Chapter 7
SEVEN
The female is still breathing.
I can hear her from across the cave. The steady pull of air in and out through lungs that were filling with blood a short time ago. I broke her ribs, dislocated her shoulder, almost shattered her wrist, then poured my dwindling power into mending it all.
The pathetic thing will survive, which is fortunate because I spent magic I couldn’t afford to fix her. Magic I need. Magic that should be rebuilding me, instead of keeping a human princess alive.
Three hundred years of iron draining me to nothing, and I spent the dregs on her because I still need her.
It’s amusing. In a way that makes me want to hit something.
My gaze moves from her to the cave. It’s small, barely deep enough to block the wind.
I picked it for the overhang, and the way the entrance narrows to a gap I can ward.
The wards themselves are thin and fragile, held together with scraps of power I scrounged up from somewhere buried deep within me. But they will hold until dawn.
They have to. Because my people are still in cages, while I sit in a cave with the princess who came to mount my head on her wall, wondering how long it will take for my powers to return.
She doesn’t know how close she came to breaking free.
I made sure of that. Every step, every word, every time I dragged her upright, I hid how much it cost me.
I’m exhausted, but she never registered it.
She saw only what I showed her. A necessary performance, and one that drained me, because my body is a ruin.
That’s what iron does to us. It doesn’t just disrupt our magic, it hollows us out, leaving nothing more than a shell in the shape of what we used to be.
But now the collar is gone, and I can feel every empty space inside where my power should be.
The absence hurts more than any physical wound I’ve taken over the years.
The places where the antlers jutted from my skull throb with a dull, persistent ache that sharpens every time I turn my head.
My fingers find where they used to be, gently touching the tender, new skin that has sealed over wounds that should never have existed.
I trace the curve of my skull with one fingertip, feeling for the damage.
My jaw tightens, and I force myself to stop touching it.
Three days I wore them. Three days of being turned into prey.
My lip curls.
Prey. Me.
The idea would be funny if it wasn’t so rage-inducing. Humans have a particular talent for looking at things and seeing the exact opposite of what is there.
The collar was on. I was in a cage. Therefore, I was safe.
They’ll learn differently now. The ones who survive, anyway.
The memory of how they changed me rises, the way memories do when you’re too exhausted to keep them caged.
They dragged me out of my cage and chained me to a post in the courtyard where the others could watch. That was part of it—making it a spectacle. They wanted the rest of my kind to see what happens, what they force us to become.
My breath fogged in the air while they stripped me naked. Their mage drew circles in chalk and ash around the post, while the other fae pressed close to the bars of their cages, watching with empty eyes. I stood there with iron around my throat and could do nothing to stop what was coming.
The mage was a thin man with ink-stained fingers who never once looked at my face. He consulted a piece of parchment while he worked, reading aloud to his apprentices.
Twelve points, spreading no less than three feet at the widest point. Coloring to match standard hunting stock. The king’s seal is on this order, so we cannot make any mistakes.
Standard hunting stock.
I wanted to tear his fucking throat out with my teeth. I wanted to feel his blood on my hands, and watch the life drain from his eyes while he choked on it. Instead, I stood there. Chained and collared, unable to do anything but hate.
They thought the collar would keep me docile and weak.
They were wrong.
When the mage stepped into the circle and raised his hands, I lunged for his throat. The fae watching shouted, urging me on, but the chains caught me short. The collar blazed white-hot, searing into my neck, and my muscles locked mid-stride.
But I’d moved fast enough to scare them. The blood drained from the mage’s face, and his hands shook as he stepped back. And for a single moment, he feared what he was standing in front of.
That fear was worth every second of pain that followed.
Four guards rushed in, big men used to dealing with fae who still had fight left in them. They forced me to my knees, twisted my arms behind my back, and held me in place while the mage muttered about untamed beasts.
Then he cast his spell.
I’ve known pain. I’ve taken wounds in battle that would have killed a human twice over.
I’ve endured centuries of iron against my skin, while it slowly leached away everything I am.
But I’d never felt anything like this—bone pushing through my skull from the inside, splitting skin, and forcing its way out.
I could feel it growing, each point extending. Branching. The weight increasing as more bone emerged. The pressure built inside my head until I was certain my skull would split apart.
I screamed. I couldn’t help it. The sound tore out of me, and over it I could hear them discussing adjustments.
“The spread lists to the left,” one of the apprentices said. “The eastern point grows crooked.”
“Then straighten it.” The head mage didn’t look up. “The order calls for twelve. There are only ten.”
“The bone resists. If we force it—”
“The king’s daughter wants a trophy worthy of her first hunt. Force it.”
Blood ran down my face while they debated symmetry. The fae in their cages watched in white-faced silence. And when it was done, the mage stepped back and examined his work with the critical eye of a craftsman inspecting a finished piece.
“It will serve. Begin the coloring.”
The coloring was worse. Not the pain of it.
That was nothing compared to the antlers.
But the magic sinking into my skin, changing me, painting me gray-green—erasing the very essence of who I am.
To them I was nothing more than raw material.
A canvas for the king’s vision of what his daughter’s trophy kill should look like.
When it was over, my head bowed under the antlers’ weight, and I was panting through the pain. I caught my reflection in a nearby window. Antlers spreading from my skull, skin the wrong color.
My eyes were the only thing still mine.
I glance down at my legs. The gray-green is almost gone now, sloughing away in patches. By morning, I’ll look more like myself again. Whatever that means after three hundred years of being someone else’s property.
The female shifts in her sleep, pulling me back to the present. I track the movement automatically—position, breathing, distance from me, the entrance, and anything she might use as a weapon. Old habits. Ones I learned long before every human in my vicinity became a threat.
I lean my head back against the wall and watch her through half-closed eyes.
She’s curled on her side, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her torso.
Her tunic has ridden up, exposing the curve of her ribs where the bruises I gave her are fading.
The marks on her throat are still there, though.
I didn’t bother healing them. She can wear my fingerprints for a few days more.
A reminder of what I could do again, anytime I choose.
She fought me when I healed her. Screamed and thrashed and clawed at my arms while I held her down and fixed what I’d broken. She passed out before I finished, which was a mercy for both of us. Her screaming made my hands want to stop healing and start killing.
I didn’t let that happen. I held myself still until the urge passed.
She thought I was going to force myself on her. It was in her eyes. In the way she fought. As if I’d want that. As if years of human females taking what they wanted from me would leave me hungry for more.
The thought alone makes revulsion fill my veins. My skin crawls with the memory of hands that weren’t welcome.
I know what it is to be used. I know it better than she could possibly imagine.
The humans don’t care what any of us might have been. All they see are beasts that would make interesting trophies or beautiful bedmates.
The cages where they kept us were arranged by type.
Fighters in one row—the big ones, the aggressive ones, the fae who might provide a good chase and a satisfying kill.
Oddities in another—unusual features, strange coloring.
Fragile creatures, most of them, who once would have gone out of their way to help mortals, not harm them.
And then there was my row. The ones they called decorative. The ones with faces humans like to look at, and bodies they want to touch.
They put me there because of my face. I wasn’t large enough or brutish enough to fit their idea of what a fae warrior should look like.
They still have no idea what they held. No idea of the things I did during the war, how many of their kind I’d killed, or the name their soldiers gave me while fleeing in terror from my blades.
They looked at me and saw something pretty. Something to be used.
I let them think that. Every year I spent in a noble woman’s bed was a year I didn’t spend bleeding out in a hunting ground. Every time one of them chose me for their entertainment, I survived … I waited … and I burned so hot with fury that I’m surprised they couldn’t feel it through my skin.
They would come to the cages looking for entertainment.
A little something to brighten a long winter, they’d say.
Something pretty to keep them company. They’d walk along my row, examining us through the bars, and eventually one of them would stop in front of my cage, and look at me the way you’d look at a horse you were thinking of buying.