Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
ALLERIA
I’ve been awake for hours, sitting on the sleeping platform, a bowl of porridge that went cold ages ago balanced on my knees.
The last thing I remember is kneeling beside his chair while he talked with Therin and Vel, their voices washing over me in waves I couldn’t follow.
My eyes kept drifting shut no matter how hard I tried to keep them open …
and then I woke up here, on the furs, with a blanket covering me.
Someone moved me. They put me to bed and covered me. And I don’t remember being lifted or carried or laid down. I don’t remember anything between the sound of their voices and waking up with the blanket tucked around me.
He must have done it.
But even worse is what happened before that. Before Vel and Therin arrived.
His mouth on mine. His hand fisted in my hair. The heat of his body pressed against mine. And the way I leaned into him instead of pulling away. The sound I made when his hand slid up my thigh.
Even now, my body responds to the memory. Heat crawls up my neck, and there’s a tightness low in my stomach that has nothing to do with the cold porridge.
Interesting. At least now I know what it takes to shut you up.
My face burns, and I shovel another spoonful of porridge into my mouth.
I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to remember the way my fingers curled into his shirt, or the heat that spread through me … or how, for one moment, I forgot everything he’s done to me.
The entrance flap rippling is the only notice I get that someone is coming in. I abandon the bowl and slide off the platform, lowering myself to my knees on the furs. The position is automatic now.
Cairn steps inside.
My pulse kicks hard against my throat. I fix my eyes on the furs, studying the pattern of the weave like it’s the most interesting thing in the tent, but I can feel him in this space. The air changes when he’s here. It turns heavier. It’s harder to breathe.
Something lands on the table with a quiet thump. I wait for him to speak. When he doesn’t, I risk a quick glance up.
He’s standing by the table, watching me. One hand is splayed across the tabletop, fingers drumming across it silently. Our eyes lock. My stomach drops. I’m the one who looks away first. But he still doesn’t say anything. Instead, he turns away and sits down.
I stay where I am, waiting for the command to kneel beside him. It doesn’t come.
The entrance ripples again, and the woman who brought me breakfast yesterday walks in. Cairn stands up, moving to greet her.
“Serath. How are you today?”
“Stronger.” She reaches out and touches his arm, her fingers resting against his sleeve. He covers her hand with his own, his thumb brushing over her knuckles, then he lets go.
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” His voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. He waves a hand in my direction without looking. “I’d appreciate it if you would stay with her today. There are fresh clothes on the table.”
Her head dips. “Yes, of course, Eldráfn.” The way she says the word, warm and filled with affection, makes me curious about what it means.
He strides toward the entrance, passes me without a glance, and leaves.
I stay on my knees, turning over what I just witnessed. The way he touched her hand. How his voice changed when he spoke to her. He was gentle, kind, the complete opposite to how he speaks to me.
“You can get up.” The woman’s soft voice breaks through my thoughts, and I look up. She’s standing in the spot Cairn vacated, unfolding a bundle of clothes.
“Come. Dress.”
I rise slowly, while she shakes out the tunic and pants and holds them out to me. I hesitate before reaching for them. She smiles.
“Take your time. That thing can’t be comfortable.” She nods toward the tunic I’m wearing. “Put these on. You’ll feel a little better wearing them.”
Once I’ve taken them from her, she turns away, giving me privacy to change.
The small kindness undoes something in me. My throat tightens, and I have to press the ball of my palm against my eyes and breathe through the ache until it passes.
What have I become that something as simple as this makes me want to cry? What has he turned me into?
I swallow hard. It doesn’t help, so I focus on changing instead, pulling the clean clothes over my head. The tunic falls past my hips. The pants are loose at the waist. But I’m covered from head to toe. I’m wearing clothes instead of that humiliating rag that left everything exposed.
But my relief is short-lived when she next speaks.
“Are you dressed?” She turns without waiting for my answer, her gaze sweeping over me, pausing on my bare feet. She tuts. “Thankfully, the ground is dry, but we’ll need to do something about that. Come.” She moves toward the entrance.
My entire body freezes up.
Outside. She wants me to go outside.
“No. I can’t … I can’t go out there again.” Not after yesterday with all those eyes following me, the hatred in their gazes.
She turns back to look at me. “Follow me.” Her voice is firm.
“You don’t understand. Yesterday—”
“I know.” She pushes through the entrance without waiting for me.
I stand there, frozen. Every instinct screams at me to stay here, to hide, and never set foot outside this shelter again. What will happen if I refuse? What will Cairn do if he comes back and finds out I disobeyed?
I force my feet to move, and follow her outside, bracing myself. But she doesn’t take me toward the center of the camp. She walks a different way, and we don’t pass anyone.
The further we walk, the quieter it gets and my heartbeat starts to slow. After a few minutes, she stops in front of a shelter and pulls open the entrance.
“Inside.”
I do as she says. The interior is dim, and it takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the soft glow. There’s a pallet of furs against one wall, and on it a fae male is lying on his back. I back away, my mind racing through all the reasons she could have brought me here. None of them good.
“There’s no need to run.” Serath’s hand touches my back, slowing my backward motion. “This is Caelum.”
I focus on the male. His chest rises and falls, and his eyes stare upward.
But there doesn’t seem to be any awareness there, no sign that he knows anyone is here.
Serath moves past me and kneels beside the pallet, brushing the hair back from his forehead, the gesture so gentle it makes my heart ache.
“Cairn comes to see him every day.” Her voice is soft. “Come. Sit with him.”
“Why?”
“Because he needs company.”
She pats his cheek, then rises and moves back toward the entrance.
“Wait ... where are you going?”
“I’ll come back soon.” And then she’s gone, and I’m alone.
For one wild second, I consider running, fleeing into the forest surrounding the camp, and I even take a step toward the entrance.
Then common sense returns. I have no idea where I am, and Cairn will find me in a matter of minutes.
I know he will. That’s even if I can walk out of the tent without the collar around my throat burning me.
Sighing, I turn back to the fae. He hasn’t moved, and I stand there staring at him.
She said his name was Caelum. Who was he before this happened? Did he have a family? Friends?
I lower myself to the floor.
“I …” I lick my lips. “I don’t know if you can hear me.”
He doesn’t respond.
“My … My name is Alleria. I’m the human everyone hates.
The one Cairn brought here.” I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them.
“I was supposed to hunt him. That’s why I came to the Dell.
He was going to be my birthday present. My kill.
I was going to track him through the forest, and put an arrow through his heart. ”
The words feel strange saying them out loud. Admitting what the plan was for that day.
“I walked past your cages. I saw what they did to you. The filth and the collars.” My voice catches, and I have to stop, swallow, and then start again.
“I was horrified. It made me sick. But I didn’t do anything to stop it.
I could have, you know. As a princess, I could have given them orders they would have had to follow, but I didn’t say anything. I just … ran away from what I saw.”
Caelum stares at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything. Cairn’s told me a hundred times that sorry is worthless, and he’s right. But I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to make it better. I think Cairn is right. There isn’t anything I can do that will make it better.”
I rest my head against my knees. “I spent yesterday afternoon being looked at the way you were, and it broke me. I don’t know how he stood it for so long.”
I keep talking. I tell him about the hunt, how it went so horribly wrong. I tell him about the collar Cairn put around my neck and the days I’ve spent in this camp. I tell him about Vel, and how I returned to the shelter so terrified I could barely stand.
And then I tell him about the kiss. Not in detail, I can’t make myself say those words out loud, but enough … Enough to admit that something happened, and that my body did things I didn’t want it to do. My face burns as I speak, and I’m grateful he can’t see it. Grateful he can’t respond.
I talk until my voice turns hoarse, until my throat aches, until I run out of words.
Caelum doesn’t respond. His eyes stay fixed on the ceiling. His chest rises and falls in the same rhythm it’s been keeping since I walked in. But I keep talking anyway. Because the woman said Cairn comes here every day, and if he can do it, then so can I.
I don’t know how long I sit there, in the quiet shelter with Caelum, but my body is aching from sitting on the hard ground, my back stiff and my legs half-numb, when Serath finally returns.
“Come. It’s time to go back.”
I push myself up, wincing as blood rushes back through my legs. Then I pause, turning to look at the silent fae one more time.
“I’ll come back. If they let me.”
The walk back is quiet. The camp has settled into evening. I can hear the faint murmur of voices, but don’t see anyone as I follow her back to Cairn’s tent.
“Eldráfn. What does that mean?”
She glances at me. “I’m not sure how it would translate. It’s a … title.”
“Title for what?”
She’s quiet for a few steps, and when she next speaks, the words come hesitantly, as though she’s choosing each one carefully.
“Your people used to tell stories. I don’t know if they still do.” She looks at me. “About the Wild Hunt.”
The Wild Hunt.
I know those stories. There are songs and nursery rhymes. Bards still tell tales of risers who hunted through the darkness on steeds that weren’t horses, and rode down anyone caught outside after nightfall.
If you hear their hoofbeats, you’re already dead.
No one outruns them, they’ll come for your head.
If you know they are coming, you always should hide.
Because death comes for all when the Wild Hunt does ride.
A shiver crawls its way up my spine at the memory of my nursemaid singing to me when I was a child.
“In your stories, the Eldráfn leads them.” Serath’s voice is soft, but the look she angles at me is not. “Has led them for longer than your kingdom has existed. In your stories, he is the Hell-Thorn, Lord of the Wild Hunt.”
The ground tilts beneath my feet. I stop walking, my hand shooting out to grab something to steady myself, but there’s nothing there.
The Hell-Thorn. Lord of the Wild Hunt.
I know that name too. From war songs and ballads about Therison Vale, where human soldiers held the final stand against the fae hordes.
The Hell-Thorn led the charge that nearly broke the human lines. It was the Lord of the Wild Hunt who killed Lord Casric the Unbroken, and whose name was spoken in terror by the soldiers who faced him, and in grief by the families of those who didn’t come home.
My pulse is hammering now. Too fast. I can feel it in my throat, behind my eyes.
According to the stories, he vanished. The war ended with the fae broken, and the great terror of the battlefield simply … disappeared. There were no tales of his capture, no songs about his death. He was gone, as though he’d never existed at all.
And now Serath is standing here and telling me that those aren’t just stories.
He’s real.
He’s a thousand years old, if the stories are true. A thousand years of warfare, killing and hunting humans. A warrior who made seasoned soldiers run.
And I aimed my bow at him.
My hand remembers the weight of it. The way I sighted down the shaft at his chest, so certain I was the hunter.
Was he caged the entire time? The Hell-Thorn of the Wild Hunt … Had he been in an iron collar all those years, while hunters walked past and chose their quarry for the day? While noblewomen picked him to share their beds?
How is that possible? How did no one realize what he was?
I can’t breathe. My chest is too tight. My vision is starting to narrow at the edges.
“The stories …” I try to speak. Nothing comes out. I have to force the words past the tightness in my throat. “The stories say he killed—”
“Thousands. Yes, he did.”
Thousands.
And she’s taking me back to him.
The fae I’ve been calling Cairn.
The Hell-Thorn.