Chapter 9
NINE
She falls asleep eventually, slumping back onto the mattress gracelessly.
Even after cleaning up in the washbasin, she’s filthy, with dirt ground into her skin, her hair matted, and her clothes are torn in at least a dozen places.
Three days ago she was a noblewoman, confident and certain of her place in the world.
Now, she looks more like the fae I’ve left behind at the Dell—a terrified captive, fighting to stay alive.
I wait until I’m sure her breathing has evened out, and her heartbeat slows to the steady rhythm of deep sleep, then I ward the room.
It takes longer than it should to form the thin barrier across the door and window.
It’s nothing that would stop a determined mage from getting in, or hold against a real assault, but it’s enough to alert me if anyone tries to enter, and will buy me a few seconds.
Every thread of magic I draw on is a struggle. Being bound so long with iron has left my power a guttering flame where it should be a bonfire. It will come back, all of it, eventually. For now, it leaves me weaker than a child.
The food she left sits on the small table, and my attention keeps going to it. I look away. Look back. My mouth waters, despite every effort to ignore it.
Hunger is a distraction. One I’ve learned to push down and ignore. For years, I’ve lived on scraps and filthy water. I should be able to ignore this now. But …
She tore the bread in half, while I watched. She didn’t eat the entire bowl of stew, and I know she was hungry. I heard her stomach grumbling. She had every reason to eat it all. Yet she didn’t.
I don’t know what to do with that knowledge.
My body needs fuel. I need to heal, regain my strength. If I want to stay free, that means swallowing the pride I didn’t know I still had, and taking what she’s left for me.
I keep one eye on the sleeping female as I cross the room and stop before the small table. The smell of the stew hits me, and before I can stop myself, I’m lifting the bowl to my lips. I don’t bother with the spoon.
The first mouthful is almost enough to do what centuries of abuse couldn’t. My legs buckle, and one hand hits the edge of the table to steady myself. Meat, salt, the richness of gravy. When had I last tasted anything like this?
The second mouthful is worse. Or better. I can’t tell.
Flavor. Actual flavor, not the gray slop they toss into the cages. I tip the bowl higher, drinking it down, then drag my fingers through the dregs and lick them clean. The bread tears apart in my hands. I stuff it into my mouth, followed by the cheese.
And all the while, I watch her, hoping she doesn’t wake and see me eating like the animal she believes me to be.
When I’m done, I scan the room again. It’s small, but clean.
The window has shutters that don’t quite fit properly, and the door has a lock a child could pick.
The bed has a thin mattress stuffed with straw that smells of other humans’ sweat …
and yet compared to where I’ve spent the last three centuries, this is a palace.
That thought takes my attention back to the female sleeping on the bed.
She is a problem I haven’t solved yet. She can be useful, but she’s also a liability. A king’s daughter. I don’t know who the king is now, but I remember the one who ruled when I was last free. He was responsible for the war that erupted between our kind, and it was my blade that ended his life.
This one sent his daughter to hunt a fae. A gift. I’m sure he thought it was very thoughtful.
Sooner or later, news will spread. The Dell won’t be able to keep the news hidden for long that a fae escaped, spiriting away the king’s daughter with him. As much as they’ll try to keep it a secret, people will talk.
And the longer I keep her, the more risk there is of her being recognized or, eventually, trying to escape or kill me.
I could kill her. Leave her body here and disappear before dawn. It would be easy enough. She sleeps like she trusts me not to do it, which is either stupidity or exhaustion. Probably both.
But I need her, as much as the admission grates on me. A fae walking alone through human lands will draw attention. A fae trailing behind a noblewoman is invisible. If I want to free the rest of my people, I need her face, her voice, and her ability to lie to her own kind.
I shift on the floor, trying to ease the ache in my back.
Another side-effect of reduced power. I don’t have the stamina I once did or the quick healing.
It’ll come back, along with my power, but it’s another thing that needs time.
I could join the female on the bed. She’s small, barely taking up half of it, but—
The thought of lying beside a human female turns my stomach. So I stay where I am, back against the door, and close my eyes, letting my awareness sink into the wards, and eventually …
Eventually, I sleep.
I don’t know how long I sleep for, but something wakes me. My attention goes straight to the wards. They’re intact, humming quietly at the edge of my awareness. There are no footsteps coming from outside the room.
So, what woke me?
I keep my breathing steady, my body still, my eyes closed, and I listen.
She’s awake.
Her breathing has changed, and her heartbeat has accelerated. The soft rustle of blankets as she moves fills the room, then the bedframe creaks.
She’s getting up.
I track her by sound. The whisper of her feet on wood. The catch of her breath as she tries to be quiet. She’s heading toward the table, where the empty bowl, cup, and plate still sits.
There’s a soft scrape of metal against wood.
She’s picking up the knife. It’s meant for spreading butter, the blade barely sharp enough to slice through the bread or cheese.
But a blade doesn’t need to be sharp to open a throat.
It just needs to be pressed hard enough, drawn fast enough.
In the right hands, even a dull knife can do damage.
I’ve killed with less.
I wait, curious to see what she’s going to do.
She crosses the room step by careful step. Her breathing is louder now, fast and shallow, and fear comes off her in waves. She’s terrified, and yet she’s doing this anyway.
Interesting. Stupid, but interesting.
She crouches beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body and hear the rabbit-fast beat of her heart.
The blade touches my throat. Her hand is shaking.
I can feel the tremor through the steel, a faint vibration that betrays everything her silence is trying to hide.
She adjusts her grip, and the edge presses harder, finding the soft spot just below my jaw where blood runs close to the surface.
She knows where to cut. Someone must have taught her that, an odd lesson for a princess. Or maybe she figured it out for herself. Did she lie awake at night imagining all the ways she might need to kill something? I wonder if she pictured a fae when she practiced.
I don’t move.
The knife presses harder. She’s working up her nerve, and I can almost hear her thoughts.
Just do it. One quick motion and it’s over. He’s asleep, he won’t even feel it. Just do it and run and don’t look back.
She came here to hunt, but hunting from horseback with a bow is different from this. This is close. This is personal. This is feeling the blade bite into flesh and watching the life drain out of someone’s eyes.
Seconds pass. Ten. Twenty. The blade trembles against my throat.
I open my eyes. She flinches, a full-body jerk that almost pulls the knife back a fraction. She catches herself, and the blade steadies, pressed against my skin, her knuckles white around the handle.
“Go on.”
Her breath hitches at the sound of my voice. Her pupils are blown wide, whites showing around the edges. She has a knife to my throat, and she still can’t make herself use it.
“You’ve got it right where you need it. A little more pressure, until you cut me, and then I’ll bleed out.” I hold her gaze. “What are you waiting for?”
“Shut up!” Her voice shakes.
“You won’t get another chance, Moirthalen. You’re armed. I’m not. All you have to do is—”
She presses harder, and there’s a sting as the blade breaks skin. A thin line of warmth trickles down my neck.
“I said shut up!”
I smile. Under all that fear and trembling, there’s something with teeth after all.
Her eyes widen, and that’s when I move. My hand closes around her wrist and twists.
The knife clatters to the floor. Before she can react, before she can draw breath to scream, I have her on her back, wrists pinned above her head.
She struggles beneath me, body arching and twisting, her hips bucking as she tries to throw me off.
I press her harder into the floor, my chest against hers, my legs pinning hers so she can’t get leverage.
I can feel the heat of her body through the thin fabric of my tunic.
She’s panting, her breath hot against my face.
For a moment, I’m not here. I’m in a silk-draped bedroom with perfumed air and hands that won’t stop touching. I’m pinned under a body that takes what it wants while the collar ensures my compliance.
I shake my head, forcing myself back to this moment. This is different. I’m the one in control.
“Let me go!” She writhes again, and her thigh slides against mine. Disgust fills me at the touch. “Let me—”
“No.”
She spits in my face.
I wipe it away with my free hand.
Fury and fear battle for dominance in her eyes. Her jaw is set, but her chin is quivering. She tried to kill me and failed. And now, she’s pinned beneath me with no hope of escape. Yet instead of begging for her life, she spat at me.
“Just kill me already. I’m tired of waiting.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t look away.
“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
“Then what do you want? To torture me?”
I don’t answer. Her body is taut beneath mine, every muscle coiled tight.
Her chest rises and falls against me with each ragged intake of breath.
Her wrists are small in my grip, the bones delicate, her skin soft and warm.
Her pulse hammers under my fingers. The heat of her body is everywhere we touch. Her lips part, eyes locked on mine …
I need to get off her. Now. Before the memories drag me back under.
I release her, and roll to my feet.
“Next time, when you have your enemy at a disadvantage, don’t hesitate.”
She stays where she is, rubbing her wrists, and glaring at me.
“You had the knife at my throat for over a minute.” I focus on that instead of the memories trying to take over. “If you’d cut when you first touched steel to skin, you might have done damage before I could stop you.” I cross to the window, putting my back to her. “Hesitation will get you killed.”
“I cut you. I drew blood.”
I laugh. It sounds rusty, even to me. “You’d have had better luck using your fingernails.”
There’s silence for a moment, and then the bed creaks as she climbs back onto it.
“Why didn’t you?” she asks softly. “Kill me, I mean.”
“Go to sleep.”
She doesn’t argue. Whatever fight she had in her has drained away, at least for now.
I turn my attention to the town outside the window. Most of the windows are dark, the folk of this place tucked into their beds with no idea of what is sleeping near them tonight. A dog barks somewhere, a lonely sound that echoes off the buildings and fades into silence.
My thoughts go to my people. Caged, waiting to be chosen as a new pet or for a hunt.
I don’t know how many have survived. We were kept apart, isolated in separate cages, and rotated so we couldn’t form bonds.
I saw faces through the bars sometimes, heard the screams when they took someone to be modified for a hunt.
But I don’t know how many of my warriors they caught, how many are still alive, and how many have already been mounted on some noble’s wall.
I need information. I need to know how many guards the Dell has, what kind of wards protect it. I need to know if there’s a way back in that doesn’t end up with me dead or back in iron.
But first, I need to regain my strength. Each day without iron wrapped around my throat, my magic will recover a little more. Every day I’ll move closer to what I was before they caught me.
So I must wait and plan. And when I’m strong enough, then I will make my move.
Behind me, her breathing has evened out again.
She’s asleep, or close to it. I stay at the window a while longer, watching the empty street and letting my thoughts settle.
The cut on my throat has already stopped bleeding.
It was shallow enough that it’ll be healed by morning, even with my weakened state.
I give another soft laugh.
She tried, I’ll give her that. If she’d had the nerve to follow through, been a little faster, a little more decisive …
But she wasn’t. And that knowledge will eat at her, making her doubt herself, and make her wonder if she’ll freeze again the next time she has a chance. Fear and doubt are useful tools. I’ll let them do their work.
Yet … when I had her pinned, when she should have been begging, she spat in my face and told me to get it over with.
Foolish human. If I’d wanted to hurt her, defiance would only have made it sweeter.
But I’ve known fae who would have broken after what I’ve put her through. Warriors. Nobles who survived the war. Yet this soft human princess … this Moirthalen … hasn’t broken yet.
I turn, studying the shape of her in the dim light. She’s on the far edge, curled into that tight ball she’s assumed every night we’ve been together so far.
I move toward the door, then hesitate. The floor is hard and cold, my body is depleted, my magic barely a flicker, and the ache in my bones goes deeper than discomfort. I need real rest if I’m going to heal.
I turn and walk to the bed, lowering myself onto the edge. She doesn’t stir when the mattress dips under my weight. I stretch out with my back to her, putting as much distance between us as the narrow frame allows.
It’s just a bed. I’ve endured worse things than lying next to a human female.
I keep telling myself that until my eyes close and I return to dreams of iron, cages, and the sound of screams that might be mine.