Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
ALLERIA
Because they are my people. And I will not leave them to rot.
The words he said won’t leave me alone. I turn them over in my head, trying to fit them into everything I thought I knew about fae.
Animals don’t have people. Mindless beasts don’t go back for each other. Everything I’ve been taught says fae are dangerous, yes, but dangerous in the same way wolves are dangerous. Predators operating on instinct, not loyalty.
But he said my people the way Brennan says my king or my princess. It bothers me … a lot.
Each time we pass anyone, Cairn drops back into position behind me, head bowed, shoulders hunched, the glamoured collar dark against this throat. His performance is flawless, but I know what’s underneath it now.
The glamour shows something broken. A dull-eyed, defeated fae, with a collar eating into damaged skin.
But I watched him climb out of that stream, with water sheeting off muscle and scar tissue.
I’ve seen the way he holds himself when no one is watching—spine straight, shoulders loose, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. Alert and ready.
He’s been different since the stream. More … present. The marks on his skin are darker, and when he flexes his fingers, silver flickers at his fingertips before he closes his fist and snuffs it out.
“You’re changing.” I don’t mean to say it out loud.
“Yes.”
“The skin color and antlers … they weren’t you. This is how you really look.”
“This?” A hand waves down his torso, and he gives a soft laugh. “No. This is what I look like after centuries of iron draining everything I am to dregs.”
I fall silent after that. It’s becoming too easy to forget that he’s the same thing who nearly killed me in the forest days ago.
I stop walking beside a crumbling stone wall, staring at it. It’s familiar. I remember it, because Nella pointed out the wildflowers growing between the gaps. Cairn takes three more steps before he realizes I’m not beside him. He turns and lifts an eyebrow.
“This is the road to the Dell.”
His expression doesn’t change.
“You’re going back now? I thought you were going to wait until—” I bite my lip. Until what? Until he was strong enough to kill everyone there? Or until he could find a way to slip in and free his people?
He starts walking again without answering me. I want to ask what he's planning, what he thinks he can do alone against the entire hunting preserve. But I know it won’t get me anywhere. He won’t tell me a thing.
With a soft sigh, I jog to catch up to him. The road crests a low rise, and he stops at the top. Below us, the land spreads out in gentle folds, and in the distance, rising against the afternoon sky, a plume of smoke.
The Dell.
It’s right there. A mile away, maybe less. I can see the high fence, and beyond it the shape of the lodge itself.
“This is where I leave you.”
The words don’t make sense to me at first.
“What?”
He’s not looking at me. His attention is fixed on the distant smoke and the place that caged him.
“If you start walking now, you’ll be inside their walls within the hour. Tell them you escaped from me.”
I stare at him.
“You’re letting me go?”
“Yes.” One word, nothing more.
I’ve wanted this since he grabbed me in that clearing. I’ve dreamed of rescue, of escape, and leaving this nightmare behind. So why aren’t my feet moving?
“Why?”
“You’ve served your purpose. Go home. Forget this ever happened. Go back to your palace and your daydreams.”
You’ve served your purpose. The words should be a relief. He’s not going to kill me. He’s letting me go. I’m free.
“What purpose?”
“Does it matter?”
“You kept me alive. You healed me. You could have dumped my body in the forest and no one would have found me. Why are you letting me go?”
“Would you rather I kill you and send your body to the Dell instead?” The sarcasm in his tone is biting and dark.
“Of course not, but—”
“I needed your blood to break the collar and the wards. You were useful.”
“Useful?” Why is my voice rising? “And now I’m not?”
“What were you expecting?” His head tilts, and amusement gleams in his eyes.
“Gratitude? A heartfelt goodbye? Perhaps you wanted me to tell you that you’re different.
That somewhere between you pointing an arrow at me and ogling me at the stream, I started to see you as more than a human female who came to kill me for sport. ”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to. I know that look.” His voice turns soft. “I’ve seen it a thousand times before. Human females who want to fuck the dangerous fae. Who want to believe they’re special. That they’ve tamed something wild and vicious.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Go home, Moirthalen, before I change my mind.”
I open my mouth to … To do what? Argue about being free?
What is wrong with me?
The sound of hoofbeats reaches us, coming toward us at a rapid pace. His head snaps toward it.
“Go.” His voice is sharp. “Now.”
“Cairn—”
“Go.” Then he’s not there anymore.
I spin, searching the trees along the road, the ditch that runs on the opposite side, the shadows pooling behind the wall. Nothing. He’s gone between one breath and the next.
He didn’t say goodbye.
The thought is absurd. He kidnapped me. Hurt me. Used me. Why would he say goodbye … and why do I care that he didn’t?
I never got to say—
What? What would I have said? Thank you for not killing me? Thank you for healing me when you could have let me die?
I don’t know what I would have said, and now I’ll never find out. He’s gone, the hoofbeats are growing louder, and I have to get a grip on myself.
Three riders come around the bend in the road, all wearing the Dell’s colors, swords at their hips. They see me, and the lead rider hauls back on his reins.
“Miss. What are you doing on the road alone?”
“I … I am Princess Alleria.” There’s a tremor to my voice that I don’t have to fake. “I—"
“Gods above!” His eyes go wide. “Is that … Markus, that’s her! That’s the missing princess. Go back and inform Cowen.”
One rider wheels his horse around, and spurs it back toward the Dell. The remaining two stare at me.
“Where have you been?” The first rider dismounts and walks toward me cautiously, eyes scanning me from head to toe. “Are you hurt?”
“I … I escaped.” The lie comes smooth and easy. “While the fae … while it was distracted. I ran.”
Why am I lying for him? Why aren’t I telling them the truth? Why aren’t I screaming that he’s close by somewhere?
But I know why.
You told the serving girl I was a pet. You told the seamstress your father bought me. You spent the night in a room with me. What do you think the guards will see when they find us? A kidnapped princess, or a woman who helped a fae escape?
Every lie I told to survive has become a link in a chain of deception.
If I tell the truth now—that he took me prisoner, and threatened to kill me—they’ll ask why I bought him clothes, why I sat in the common room and fed him while he knelt at my side …
Why I shared his bed. The guards witnessed what happened there.
He knew. He knew what he was building around me, and I was blind to it.
“You’re safe now, my lady.” The rider’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “We’ve turned the entire region upside down searching for you.”
Safe.
“Allow us to take you back to the Dell. Your companions refused to leave. Your handmaiden was returned to the palace, but your guards remained to search for you. They wouldn’t give up.
” As he speaks, he helps me onto his horse, then mounts behind me, sliding an arm around my waist to keep me steady.
The remaining rider brings his horse to our side, and they turn as one back toward the Dell.
I look back over my shoulder at the empty road. Cairn could be ten feet away, and I’d never know. Or he could be miles away, I know how fast he can move, I have no doubt he could put enough distance between us that no one would find him if I told the truth.
I open my mouth to warn them, then close it again.
The Dell appears ahead, and we ride through the gates toward the wooden lodge with smoke curling from its chimney. My gaze goes to the fenced enclosure where I first saw him. It’s empty, the post he was restrained at standing bare, with the chains heaped at its base.
I can still see him there. His head bowed under the weight of those antlers, with gray-green skin that I thought was his natural coloring. The iron collar wrapped around the ruin of his throat.
The courtyard is crowded with people, but my gaze is searching for one person only. My heart picks up speed when I see him, tears stinging my eyes.
Brennan pushes through the people milling around, reaching for me before the horse has fully stopped. He lifts me down, his arms closing around me so tight I can barely breathe.
“Alleria.” His voice breaks on my name. I’ve never heard him sound like that. “Gods, girl. We thought—”
“I know.” My face is pressed against his chest, and I breathe him in, letting the familiar scent of leather and horse and the soap he’s used for as long as I can remember fill my lungs. “I know what you thought.”
Someone wraps a blanket around my shoulders. Voices crowd in from all sides.
Is she hurt? Does she need a healer? What happened? Where was she?
I answer with the same words I gave the riders. I escaped. I ran. I’ve been lost, hiding from the fae, and trying to find my way back.
The lies come easier each time.
Huntmaster Cowen pushes through the crowd. He bows low, lower than he did when I first arrived, when I was just a patron instead of a scandal he’s desperate to survive.
“Lady Alleria. Thank the gods you’re safe!” There’s fear under the relief. Fear of what my father might do as punishment for allowing a fae to escape with his daughter. The rumor alone could ruin his business.
“Where is the creature now?” His voice hardens. “Do you know?”
I think of Cairn vanishing into nothing.
“I don’t know. I ran as soon as I could. I didn’t look back.”