Chapter 15 #2
The first cage holds a male curled on his side with his back to me.
Every knob of his spine shows through skin that’s sallow and sick-looking, stretched too tight over bones that jut out at wrong angles.
The collar around his throat has rubbed the flesh raw, the same way Cairn’s had, leaving a ring of red and weeping yellow that glistens in the early morning light.
He doesn’t move as I pass. He might be sleeping, or he might be catatonic.
For all I know, he might be dying in the mud while the world walks past and doesn’t care.
The second holds a female standing close to the bars, hunched over slightly so her head doesn’t brush the top.
She’s tall, taller than any human woman I’ve ever seen, but the cage has bent her, curved her spine and shoulders into a permanent stoop.
Her hair hangs in matted ropes around a face that might have been beautiful once, before the filth and the hunger and the years of captivity wore it away.
Her eyes find me as I approach. They’re shaped like Cairn’s, with that distinctive almond tilt that marks them as other. But where his burn gold, hers are pale gray, washed out, and empty. So empty.
I stop in front of her cage and force myself to look into those eyes, trying to imagine what she was before this place. She must have had a life once. A home. People who loved her, even. And now she’s this. A hollow shell with nothing left inside but the basic functions of breathing and existing.
“That one has been here for a long time.” Cowen’s voice comes from behind me. “The last time someone rented it for …” I turn to look at him. “Well, it attacked its owner. We’ll probably need to put it down soon.”
Put it down. Like a lame horse or an old dog. Her life ended because she’s no longer useful.
“Shall we continue, my lady?”
I nod and make myself keep moving.
The smell grows worse as we go deeper into the rows.
Layers of filth that have been accumulating for years, decades, maybe longer.
Some of the fae watch me pass with the same hollow stare as the female.
Others don’t acknowledge me at all, curled in corners with their faces turned away, retreated so far into themselves that nothing from the outside world can reach them anymore.
One male rocks back and forth, his arms wrapped around his knees, his mouth moving in words I can’t hear. Another female sits perfectly still, her eyes open and fixed on nothing, so motionless, I think she must be dead until I see the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
A guard passes us with a bucket in his hand. He stops at a cage ahead of us and upends it through the bars, sending gray slop splattering across the dirt floor. The fae inside, a small female, doesn’t move toward it.
“It’s feeding time.” The guard grins at my questioning look. “It contains everything they need to keep them alive. More than they deserve, if you ask me.”
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood, because if I open my mouth right now, I’ll say something I can’t take back.
We near the end of the row, and I stop. The male in this cage is different.
He’s standing at the front of the cage, his fingers wrapped around the iron bars, and he’s looking at me. Not past or through me, but directly at me. There’s nothing empty in his eyes. They’re filled with intelligence and fury, and a malice so strong it raises the hair on the back of my neck.
While I watch, his lips peel back from his teeth. It isn’t a smile. It’s a warning. If this one ever gets free, he’ll tear through as many humans as he can before they bring him down. And he’ll enjoy every second of it.
He reminds me of Cairn.
I drag my gaze away from him, and keep walking, but I can feel his eyes on my back long after I've passed his cage.
Cowen leads us down the second row, and three cages in, I stop again.
This female is different too. She sits in the center of her cage with her spine straight and her shoulders square, her posture as perfect as if she were holding court in a palace instead of sitting in filth.
The cage has tried to break her, it's there in the collar wounds and the gauntness of her frame, but somehow, against all logic, she’s kept hold of her dignity.
Her head lifts when we stop in front of her cage, and her eyes meet mine. Contempt fills them. She looks at me the same way I might look at something I’d scraped off the bottom of my boot. I should look away. I should keep moving.
Instead, I step closer to the bars.
Her chin lifts higher, her lip curls, and then she spits at me. The gob of mucus lands on my boot. Before I can react, a guard is there with an iron rod in his hand. He shoves it through the bars and slams it into her ribs.
She doesn’t make a sound, and she doesn’t move. She just keeps looking at me with those cold, contemptuous eyes while the guard hits her again and again, the iron rod thudding against her body with a sound that makes my stomach lurch.
“Apologies, my lady.” The guard is breathing hard, his face flushed. “This one has always been trouble. It attacks anyone who gets near.”
But I deserve it, and she doesn’t. The thought rises and won’t be pushed back down. I came here to kill one of her kind for sport. She is right to spit at me. They’d all be right to spit at me. Every single one of them.
“Princess?” Brennan’s hand touches my elbow, and I realize I’ve been standing too long, staring at the female while she stares back. “You’ve gone quite pale. Perhaps we should—”
Cowen is saying something about difficult stock being worth more because they provide better sport during a hunt, and I turn to look at him.
“Show me the rest.”
More cages, more faces, more bodies. My boots are coated in mud and excrement and who knows what else. My eyes burn from the ammonia stench of old urine. But I keep walking. I keep looking. I keep witnessing what my people have done, what my father pays for, and what I came here to participate in.
The melody reaches me before I see her.
It drifts through the smell and the misery, and when I hear it, my chest constricts so tight I can barely breathe. I stop walking, searching for the source.
A female in a cage near the end of the row.
She’s sitting cross-legged, with her eyes closed and her face tilted slightly upward.
Her humming rises and falls—a melody I don’t know, in a scale that doesn’t quite fit any music I’ve ever heard.
It’s beautiful. Heartbreakingly, impossibly beautiful.
Her voice is rich with grief, with longing, and with a sorrow so deep it brings tears to my eyes.
“That one.” There’s irritation in Cowen’s voice. “It hums constantly. Nothing we do stops it.”
“It’s beautiful.” My voice comes out thick.
She doesn’t seem to know I’m here, or if she does, she doesn’t care. She’s somewhere else entirely, lost in that melody and whatever it means to her. And as her voice rises and falls, another voice whispers through my head again. His voice. As clear as if he’s standing right beside me.
My people. I will not leave them to rot.
I close my eyes and let the humming wash over me. I’ve reached the end of what I can bear. I’m shaking, and everything inside me feels tight and fragile. If I have to look at one more cage, one more face, one more collar, I’m going to shatter into pieces.
“I’ve seen enough.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. “Take me back.”
We pass an empty cage on the way out. I don’t mean to stop, but my feet falter of their own accord, and then I’m standing there, staring at the open door.
The space inside is small, the ground is bare dirt, packed hard, and worn smooth in a path that runs from one side to the other. Three steps. Maybe four. I can see where the earth has been compressed by the passage of feet, back and forth, back and forth.
“That was where the one that took you was kept.” Cowen has moved up beside me.
“One of the most valuable stock we’ve ever had.
I tried to talk your father out of choosing it for your hunt.
The ladies loved it. Very popular.” He clears his throat.
“Of course, the king insisted because he wanted the best for you.”
I stare at the cage and imagine Cairn inside it, sleeping on the ground with nothing between him and the earth. Standing at the bars with nothing to look at but other cages. Pacing that worn path, three steps and turn.
How long was he kept here?
“When your father saw it, he said it was perfect. In good health. Strong. Handsome even, in the strange way fae are. Something very special for your birthday. The king wanted it to be memorable.”
Something special. A gift, wrapped in agony, and presented to me.
“Would you like to see how the modifications are done? We have one scheduled for today. I could arrange for you to watch, if you’re curious about the process.”
I turn to look at him. He’s smiling. That same smile he greeted me with when I first arrived for the hunt, when he welcomed me to the Dell and promised me the experience of a lifetime.
He’s offering to show me how they torture fae into shapes that please their patrons, and he doesn’t see anything wrong with it.
He genuinely doesn’t understand why I’m staring at him like he’s just offered to show me how to flay a child.
“No.” The word comes out sharp enough to make him take a step back. “No. I don’t want to see that.”
His smile falters. “Of course, my lady. I only thought—”
“I want to go home.”
I push past him without waiting for a response, and stride back toward the courtyard, my legs moving so fast I’m almost running. Brennan catches up and falls into step beside me, but he doesn’t speak. He’s known me for my whole life, and he knows when to stay silent.
The carriage is waiting in the courtyard. Brennan opens the door and helps me inside, then climbs in after me and pulls the door shut. The wheels lurch into motion, and the Dell begins to fall away behind us.
I look down at my hands. At my palm, where the scar cuts a thin white line from the base of my fingers nearly to my wrist. I trace it with one fingertip, remembering the heat of his mouth, the pull of his lips against the wound.
Go home, Alleria. Forget this ever happened.
I turn my hand, press the palm flat against my thigh, and close my eyes.
In my head I can still hear the fae female humming.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop hearing it.