4. A dyrehorse? A deer? Oh no
A DYREHORSE? A DEER? OH NO
ENORA
Ibecame alerted to the most thunderous buzzing of bugs I’d ever heard, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
They came at me from all directions, like I’d been caught in an unimaginable swarm of bird-sized horseflies, but my eyes refused to open, and my limbs felt tethered, protesting ardently to any movement.
The truest testament to how delirious and half-conscious I really was—the incessant buzzing sounded like it pitched into words sometimes. Squeaky, panicked words.
Bzzzzzz. Bzz. Bzzzz.
“Let me help! Let me help!”
Bzz. Smack.
“No, Aofe!” Bzzzzzz. “Don’t touch! Eilir asked me, not you!”
Bzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bzzzz.
Goddess, if I could’ve laughed! It sounded just like children bickering.
But my awareness waned, and the quiet claimed me again.
Not that it lasted long.
Shrill bickering came back in a burst that stirred me awake once more, though my eyes and limbs didn’t feel the need to oblige.
A crack of my eyelids was all I could muster, and little good that did with the dimness of my surroundings.
I couldn’t make out what the voices were saying, even though I was confident they were truly voices now, not just tricks of sound. Their pitch was too high, too fast, and, truthfully, I was too damned preoccupied with my newest revelation—I wasn’t actually tethered.
My limbs were heavy, yes, and my body felt akin to a bag of wet clay, but I didn’t seem to be bound by anything other than my own weakness. And whatever was making it feel like I’d drunk every pitcher of wine in the fortress.
But I could work with that.
Even though my focus felt like it might give way at any moment, I narrowed it all down into my hands. It took an eternity, but I was confident my fingers flexed.
“Aofe…” one voice beside me said in obvious concern. “How much of the draught did you give the walker lady? You followed the directions, right?”
A squeaky, indignant scoff came. “I gave it enough to knock out a dyrehorse!”
“Dyrehorses are undead, you imbecile. They can’t be knocked out!” Smack. Smack. “How much. Did you. Give. It?”
“Who are you calling an imbecile, Fenfay?” Pages rustled frantically. “I followed this recipe right here, with these measurements for…for…a…”
“For a what?”
“A…deer.”
“Oh, give me a break, Aofe!” The tip of something small and pointed jabbed into my side. “It’s ten times as fat as a deer!”
A groan built in my chest, but even my throat was fighting me, and it died there.
Good goddess, I wanted to tell these voices to shut the ever-loving hells up before my ears bled, but my body had other plans. After an embarrassing delay, my muscles contracted, revolting against that jab to my side, sending my arm rolling right over the edge of whatever I was draped across.
“It’s…it’s moving,” one voice hissed at the other, and a gasp followed it. “Fenfay, do something!”
“Oh, no. Oh, no.” Those tiny jabs came back, at my arm this time, like they were trying to lift it. “I’ll take up top, you start on that mess there. We’ve been dallying for too long. Eilir is going to be so mad!”
“And why would I be mad?” came a third, equally tiny voice from somewhere distant.
Something metallic clattered, and pain shot through my leg—the most reassuring thing I’d felt in ages.
“N-n-no reason!”
“Tsk, tsk.” The buzzing of bugs started again, and a breeze passed over my face.
Something prodded at one hand and wrist, then the other, and I was certain I had more feeling than a moment ago.
“I gave you a simple task, Fenfay.” A tug at the waist of my pants this time.
“We need to know if this one came with the rest! A mark. A tag. Something! They always have one.”
“W-we were just looking, I promise!”
A quiet scoff came from near my face and, goddess, I wanted to smile. But whatever was subduing my body was fucking strong, and I wasn’t confident my lips had even twitched.
“I’m sure you were, just like I’m sure you were—oh. Oh, ho. What is this?”
What had to be hands started pulling at my top as their owner hummed thoughtfully, and my heart started pounding. It should have been reassuring it could still pump blood like that and warm my body, but comfort was the furthest thing from what I felt.
Cord tugged at my neck as my necklace—my father’s necklace of his family sigil—was pulled from my shirt and away from my body. It was an immensely personal memento of my father, one I’d stolen from his viewing room before his body was interred, and I was positive it hadn’t left my flesh since then.
My heart rate grew erratic, and pinpricks started in my fingers.
“What is it, Eilir?” one of the familiar earlier voices asked.
“Hmm.” A lengthy pause. “I think…it looks like… Oh my. Ohhh myyyy. Could that really be…?”
The solid metal of the sigil landed back against my chest, but my thunderous heart didn’t ease one bit.
“GET THE HIGH MAGE! NOW!”
I did, however, manage to wince.
Chittering erupted, a squeaky shout I couldn’t parse, and my surroundings ignited to life.
“But what about its leg?” another voice squealed. “It…it’ll get all tainted if we don’t clean it, and it’ll fall off!”
My entire chest tightened, and my fingers twitched.
“You can clean it while we wait for the mage, you idiot.” A smack, a scoff, and then a voice trailed away. “I cannot wait to get back to the Keep.”
My fucking eyes opened.
Although my vision was blurry and shaky, the unmistakable verdancy of a tree canopy hung above me. I couldn’t make out any substantial detail, but bits of glass or maybe metal glittered all around, picking up light struggling to filter in.
And all around me were wings.
Shaped like butterflies’ and the size of feast platters, they were translucent and gave off a mesmerizing, rainbow-like iridescence. They were connected to little, lithe bodies that blended into the surrounding greenery. My mind was operating far slower than usual, but I was confident they were—
“S-s-sprites?” The word stuttered out of me as a hoarse rasp.
Wings ceased buzzing.
The blurry outlines of frantic bodies halted.
Child-like rambles and giggles died.
Like time itself had stopped, except for an outline that shifted in my periphery.
A single glimpse of dark, marble-like eyes drifted past mine, framed by a small face, and a blanket of weightless cold settled over me. A shiver ran through every fiber of my body, and my tongue felt heavy in my mouth again.
“No, please,” I whispered, but the darkness was back, skirting the edge of my vision.
Small, warm hands touched my face, and a tiny, soft voice said, “Sleep tight, pretty golden lady.”
I remembered little after that, except for a voice so warm, it brushed my soul, saying, “Goddess below…what’s happened to you?”
Despite not wishing to be, I was awake.
The thick, chilly dampness clinging to the air was unfamiliar, but breathing slow, measured lungfuls of it was all that kept me from spilling my guts.
From the moment I’d roused to unwitting consciousness, my stomach knotted and churned disastrously.
It was only a matter of time, and I’d mapped a clear shot to the empty bucket on the filthy ground beside my cot.
I was definitely imprisoned, but I couldn’t fathom where.
Not in Caenleigh Fortress—unless, somehow, in my thirty-one years of exploring every crevice of my home, I’d missed a block of decrepit jail cells. But the crumbling stone walls were wrong in a way I knew in my bones—colored a tenebrous black that was nowhere to be found in Odessa’s pale peaks.
Even more concerning than where the walls of my prison were quarried was the state of me.
I was flushed head to toe and tacky with sweat, but I couldn’t stop shivering.
The scratchy, threadbare cover draped over me did little to help, and the sweat-soaked linens plastered to my skin weren’t much better.
Distantly, through the bars that made up the door of my cell, I could see blue light dancing against the walls, and its icy shade only worsened my chill.
In that flicker of strange light was the shadow of a man’s body, if I trusted my sore eyes, hunched over or sitting, and I was not keen to catch their attention.
My body had other plans.
I shifted up on my cot to form a cocoon of body heat, but, as always, I overestimated myself.
The movement was so exerting, it sent my stomach surging the final distance up my throat, and I scrambled for that bucket.
I fumbled the damn container, clanking it off my cot and cursing hoarsely as the most violent dry heaves I’d ever experienced wracked my body.
The heaving went on until I could barely breathe.
I alternated gulping lungfuls of air with spitting bile-tainted saliva into the empty bucket.
When I finally had a handle on the unraveling state of my body, I eased out of my rigid hunch for two seconds before I went stiff again.
“A thousand times worse when you ain’t got nothing in you, isn’t it?” came a low, amused voice from across my cell.
The figure filling my now-open door was a dark fae male, through and through.
Framed by skin of a deep purple-gray and long, undercut hair as white as fresh snow, his silver-black eyes seemed to glow at me in the darkness. The question of my prison’s whereabouts resolved itself quickly.
I shrank back farther into the corner, clutching the bucket. “What?”
The man chuckled. “You haven’t eaten much in a few days. Barely drank either. Here,” he took a couple of steps towards me and extended a waterskin, “have some.”
Unease must have been written all over my face, because he tsked and took a healthy gulp before thrusting it back at me.
“Drink.”
My hand shook something fierce as I grabbed it.
I gave the contents of the skin a cursory sniff, and, goddess above, it reminded me of the crisp smell of spring streams that would run down the back of the fortress.
A small, cautious sip, and I could’ve groaned.
I took another sip, and another, and another.
My jailer definitely told me to take it easy, but I just couldn’t.