Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
ALLERIA
The walls are closing in. I can’t move. I can’t do anything except lie here while earth presses up from below and the foundations of a building press down from above. I can smell the wood and mildew with every breath I take.
I’m lying on my back in a space so narrow that when I turn my head, splinters catch in my hair and scratch across my forehead.
Tiny legs, too many of them, pick their way across the back of my hand.
I try to jerk away, except there’s nowhere to go, and my body ignores my demand.
I have no choice but to stay where I am while the thing explores my fingers, my wrist, before moving up my inner arm.
I open my mouth to scream, and nothing comes out. There’s no air, only the overpowering smell of rat droppings, rotting wood, and damp earth.
I’m going to die here. Buried alive in the dark with vermin crawling over my skin, and no one will ever find me … no one will ever know.
I wake, gasping for air and clawing at blankets that have wrapped around my face.
For one long, terrible moment, I don’t know where I am. Embers pulse red in an unfamiliar hearth. My nightgown clings to my skin, soaked through with sweat that’s already turning cold. My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard, I can feel it in my throat.
The Dell. I’m at the Dell. In a bed, in a room, with space around me, and air to breathe, and light bleeding through the shuttered window.
I’m not buried, or trapped, or dying alone in the dark.
I sit up slowly, pushing damp hair away from my face with hands that won’t stop shaking.
The dream is already fading, but the feeling won’t let go of me.
That horrible crushing fear that I would never get out.
Even now, with firelight flickering against the walls and the soft sounds of the Dell waking outside, I can’t shake it.
It was a nightmare. After everything I’ve been through, it shouldn’t surprise me.
I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my chin on top of them, making myself as small as possible. Outside the window, the sky is lightening from black to gray. Dawn is coming and I’ve barely slept.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face. Not the gray-green creature with antlers sprouting from his skull, or the glamour he used around people, but the real one. Those golden eyes watching me, the sharp angles of his jaw, and the black marks he said showed his rank and victories on his skin.
What rank? What victories? What did he mean by that?
Go home, Alleria. Forget this ever happened.
He said it as though forgetting is a choice I can make. As if I could close my eyes and unsee everything that happened.
A knock at the door startles me badly enough that I jump.
“My lady?” A woman’s voice, slightly muffled through the door. “I’ve brought breakfast.”
I have to clear my throat twice before I can answer. “Come … Come in.”
The servant who enters is much older than me, with graying hair pulled back in a severe knot. She sets a tray on the small table by the hearth, then kneels to build the fire back up.
I watch her work. She doesn’t look at me directly, keeping her eyes lowered, and her presence as unobtrusive as possible. I wonder what she’s heard about me. The stories must have spread through the Dell about the princess who was taken by a fae and somehow came back alive.
What do they imagine happened to me out there in the forest? What do they think he did?
“Will there be anything else, my lady?”
“No. Thank you.”
She bobs her head and withdraws, pulling the door closed behind her.
I stay where I am, arms wrapped around my knees, staring at the tray she left.
Steam rises from the cup of tea. There’s fruit, cheese, and fresh bread beside it.
It smells good. It should make my stomach growl.
But, the thought of eating makes me sick.
I force myself to get up anyway, wash my face in the basin of cold water, pull on the clothes I stripped off last night, and then sit at the table to eat.
The fruit tastes bland. I try the cheese, and it’s the same.
Sustenance without pleasure, fuel for a body that only remembers how awful it was making him kneel beside me so I could share a meal with him in the common room of the inn.
I’m staring at the tray, trying to convince myself to eat more, when another knock comes.
“Alleria?” It’s Brennan’s voice this time. “May I come in?”
“Yes.”
The door opens and he steps inside, then stops when he sees me sitting at the table. I must look worse than I thought, because concern flickers across his face before he can smooth it away.
“How did you sleep?”
“Fine.”
He doesn’t call me out on the lie. “We can leave for the palace whenever you’re ready. Cowen has offered a carriage for the journey home. I sent Nella back with Wil when—” His jaw clenches.
“Before we go, I want to see where they keep them.” Until I speak the words, I had no idea it was something I needed to do.
Brennan’s brows draw together. “Keep what?”
“The fae.” I force myself to meet his eyes. “I want to see where they’re kept.”
“Alleria.” His voice softens, and I hate it—the gentleness, the careful handling, the way he’s looking at me. “You don’t need to put yourself through that. What happened—”
“What happened is exactly why I need to see.” The words come out harder than I intend, sharp enough to make him frown harder.
“He wasn’t what I expected. He wasn’t mindless, Brennan.
He spoke to me. In words. In sentences. He told me—” I shake my head.
“It doesn’t matter what he told me. But I need to see the others.
I need to know if they’re all like him, or if he was different somehow. ”
“They have magic,” Brennan says slowly. “The collars suppress it, but sometimes sounds can seem like—”
“Four days. I spent four days with him. I know the difference between magic tricks and speech. He talked to me. He answered questions.” He made threats and kept them. “Please, Brennan. I need to see.”
He’s quiet for a long time, studying my face with sharp eyes. I brace myself for more arguments or gentle redirections, more attempts to protect me from what I’m asking for.
“I’ll speak to Cowen,” he says finally. “They don’t usually allow patrons to see the holding pens, but after what happened … he might make an exception.”
He leaves the room, and I force myself to choke down a few more bites of food.
By the time another knock comes, I’ve convinced myself Cowen will refuse.
That I’ll be bundled into a carriage and sent home, with this horrible uncertainty eating me alive.
Brennan’s face when he opens the door tells me otherwise.
“He agreed. He’s waiting in the hall.”
Cowen’s smile is fixed firmly in place when I step out of the room, but his eyes remain cold.
“Your Highness, I really must advise against this. The holding pens aren’t … they’re not a place for ladies. I don’t want to cause you any more distress after everything you've already been through.”
“I appreciate your concern.” I’m surprised by how steady my voice sounds. “But I want to see them.”
His smile flickers and fades. He can’t refuse me, not after what happened.
Not after his establishment lost the king’s daughter to a fae, and nearly got her killed.
The fact my father hasn’t already burned this place to the ground is a mercy that means he’s in no position to refuse me anything, and we both know it.
“Of course, my lady.” His response is stiff. “I’ll escort you myself.”
We walk in silence through the lodge and out into the courtyard. I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead when we pass the trophy wall, refusing to look at the antlers and tusks that line it. But I can feel it, the invisible eyes of the fae they were taken from, all those lives reduced to decoration.
Cowen leads us past the outbuildings I barely glanced at when I arrived, and through a narrow passage. The morning air is cool and damp, carrying the faint smell of the forest and the sharper scent of horses and hay.
Then another smell starts to creep in.
At first, I think I’m imagining it. A hint of something foul mixed with the clean air. But with each step it grows stronger, thicker, until I have to press my hand over my mouth and nose to keep from gagging.
“How can anyone stand this?” The words come out muffled through my fingers.
Cowen glances back at me, his expression blank. “You stop noticing after a while.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think the people who work here just learn to pretend they don’t notice, to wall it off in their minds, and tell themselves that the stench of waste and blood and suffering doesn’t matter, because the things producing it aren’t really people anyway.
We round the corner, and I see the cages.
Rows of them, stretching back into the yard in long uneven lines. Iron bars blackened with age and rust, the ground between them churned mud—mud mixed with other things I don’t want to think about, tracked and smeared and ground in until the earth itself has turned foul.
I try to count. There are thirty in the first section. Another thirty in the second. At least twenty at the far end. Eighty cages, and in each one, a living creature that was once free.
“This is one of five preserves in the kingdom.” Cowen’s voice slides into the practiced cadence of a tour guide. “We keep approximately eighty here at any given time. They’re separated for easier management. Fae are territorial by nature, and keeping them apart prevents fighting.”
If that’s the case, why did Cairn call them his people? Why did he say he was coming for them?
I make myself walk forward, my boots squelching in the muck, the stench wrapping around me like a living thing.
“Occasionally, we transfer some to other preserves. Especially during the breeding season.”
Breeding season? I can’t bring myself to ask.