Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
ALLERIA
I don’t know what day it is anymore.
Four days have passed. Maybe. Or five. The light through the walls shifts from silver to gold and back again, and I’ve stopped trying to count. I sleep when I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open, wake when I have to, and the hours in between stretch into nothing.
Is this how it felt for the fae while they waited to be chosen for a hunt? The question haunts me, infiltrating my dreams until I have nightmares about it.
I keep seeing the cages, row after row of them, filled with the stench of excrement and urine. I see the male whose spine showed through his skin, the female bent into a permanent stoop because the cage was too short for her height.
I see Cowen … smiling while he explained how they’d need to put her down soon, because they needed the space.
And I see the one who came into the tent that first day and looked at me. The one who spat at me. I see the guard with the iron rod, and I hear the sound it made when it hit her ribs. I see the way she didn’t flinch or make a sound while he beat her again and again.
I didn’t stop him.
Every morning I wake up gasping, one hand at my throat feeling for the collar. It’s there. It’s always there. Cool and smooth and inescapable. A constant reminder of what I’ve become.
Just like the wound on my arm is a reminder of what happens when you speak up against how my kind treats them.
It’s healed now. On the second or third day, Cairn unpeeled the make-shift bandage I’d used, and ran his finger along it.
Whatever he did sealed the edges, but left an angry red scar behind. I try not to look at it.
I’m sitting on the platform where I sleep when the flap moves. My body goes rigid. That’s what days of captivity have done to me. Every sound makes me flinch. Every shadow makes me freeze. I’ve become a creature of nerves and fear.
Cairn.
He makes me kneel whenever he’s in the tent. Sometimes it’s only an hour. Sometimes it’s longer. My knees ache constantly.
He calls me ‘pet.’ The word burrows under my skin, hot and shameful. I’m not his pet. I’m a princess. I’m the daughter of a king. But every time I drop to my knees at his command, I feel less like what I was and more like what he’s turning me into.
But it’s not Cairn who comes inside. It’s a female, with pale hair. She moves carefully, and she’s humming under her breath.
I know that melody.
I’m back at the Dell in a heartbeat, standing in front of her cage while her voice rises and falls in scales that don’t fit any music I’ve ever heard.
“You,” I breathe.
She stops humming and turns her head toward me.
“You know me?”
“I … heard you. In the cages. Your song …” I lick my lips. “I hear it sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep.”
She sets down the tray she’s carrying on the table. “You should eat more.”
“I’m sorry.” The words spill out before I can stop them. “For what happened to you. For what they did to all of you. For what I—” My voice breaks. “For what I was going to do.”
She looks at me, eyes moving over my face, down to the collar at my throat, then back up. I don’t know what she sees. A princess who walked along the rows of fae and did nothing to ease their suffering, or a collared human paying for what her kind did to them?
“Eat,” she says finally. “Apologies don’t fill stomachs.”
Then she’s gone, and I’m alone again with a bowl of porridge and the ghost of her humming echoing through my head.
The hours crawl by. I eat the porridge without tasting it. I pace from one end of the tent to the other. I’ve memorized every curve of the silver walls, every shift in the light. I test the collar twice, pushing against the invisible barrier at the entrance until the collar starts to burn.
The other fae female comes by after my second attempt. She doesn’t enter the tent, just pushes the flap aside and looks at me.
Her eyes are cold as they sweep over me, contempt radiating off her. “Still breathing, then.”
“Still breathing.” I repeat her words softly.
Her lips curl. “Pity.”
She walks away, leaving me standing there staring at the place where she stood, with the sound of the iron rod hitting her ribs sounding in my memory.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t make a sound. She just stared at me with the same hatred she’s showing now.
I should have stopped him. I should have done something. Instead, I stood there like a coward and let it happen.
She wants to kill me. It’s clear in her eyes that she thinks about killing me every time she looks at me. I’m sure that if she had Cairn’s permission she wouldn’t hesitate.
When Cairn returns, I’m sitting on the far side of the tent, with my back against the wall.
I don’t move when he enters, tracking him with my eyes as he crosses to his chair and sits, stretching his legs out.
With a finger snap, a goblet appears on the table beside him.
He reaches for it, lifts it to his lips and takes a sip.
Then he sets it back down and looks at me.
“You’re not kneeling.”
“No.”
I brace myself, but he doesn’t move. The silence stretches until I want to scream just to fill it. I can feel him waiting for me to break and crawl across the floor toward him.
I fight against it, and stay where I am.
“I heard you apologized to Serath.”
“Who?”
“She brought your porridge today. You apologized to her.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Feeling guilty?” His tone is light, almost conversational. “Or just hoping that if you say sorry enough times, one of us might actually believe you mean it?”
“I do mean it.”
“You look terrible.” It takes a second for my brain to process his change of topic.
What does he expect? I’m still wearing the same nightgown I was taken in, my hair is a tangled mess, I haven’t been able to bathe properly in days. But hearing him say it, in that flat dismissive voice, makes my face burn.
“Whose fault is that?”
“Yours, I’d imagine. You could have asked to wash, for clean clothes, for something to brush your hair.
” He tilts his head, eyes gleaming. “Unless you’ve given up.
Is that it?” Those lips curl into that smile I’ve grown to hate.
“Those fae out there survived three centuries in cages. You haven’t even lasted for four days without surrendering to your fate. ”
Hate flashes through me. “I haven’t surrendered.”
“No?” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Then why haven’t you tried to escape again? Why haven’t you attacked me? Why haven’t you done anything except pace and cry and feel sorry for yourself?”
“The collar won’t let me leave. You’re stronger than I am.
Faster. Even if I got past you and made it outside, there are more of you out there.
I don’t even know where I am. So yes, I’ve been pacing.
What else is there for me to do?” My voice rises with every word.
I don’t even know I’m yelling until I fall silent.
“What else is there,” he repeats. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What more is there to you? All I see is a frightened female who’s given up.” He leans back in his chair. “Disappointing, really. I expected more from the princess who came to hunt me. More … spirit.”
The disgust in his voice makes my fingers clench into the fur. “What do you want from me? You want me to kneel, I kneel. You want me to stay in this tent, I stay. What more is there?”
“You could give me something interesting. Fight back.”
“Fight back? What exactly am I supposed to fight with?”
“Your words. Your anger. Your desperate need to feel like you still have power and control over your life.” He laughs. “Come on, pet. Show me the girl who walked into the Dell ready to kill. Show me some fire.”
His words shake something loose inside me, and I’m on my feet and halfway toward him before I even realize I’ve made the decision to move.
“You want fire?” My voice shakes. “Fine. I hate you. I hate this tent. I hate this collar. I hate the way you look at me. I hate that you’re right!
I have given up, because there’s nothing else for me to do.
I hate that I’m trapped inside this cage with no way out.
I hate that I know it’s not even close to what your kind has suffered.
” I suck in a shaky breath. “I can feel myself going mad one hour at a time, and you sit there and mock me for it!”
“There she is.” Heat curls through his voice. “There’s the hunter who came after me. I was starting to think she’d disappeared entirely.”
I don’t understand him. I don’t understand what he wants or what game he’s playing. One minute he’s cold, dismissive and terrifying, the next he’s almost pleased when I snap at him.
“I need to get out of this tent.”
“No.”
“I will go crazy in here.”
“Probably.” He shrugs. “You humans are all so fragile.”
My fingers clench, nails digging into my palm. I want to hit him. I want to claw that dismissive look off his face.
“You walked past eighty cages. You saw the hollow eyes, the broken spines. And you went home and put on your prettiest clothes.” His fingers tap the arm of the chair.
“Did you wonder what it felt like, being locked in a space too small to move, day after day, year after year? Or did you just not care?”
“I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t want to know.” He’s on his feet and coming toward me. “It was easier not to think about it.”
“That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” He’s right in front of me now, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
His hand comes up and I flinch, but he just touches my jaw lightly.
“Did you think about what it would feel like? The arrow going in? The moment when I realized I was going to die for your entertainment?”
His fingers are cool against my skin, his thumb tracing along my jawline. I should pull away, slap his hand off me, but I can’t move.