the rockling’s head.
He beats his wings. The other snags the rockling’s feet. Together, they rip the beast clean in half and use his broken body to toss into the fae ranks. More dive and attack. Others circle overhead.
Human soldiers rally below, shouting over the din, forming broken lines that buckle and reform under the onslaught. Steel rings against steel. Men scream—horses rear and fall.
The ground trembles beneath the clash.