Chapter 7
SEVEN
My eyes snap open to movement.
The cell wall—scratched with fingernails and stained with suspicious off-white smears—faces me. Shadows arch over the pale paint. The fae are moving through the flickering torchlights that manage to break into the cell.
Soft thuds, murmurs, a yawn, a shout that bounces off cold walls—and it all tangles together.
It takes a few heartbeats for the sleepiness to fade, until I can make sense of what’s happening.
The general is calling the warriors.
Samick peels away from me.
Like he doesn’t want to disturb me, like he doesn’t know I’m awake and staring blankly at the wall, his arm snakes away from my belly, hand grazing over my waist—then he’s out from under the covers.
The mattress dips, but only for a moment, before bootsteps tap softly out of the cell.
Then it’s quiet.
Quiet in here, I mean.
But out there, like an echo, the foreign murmur of the general goes on.
I wonder if I need to learn this language at some point.
Bee speaks it. She spoke to Samick and Dare on the road. But is that the same language of the light lands, or does she just know her own language, then the dark language, then also English?
I only know English and Welsh.
Not sure I’m actually smart enough to learn a whole other language in adulthood. Like, that idea immediately irritates me.
And that in itself is confusing—because if I’m going to be irritated or angry about anything, it shouldn’t be learning other languages, it should be Samick in the shower…
But suddenly I feel that thing again.
Not numbness. Not apathy.
It’s like an echo of feeling, so far away that I can’t tell what it is.
I rub my hands over my face and roll onto my back.
A stretch arches through me, and I let it.
It’s been a long time since I slept like that, a sleep so deep that I can feel the puffiness of my face beneath my palms, and I know that even if I had the absolute luxury of a few coffees, I would still be too… slow.
Not relaxed.
But like my body has gone into a tranquil state, and it’s taking too long for it to remember that I’m surrounded by dark fae monsters, and that there’s one in particular who’s out for my blood.
I turn onto my side—and startle.
The relaxation is too deep in my muscles for an actual fright to jolt me.
But my lashes flutter with the surprise of seeing Mika sitting on the bunk across from me.
And she looks rough.
That black powder really does a number on the fae.
She’s hunched over herself on the edge of the bed, her bare feet flat on the floor, and she takes ages to pick out a pair of socks from her satchel, then slowly, clumsily tug them on.
On my side, rugged up in the blankets, I watch her try to get her boots on.
Her face is furrowed with concentration and a trace of irritation as she flicks through the laces, trying to make sense of them.
Was I that bad when I woke up from that powder shit?
I don’t know if I was as fucked up as she is.
So maybe Rust is, too.
I don’t know how bad his injuries were from the hailstorm, so I don’t know if he had more medicine or not, or if that’s even a thing, because it could be one size fits all with the powder medicine.
But I can hope he’s as out of it as Mika is.
A clammer draws in my gaze.
Mika fumbles with the boots, now off her feet again.
Oh.
She put her boots on the wrong feet.
Now, she’s swapping them over.
She sways with the motion, her face slack, eyelids heavy. But she speaks, and her voice is a stifled yawn sheathed in razors, “Nice gaol.”
I watch as she shoves her sock-clad foot into a boot, then sighs with a bout of relief.
She adds, “More nice than my gaol.”
She moves for the next boot.
It takes my sluggish brain a second.
Gaol, the old word for jail.
“This is nicer than the jails where you’re from?”
Her nod is lethargic.
She manages to get the next boot on, but her struggle isn’t over yet—because she still has her laces to tie up.
She doesn’t elaborate, and I’m left with images of dungeons and damp walls and mould and dripping water, and unrelenting darkness.
Mika slowly weaves and un-weaves her laces. She doesn’t look at me as she asks, “How? How human shoot Samick?”
“The man in the showers? He didn’t shoot Samick, he just shot at us.”
Blades swerve to me. Eyes as hollow as glass.
Her mind and body might be bogged down, but the blue of her eyes are sharper than ever.
“Samick hear,” she says, and the suspicion darkens her face. “Samick… feel.”
The laces drop as she lifts her hands and runs them over the silhouette of her hunched-over body.
I tug the blankets up to my chin. “I don’t know what you’re saying to me.”
Also, shut up.
I prefer when you’re unconscious.
“Samick feel the man,” she says, and there’s a faint sigh sheathing her tone, an edge of annoyance. “Man not shoot.”
Heartbeats pass.
Then…
I get it.
Samick should’ve sensed him. Felt him advance. Knew he was there before he could pull the trigger.
I glance at the open doorway.
All I see are the gleams of the torch flames climbing over the grey concrete and flickering shadows.
I doubt anyone stands on the other side of the cell. Because I really don’t think Mika would talk to me like this if anyone was there, listening, paying attention.
She sneaks in moments when she can.
She’s a curious fae.
Too curious about Samick—and me.
Her blue-tinted clear eyes fix on me. “Why?”
Such a simple word, but a blunt question.
I know exactly what she’s asking—what she’s implying.
How did a human manage to sneak up on Samick and fire a shot at him in the showers?
I don’t answer.
I just hold her stare, and after a long moment, she shakes her head and looks down at her boots.
She starts on her laces again. “Males are bad.”
My mouth sucks inwards. I chew on my lips for a moment.
Mika isn’t wrong.
Males are bad.
The worst.
All of them, human and fae.
I don’t have to tell the truth for Mika to put the pieces together.
Samick was distracted, too preoccupied by what he was doing to me to sense that the man was creeping up on us.
If I didn’t tell him, if I didn’t warn him about the gun, he might have been hit by the shrapnel.
Maybe I should’ve let it happen.
This is all starting to feel a lot more dangerous than I can handle.
Loathing finally comes. It creeps through my veins like a poison, and I turn a dark look on Mika.
“What about you?” I challenge—but my courage fails me, and my voice is small. “Is Arwyn bad too?”
Her tired gaze lifts.
The meaning of my words isn’t lost on her.
The corner of her mouth tugs upwards, but there’s not enough energy in her to smirk. “Brother.”
For a beat, I just stare at her.
Then I scoff.
Because Arwyn can’t be her brother. He is a whole other type of fae than Mika is.
Mika is like the others, the bulk of the unit, dark fae.
But Arwyn is like Samick. Ice.
Even the other warriors seem to melt out of their paths and keep their distance.
Only Rust stood against Samick, even if he did hesitate at first. He still fought him to get to me.
Something ugly churns in my stomach.
I shut my eyes and curl up even smaller under the blankets.
I don’t want to leave here, the blankets or the prison.
There’s something that feels safe about being here. But I know that it’s because a huge chunk of the warriors have been knocked out by that healing powder, and that I’ve been hidden away in a cell, and that Rust has been in a mini coma.
And the moment we leave, it means Rust is awake and getting his strength back, and the unit will be marching into the drizzle outside—and that doesn’t feel nearly as safe as staying rolled up like a burrito in these blankets.
Dread fills me.
It grows heavier, like liquid iron pumping through my veins, as bootsteps draw closer to the cell.
The shadows of the cell darken Samick’s face as he stalks in. His expression is tight with a moody severity, and he only glances at me before reaching down for my boots—then flinging them at me.
They bounce on the blanket, right at my midsection.
The silent command is to get the fuck up, leave the warmth of the blankets, and face the rest of this gruelling journey that, frankly, I can’t be arsed with.
Part of me is too weak. Not my body, but my mind, my soul, my resolve.
If Bee and I were separated, and I couldn’t find her, and I wasn’t pinned to this fae and the unit, then I stumbled across the prison, a warm bed, showers that run hot water—
Then I would stay.
At least, the temptation to stay would be strong enough that I would waste time.
I suddenly hate myself a bit more.
The breath whooshes out of me and swells my cheeks.
Samick aims a look down at me, sharp.
I snub him and kick off the blankets.
The cold strikes me like a frosty wave.
I shudder before I scramble for my boots and tug them on much easier than Mika did.
As I do, Samick turns his back on me—and he takes a step closer to the other bunk.
Shark and Arwyn come into the cell and immediately gather around Mika.
She vanishes from my line of sight.
Now, all I see are the leathers sheathing three massive fae warriors.
But I hear them.
Low, barbed murmurs.
They don’t talk quietly so I don’t hear what they’re saying. I can’t understand their language, so it’s as though they don’t want anyone outside of this cell to hear them.
I tug on my yellow rain jacket, one sleeve at a time, then pull up the zipper.
The screech either ends their conversation, or it comes at the same moment it naturally finishes, because once the zipper is tugged up to my collarbone, the cell is quiet again.
And a sudden shadow is looming over me.
I squint up at the sudden stretch of darkness.
Samick is towering over me. His frame swallows the faint ribbons of light that make it into the cell.
Looking down at me, he extends his hand—and hooked onto his finger is a scarf.
I don’t know which pocket he pulled that from in the split second it took for him to draw away from the other bunk and turn on me—but I know that this scarf isn’t mine.
He found it.
Probably when he was massacring people in the prison.
A huff grates out of me before I swipe it into my grip.
A better person might reject it.
But I throw the soft black material around my nape.
Samick crouches down, one knee pressing into the hard concrete floor.
I’m suddenly eyelevel with his cold stare, with irises that remind me of the flesh within a crisp green apple.
Dark lashes lower over those sharp green eyes—and I sense the warning in that look alone.
Samick’s icy tone is low, “You obey me, you survive. I say run—you run.”
All I can do is blink at him.
My mouth parts, as if to speak, but nothing comes out.
Then he snatches up my wrist and, with his other hand, tugs something out from a pocket.
I’ve gotten so used to leather that I recognise the muted glisten immediately. It unfurls from his pinched fingers—and I realise, it’s the thing he’s been working on lately. It’s the leather he had cut from a fae corpse. He sewed layers of wool onto it, then a buckle.
Now, I see the finished result.
It’s a sort of wrist strap.
A handmade cuff.
For me.
Samick fastens it around my wrist.
It glides over my flesh like butter and clouds.
Speechless, I watch as he buckles it—and it feels nothing like the rope that’s been grating against my skin like sandpaper all this time.
Still, he threads the rope through the metal hook that dangles from the strap. He tethers me to him.
But the buckle is simple, like one from a belt, something I can easily undo.
That confuses me.
Then, it’s like I really hear what he said to me.
‘I say run—you run.’
I’m meant to be able to slip the cuff.
Samick communicates that with a silent stare he lifts to me, as if he knows that the dread is sinking through me.
And he reassures that I should be worried.