45. Chapter 45
Chapter 45
I t was the last day of my enslavement. The last day I had to wake in the dark smoky caves that housed the humans of the palace. It was the last day I would look over to see my dress draped over the half wall. The last day I would sit up in my little cot and count down from ten as I listened to the bells that woke all the daora ringing in my ears. It was the last time I would breathe in the morning farts of what seemed like hundreds of humans jammed into such a small space.
Goose was blinking weary eyes up at me from his place at the entrance to my alcove, where he curled up in a ball every night so that he could watch the stairwell and me while I slept. His lens-flare eyes found mine in the dark, and we seemed to silently communicate our trepidation and excitement for the day. We both knew that nothing would be the same after this. Nothing would be comfortable.
I didn’t know much about roughing it out in the human wilderness, let alone the Fae wildlands. But anything had to be better than the withering away torn between giving in to my need for The Raven and my need to self-destruct under the yoke of my captivity.
The day passed achingly slowly. My eyes flew to the window every few moments, trying to gauge the position of the sun as it moved across the palace. Silver was unobtrusive, as always, hovering outside of the salon while I dusted the empty rooms.
I made my way back to where the crowns lay with Goose at my heels.
I knelt next to him, making a show of trying to clean the unlit candles that littered the floor. “When it is time, Goose, before you go to collect the others, come back here. No matter who is in here, we take these crowns with us. They belong to me. I will lay them to rest in the graves I make for my parents.”
Goose turned his great head up to the mantle, then back to me, and nodded his shaggy head. As the days went by, he became more and more solid in his form, appearing as nothing more than an especially sooty-looking wolfhound. It made petting him much easier, which he seemed at every opportunity to enjoy with all the gusto and interest of a real dog.
I added a mental note to the discarded and forgotten stack of them to see how far Goose’s new powers had developed when we got free of the palace. I filled my mind and my time with thoughts of what came next. What happened after we were liberated from this place. I wished I had time to find and stash weapons somewhere. All that was in my pack that could act as a weapon was the small shard of iron I had pried from the door crusted with a spider’s blood and the dagger I had freed from one of the guards. It was a pitiful arsenal, not even worthy of the name, really.
It would have to do, though. Goose was not a beast of burden, and I imagined there was a limit to how much he could slide through the shadows of his passages. I didn’t know how that worked, I only knew that he could carry at least me. His part in this caper would exhaust him, leave him nearly spent, but it would be worth it for the four of us to be finally free.
A distant knocking on wood pulled me up from my crouch, and I stuck my head into the narrow hallway that connected each of the open rooms. Silver, ever aware of his status and inability to access this part of the palace because of it, was standing in the far-off doorway.
“The Captain has called for you to be brought to him, miss.”
My eyes darted to the windows where the sun hung low but nowhere near the distant horizon. “So early?”
“He said he wished to speak with you before you attended the meeting with his betrothed. ”
I had almost allowed myself to forget that he was truly engaged to that monster. I had almost allowed the poison of that knowledge to slip my awareness.
I nodded, abandoning my rag to the pile of them stashed behind the lounger where the other cleaning supplies were secreted away behind a panel. I always marveled at the lengths the Fae went to to keep their servants but also make them as invisible as possible. As if things cleaned themselves.
Silver was silent at my side. I knew he sensed that something was amiss or at least out of the ordinary with me. I wondered if he suspected what the plan was. Would he try to stop me? Would he be one of the guards that would pour into the woods I had seen outside of The Raven’s window to come after us? Would they even send guards after us? Or were there some other creatures they used to hunt down daora? There were still so many things that I didn’t know, so many other factors that made this plan a risk, so many little things that could go wrong once we were free.
I was glad, though, that I had left the feather necklace that The Raven had almost given me, in the box in his room. The last I was there, it was still in the exact same spot he had left it. Next to the tub filled with scented water and the memories of a moment that was stolen and never returned to either of us.
When we came to the door that had once held so many fears, I gave it not a single moment of my time. The woman that had stood before this door the first time was not the woman whose golden sheen hand pushed it open wide and strode through it. Daróg had not returned from the infirmary yet, and even if he had, there would be nothing he could do to me anymore. I was no longer confused about who I was. I was no longer traumatized by the transformation I still did not have the stomach to look at in the mirrors that we passed every day. There was nothing that lived beyond those doors that could scare me anymore.
The Raven was seated in the same chair that he had been that day, staring into an empty fireplace. I wondered if he was reliving that day or if he was thinking of something else. He had been there a while, though. A discarded lunch tray rested on the side table.
He looked up his eyes catching on mine before sliding to Silver’s. “You can leave us, Silver. I’ll escort Cricket to the gardens when it’s time.”
“Yes, Captain.” Silver barked and disappeared behind me, the large carved doors closing behind him. Only a few weeks ago, that sound would have made me jump, but they didn’t even bother me as I watched The Raven regard me with a contemplative and conspiratorial look.
The tension between us broke as simply and easily as it was built, and he smiled softly before patting his knee. “Come, sit down. We have much to talk about before you go to the gardens.”
I raised one brow and looked down to Goose at my heel. “Go ahead, Goose,” I said to him, giving him the signal to begin executing the plan.
It would take him time and effort to move the necessary pieces into place, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to be distracted by The Raven and miss the appropriate window to light the fuse.
Goose looked between The Raven and I, whined low, and then turned to find a shadow to step through.
“He’s grown fond of you,” The Raven said, calling my attention back to him as I made my way to him.
“Seems you have a lot in common with him.” I tossed back, letting my ass perch on the offered knee.
It was thick enough to require very little balance and wholly made a much more comfortable seat than he had any right to offer.
“I have grown fond of you, Sóna. I won’t make any excuses for it.” He pulled my braid out from behind me and toyed with the end that still sported the gold-and-black ribbon he had tied into it a few nights ago though with a much less complex braid to hold. “It’s complicated too many things for me.”
“Terribly sorry to have been a bother.” I snorted. “I told you to leave me alone several times. One of us refused to take the advice, and it wasn’t me. ”
He chuckled. “I didn’t mean it like that, little bug. It’s been a nice complication. One I genuinely never expected to encounter. I had truly thought that finding you was not something I could even dream of, let alone would happen the way that it did. I fought it at first, fought the way I was pulled toward you at every moment. But I’m done fighting it. I will have to find a way to allow it to happen and carry on with my life.”
I twisted on his knee, watching the way his decision played across his face. He looked like a man that had thrown his life savings into the pot at a poker table and had consigned himself to the capriciousness of the gods. It was a strange, complicated reaction. “What do you mean by that?”
He smiled and toyed with the end of my braid more, his unbusy hand finding its favorite spot on my hip. “I have said a thousand times or more that you could not choose me while you were still enslaved. That you could not make that choice while in bondage because no choice you made would be your own. Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course I remember.”
Fear spiked through me. Did he know? He must know. Why was he bringing this up? We had been over it numerous times. The subject of my servitude kept us apart in his eyes. I felt my stomach drop to my toes and my heart begin its slow, heavy beating in the cavity where my it had once resided.
“I think I might have found a way to free you, little bug.” He flicked his eyes up from my braid to level on me as if this proclamation might have meant anything at all to me.
And it should have. It would have had I not already secured my own exit. Had I not made that deal with The Oaken Rose, this single sentence would have changed the entire course of my life. It would have meant everything to me.
And here I was, balanced on his lap and unable to obfuscate the way my heart didn’t leap at the single most important sentence to a daora. He knew. He must know. He was baiting me. He must have been. There was no way that he could have magically come up with a way to free me in such a short amount of time .
“Wh—H-How?” I turned my trepidation and fear into a mix of stupefied, stunned confusion to try to mask it from him.
He was clever, though, and my heart kicked up speed as we played a dangerous game. If he knew and knew what I planned to do in the gardens with his betrothed, then I was fucked, and he was toying with me.
“The Ard Rí may not have returned from his convalescence in the infirmary, but that has not kept him from ruling. He is unable to walk just yet, as the knife nicked his spine and the chirugeons are still trying to decide how to properly knit that back together to ensure full function. In his ire, he has both blamed you and not blamed you. He has both ranted that you are not attending to him and cursed you for ever being born. Each time he does, each mood swing he flexes between he calls to him the drui and bids them bind you to his side by your true name. And he has tried. Many times. But you have never once been called to his side. I know this to be true, as Silver has not once mentioned you struggling or thrashing against the magic that a true name binding would cause. I set him to watching you specifically because his court excels at noticing the small things, hidden things. They are the best at reconnaissance, and I would compare notes with him at the end of the day. Not a single time they attempted to bind you to the Ard Rí’s side did you even twitch.”
“What does all that mean?” I was nearly breathless with the terror that he was so close to finding out the truth, all the truth that I had hidden from him.
“You told me the other night when we discussed this,” He slid his gloved hand under my skirt, trailing up my spread thighs to find the freshly etched 21 at the top of my thigh. I hissed as he touched it. I had carved it in especially deep today of all days. “That, in the human realm, you grew up without a family. Do you know anything of your birth?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He knows. He fucking knows. How the fuck does he know?
“Only what the files told me.” His cool touch spread out on my thigh and rested a hair’s breadth from my bare pussy who ached and clenched for the teasing that he had put me through. “There’s not much to it. There are these places called fire stations—”
“You have stations to keep fire?”
“No. It’s where special officials live. They are employed professionally to respond to emergencies and to put out fires when they start. Anyway, at the fire stations, there’s something called a safe surrender site. It’s a special box built into a wall. It opens up, and you can put a baby in it. And then close it and walk away.”
“That’s barbaric.” He hissed, gripping my thigh. I couldn’t help the wince that turned into a soft moan of pleasure. It had been so long since I had enjoyed the delight of his ire, and I wished I had time to enjoy it again.
“It’s so women who aren’t prepared or capable of being mothers can safely give their babies over to the state. It might sound barbaric, but not everyone lives in a palace, and in the human realm, there are so many women who barely get by, let alone being able to properly raise and feed a child. So, they give them up without judgment and without consequence, and the children are taken care of by the government. They enter the foster system until they can be adopted.” He was nodding as his fingers worked their way closer and closer to my burning center. I needed to focus, but it was so hard when the simple brush of his leather glove, so near to where I wished they would bury themselves deep and hard, kept drawing my attention away. “All I know is that I was abandoned at a safe surrender site with my umbilical cord still attached.”
“How did you get the name Sóna Mac Raith?” he mumbled, looking up at me.
His eyes were glassy and blown wide with lust as mine must have been. It had been a mistake to agree to come here.
I was burning up to feel him, to come for him. His fingers found the slick center of me, and I took a deep breath to try to resist falling headlong into my need.
“I never saw it, but the file said it was sewn into the edge of the baby blanket I was wrapped in. There were no papers with me, no documentation of my birth or indication of who my parents were. There rarely is.” I purred as the glossy black leather of his glove found my clenching entrance and teased it by sliding in an inch and crooking his fingers up as he drew slowly out of me.
“Watching you melt for me is my favorite sight.” He groaned as I clenched hungrily down on his two fingers, silently begging for more.
I couldn’t help but like this game, like the cat and mouse of it all now that my fear had twisted into passion. It reminded me of that first time he broke and shattered me in the Maw.
“I think I have a plan, little bug,” he whispered against my throat as he leaned forward and nipped tiny bites into the delicate flesh.
I shifted my hips to give his teasing fingers more leverage, and his idle hand found the mound of my breast, drawing it out of my dress so that he could roll the hardened tip between his fingers.
“What plan?” I asked, leaning back and bracing myself on his knee as he played me like a cello.
“You wished me to change you. To take away this face and body that Rictus gave you. I could do that for you, little bug. I can remake you into any face or body that you wish of me. It would take time and effort, and it would be painful, but you love it when I hurt you.”
To punctuate his point in tandem, he took my nipple between his teeth and bit down while his thumb worked my clit. Stars burst behind my eyes like the crescendo of a metal song. I panted as he rolled the throbbing bud between his teeth and kept me on the edge of madness.
“The sounds you make, Feidlimid be blessed, a Fae could grow addicted to them.” He purred across the sensitive bud of my nipple.
“You said you wouldn’t do it, though,” I grated out, trying to keep my head above the crashing waves of pleasure.
“I wasn’t going to. Whether you believe it or not, you are stunningly beautiful. But if my plan works, I would need to.”
“Why?”
“The Ard Rí will never let you go. The moment he figures out another way to bind you to him, he will. But if you are not here to bind, he cannot.”
“How will you explain me going missing? ”
“I will simply say that I killed you in a fit of rage. He would believe it.” Fire seared up my throat and those waves drowned me as his tongue found my skin and licked a line to my ear where he bit down. “Tell me your name, little bug.”
“You first,” I hissed back at him.
His fingers went still against me, and he pulled away. It was not like the other times, though. I felt him still there and present with me, his gloved hand finding my cheek to cradle it in his palm. My eyes darted open to find his soft and silky like freshly spun moss-colored velvet. I didn’t think that he would answer me the silence, still and pregnant with expectation.
But he finally took a breath and whispered, “I am Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, the Wings of Hope, Falcon of the Dawn.”
Emrys . E . The name sounded like a cosmic chord struck against a heavenly instrument. It filled that warming pit that swirled and grew every time he touched me. I was near to bursting with the sensation of wholeness, of contentment.
“What is your name, little bug?” he whispered against my lips.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back.
It was the truth. I knew that my mother had left my name at the House of Magic and that, one day, I would collect it, but I did not know what that name actually was.
He paused, his long lashes fluttering for but a moment before he reared back and laughed with his whole mountain of a body shaking into it. The chamber around us echoed with the strength of his laughter, and I couldn’t help but let my own lips twist up into a smile, even though I didn’t know why we were laughing.
When he leveled his gaze back on me, tears of mirth were dusting his eyes. “You tricked me, little bug.”
“I guess I did.” I grinned at him.
He drew me in closer, brushing his lips against mine, sending sparks dancing along my senses before he placed a passionate kiss on them. “I guess we are even, then.”
“How so?” I purred back, drunk on the golden sensation pumping through me .
“I always knew you were innocent.” His forehead leaned against mine, radiating rippling waves of pleasure through me.
“Of course you did. I kept telling you as much.”
He chuckled. “You could have told me you did it, and I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I am the one that planned the assassination.”
A blizzard of cutting shards of ice blew through me and snatched away every scrap of warmth I had felt for him, chilling me down to the very marrow of my misbegotten soul.
“Then, why did you torture me?”
My voice was a soft wisp, controlled solely by my need to hear him say it.
“I wanted to see if I could use you to my advantage. I am duty- and oath-bound to avenge my house. It is why I cannot touch you. Why I cannot love you freely as I wish. Why I cannot leave this accursed place and return home where I belong.”
Amusement was still dancing in his tone, as if we were still joking.
He tricked me. He lied to me. He used me. Blood peppered my tongue as I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep myself from reacting. I fought with every scrap of my willpower not to react. Not to claw his bastard eyes from his face. He was no different from every other Fae, and he had just proved it. He was just better at the game, and I was the foolish, lust-soaked little girl who fell for it.
“So, you see,” he chuckled good-naturedly, “we are even. ”
My tenuous hold on my temper snapped like desert parched twigs.
“Not even close.”
My hand whipped out faster than I could ever remember being able to move and took up the fork that lay forgotten on his lunch tray and plunged it with all my strength through the gusset of his breeches, through the tender round sacks that they protected. I felt it wedge solidly into the wood below the seat of the chair.