Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
ALLERIA
For a moment, I just stand there by the well, my hands still clasped in front of me the way they were when I made my little speech about choosing to be someone I can live with. The words had sounded brave when I said them. Now I just feel foolish.
I make myself move—across the square, through the door of the inn, up the stairs, and into my room. Closing the door, I stand with my back against it.
This is real. I actually did it. I told Therin I didn’t want to go back, then I stood in front of Cairn and told him I was choosing to stay. And what did he do? He looked at me out of those gold eyes, and told me that he’d hunt me down if I betrayed them.
Then he walked away.
I push off from the door and pace. Four steps to the window. Four steps back. The room feels smaller than it did this morning, the walls closer. And the bed … the sheets are tangled from where we—
I turn away and flop into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace.
What have I done?
I jump back to my feet.
This is ridiculous. I made a choice. I meant it. Now I need to figure out what to do with it.
Spinning around, I cross to the door. I could walk out right now. I could go anywhere. Except … I could have gone anywhere when Therin took me out of the village, and I came right back here!
I could go for a walk. I could—
Voices reach me from down the hallway. Muffled, but I can make out what sounds like an argument. A female voice, sharp and angry, and a lower male one … and cutting through both of them, low and certain, a voice I’d know anywhere.
Cairn.
I should go back into my room, or go downstairs and find food. I should do anything other than walk toward the voices.
The door at the end of the hall is closed. The female’s voice is recognizable now. It’s Vel, and she’s angry about something. The male voice pushes back. And then Cairn says something and they both go quiet.
I raise my hand to knock, and the door swings open before I touch it. Vel is standing there.
For a second, we stare at each other, then her expression hardens, and she steps into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Eavesdropping, Princess?” She says it softly, almost pleasantly, which actually terrifies me more than if she’d shouted. “Didn’t take long for you to start spying.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Save it.” She moves toward me, and I have to lock my knees to keep from stepping back. “I know exactly what you are. You think because you spread your legs for him, you’re one of us now?”
My face burns, but I hold my ground.
“I chose to stay. I want to help.”
“Help?” She laughs, a short, ugly sound. “What could you possibly help with?” She takes another step closer. “You’re nothing more than a liability. A human princess who knows our location, our faces, and our plans. The only reason you’re still breathing is because he wants you alive.”
“Then let me—”
“Let you what?” Her voice drops. “You walked past our cages, Princess. You saw us rotting in our own filth, and you did nothing. You came to the Dell to hunt us for sport. And now you want to help?”
“I can’t change what I did. But I can—”
“Don’t tell me you want to make up for it.” Her eyes are bright with something that goes beyond anger. Centuries of fury, compressed into this one moment. “Do you know what they did to us in those cages? Do you have any idea what—"
“No.” I force myself to meet her gaze. “I don’t. But standing here telling me I’m worthless doesn’t change that either.”
Her weight shifts, and for a heartbeat I’m certain she’s going to hit me. My body braces for the blow.
“Vel.” Therin’s voice comes from behind her. He’s standing in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame, his expression easy, almost amused.
Vel’s head snaps around to him.
“Cairn wants you back inside.”
She doesn’t move.
“Now.”
I hold my breath, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, waiting for her to lash out.
But she doesn’t. She shoves past Therin and goes back into the room.
The door swings wider as she goes, and for a moment I see inside.
There’s a table covered with maps, the three fae who came running out of the village at one side.
Cairn is on the opposite, one hand braced on the table. He looks up, and our eyes meet.
One second.
Two seconds.
Then Therin pulls the door closed, his eyes moving over me. There’s amusement in their silvery depths.
“You all right?”
“Fine.” My hands are shaking. I curl my fingers into fists so he won’t see.
“She’s not wrong, you know.” He leans back against the door. “About any of it. You are a liability. You can’t fight. You can’t give us any useful information.”
“I know.”
“But you’re still here.”
I sigh. “I’m still here.”
He studies me for a moment longer, then his lips curve. “You should go downstairs and eat. There’s nothing you can do here right now.”
He disappears back into the room before I can respond, and I’m left standing in the hallway, with nothing to do but what he suggested.
The common room is a little busier than it was. Fae and humans scattered across tables, eating and talking in low voices. Sharla glances up from behind the counter when I come down the stairs, but she doesn’t say anything.
I find a table in the corner where I can put my back to the wall and watch the room. A few minutes later, a human girl sets a bowl of stew and a pitcher of tea down in front of me without a word.
You walked past our cages. You saw us rotting in our own filth and you did nothing.
She’s right. I did nothing. I was horrified, I felt sick, but I went back to the palace and tried to forget what I’d seen. I told myself there was nothing I could do. That I was just a princess, I had no power, and when I did speak up it just made things worse for me.
None of it matters.
I push the bowl away, half-finished.
What could you possibly help with?
That’s the question, isn’t it? Everything I’ve been taught my whole life is useless here. I’m nothing. What is the word Cairn calls me? Moirthalen. Pampered princess.
He’s right about that too. But I’m not going back.
I leave the bowl and pitcher on the table and walk outside. The village looks different in full daylight, and I’m shocked at how openly the fae seem to be here.
A fae woman is hanging laundry outside a small cottage.
Her ears come to delicate points, visible with the way her hair has been styled, and her skin carries a faint silver sheen in the sunlight.
Across the street, a human man calls out something about the weather, and she laughs, waving back at him.
Two fae sit on a bench near the well, moving carved pieces across a wooden board in a game I don’t know. An old human woman walks past them, and stops to chat. The air fills with their voices and laughter.
This shouldn’t exist.
Everything I was taught says this isn’t possible. Fae and humans can’t live together, or exist side by side.
Fae are dangerous. Fae are animals. Fae must be controlled, or they’ll enslave us all.
These fae aren’t enslaving anyone. They’re living alongside humans like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
No one pays me any attention as I wander through the village, so I walk until my feet ache, and I’ve seen every street twice over. And while I walk, I think.
About Nella, my father, Merina, and the life I’ll never go back to.
And I think about Cairn.
Luchairn Vaedráfn. I say it in my head, careful not to let it pass my lips.
The Hell-Thorn. The Lord of the Wild Hunt. The monster in old childhood tales.
The fae male who knows my body in ways no one else does.
As if I’ve conjured him out of my thoughts, I see him. He’s coming from the direction of the forge, alone, head lowered, hands shoved deep into his pockets as he walks. I must make a sound because his head lifts, and our eyes meet. He gives me a small nod, and keeps walking toward the inn.
“Are you serious?” I snap the words out before I can stop myself.
He stops.
“You’re just going to walk past me? After everything?”
He turns slowly. “What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know!” I close the distance between us. “Something. Anything. You told me to go inside, and then you vanished.”
“I had things to do.”
“Things to do.” I stop a few feet away from him, close enough to see the gold of his eyes but far enough that I don’t have to tilt my head back to look into his face.
“Right. Too busy to even—” My face turns hot.
The words I want to say are stuck somewhere between my chest and my throat, tangled up with shame and anger.
“To even what?” His voice is quiet.
“To even look at me. I gave myself to you last night. I let you do things to me I’ve never let anyone do. And now you won’t even look at me!”
Something flares in his eyes, there and gone before I can read it. “That was the bargain. You held up your end. I held up mine.”
“Is that all it was?”
Silence.
Somewhere nearby, a door opens and closes. Voices drift out and then fade again.
“What do you want it to be?”
I stare at him. My heart is beating too fast, and I don’t know what to say, only that I can’t stand this … this distance, this not knowing what is going to happen to me.
“I don’t know. But not this.” It sounds lame to my own ears.
He’s quiet for a moment longer, then he moves, coming closer until I have to tip my head back.
“I’m not ignoring you because you don’t matter, Moirthalen.” His voice drops, soft enough that only I can hear it. “I’m ignoring you because I don’t know what to do with you.”
“What does that mean?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “It means you surprised me. I expected you to leave, and you didn’t.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It’s a … complication.”
I don’t know what to say to that. He’s close enough now that I can smell him, that forest scent that lingers on his skin, and it brings back the memory of last night so sharply I have to take a breath to steady myself.
“Then what happens now?”
“I don’t know.” He reaches out, and I still as his fingers brush my jaw in the lightest of touches. “Not yet, anyway.”
Then he turns and walks into the inn.
I stay where I am until the sky turns dark and the air turns cold, replaying the feel of his fingers on my jaw, and the softness of his voice.
I don’t know.
Eventually the cold wins, and I return to my room on the top floor of the inn, where sleep comes slowly, and I dream of gold eyes, and forest rain, and a name I can’t share with anyone.
When I wake, light is creeping through the window, and the bed is empty apart from me. I lie there, staring at the ceiling, and will myself not to think about why that bothers me so much. Then I get up, wash my face, and pull on the same green dress I wore yesterday.
Sharla is behind the counter when I go downstairs. I walk over to her and wait until she looks up.
“I want something to do. I don’t care what it is. Give me anything.”
She lifts one eyebrow. “Ever peeled a potato?”
“No. But I can learn.”
Amusement flares in her eyes. “All right then. The kitchen is through there. The potatoes are in a barrel near the door. Don’t cut yourself.”
And so I spend the day learning how to peel potatoes. The first ones come out mangled, more scraps than potato, but the cook just hands me another and tells me to try again. By early afternoon, I’ve moved on to carrots, then washing dishes.
It’s menial work. The kind of work servants in the palace do while I never thought to thank them. My back aches. My feet hurt. There’s a blister forming on my thumb. And it feels good.
When the light starts to fade, Sharla appears at my elbow.
“You should stop for the day. Eat something, then rest.”
I look up, startled. “Same time tomorrow?”
She studies me, giving me that same assessing look she gave me this morning.
“If you want.”
I do want.