Chapter 4
FOUR
I wake to pain—dull throbbings in my head, a crackling ache spreading through my chest, a searing burn burrowing deep, all the way to the bone of my shoulder—and every muscle in me, bound with sagged fatigue.
But the one I suffer the most is dizziness.
With every blink, every squeeze and open of my eyes, it stirs the camp around me, a blended canvas of darkness and warped faces and stretched silhouettes and lashing flames.
The dizziness even confuses the noise of it all into something like a garbled, faraway song.
But not the creaking sound—because that’s right above me.
My head falls back too easily, too violently, like there are no bones or muscles in my neck, like it’s the head and the neck of a doll.
The back of my skull thuds onto something hard and flat.
Exhaustion has me so fucking haggard, I can barely hold my head up.
A wispy moan sighs out of me before I look up at what should be darkness, but is the shadows shed by the light of the campfires.
It’s a blur of pale skin and freckles and brown wooden slats and a black sort of metal.
My frown digs deeper into my face.
I scrunch my eyelids once, twice, until it all starts to come in and out of view.
That hard flatness against my head is plain wood. A waggon of sorts. One of the carts that the dark fae units drag along with them.
I’m propped up against one, barely. But what digs that frown so deep into my face that my mouth puckers—is that the only reason I’m still upright is that I’m tied to the cart.
My wrists are bound with fine, black rope, then hooked to a metal ring that’s bolted into the side of the wooden cart.
The sleeves of my jacket are torn, slipped down to reveal the nasty black and purple bruising on my left wrist—the same one the cold warrior had in his grip as he hauled me through the dark.
I knew his hold on me was tight, but the sight of those bruises, a canvas of spilled milk ruined by deep blues and purples, it’s enough to hesitate me.
I woke to pain… but the same way I woke to the noise of the camp. I woke to layers of it, so many layers that it’s hard to tell them all apart.
The pain and aches throughout my body are so severe, consuming me, that I didn’t even feel a whisper of a bite on my wrist as I drifted awake.
Even now, as I latch my furrowed stare onto the ruined pallor of my flesh, I don’t feel it. All I feel is that constant swirl of pain echoing down on me, and I think most of it is coming from my head.
I drop my gaze to the camp—
A wave of nausea rolls over me.
I can’t fight the singe of a slight burp bubbling up my chest. It is soft as it comes from my lips, and I half-expected sick to come up with it.
Note to self, no more sudden movements.
If my wrists were free from the hook, I would cross my arms over my face and curl up into a ball. I would hide from the blinding glares of the campfires angled at me from all directions, and the stares of the dark fae that I’m sure come with it.
I can’t see, though.
Not through the blur, the sick brewing in me, the dizziness of my head.
So if they do stare at me, I don’t look back.
I sag against my restraints.
And a while passes.
A while of nothing.
No one approaches me, snarls at me, takes a bite out of me, speaks to me, daggers me. I just sag against the side of the cart, waiting for my sight to clear, to ease, and that takes too long.
Finally, when I can make out more than the dirt at my boots and beyond the nearest campfire, I squint up at the throne.
The leader is up there, her back to me, and she pores over old parchments that are spread out over a table. The guy in the silver crown is beside her, pointing his finger from parchment to parchment, his mouth moving, but no words reach me.
I shift my gaze to the human…
At first, I think it’s the one from the cart. The one I saw bloodied and torn. But this one is different, younger, and not shredded.
He’s tied to a thick, sturdy post. It’s plain old wood, but bolstered with black hooks, not unlike the one my wrists are tied to.
The post holds my dull gaze for only a heartbeat before I notice it. The table behind him. A table just out of his reach, but in front of him in terms of obvious fate.
I don’t need to be the sharpest around here to suspect that those whips, razored and edges with what looks like shark teeth, are going to be used on him.
I swallow back a burn of nausea, not certain if the sickliness is for him, for me, for all of it, or just that my head is still fucking thumping away.
I look at the black bloody stain on the frosted earth, just a bit away from the leaders, from the throne, from the human who’s sure as hell going to die.
The steed is gone, and that bloodstain is all that’s left.
I stare at the dark patch for too long.
The warrior, before he ripped out that beast’s throat, seemed to regret it before he even did it.
He stroked the steed’s neck, and his mouth moved around words I couldn’t hear, and even if I could, it’s a language I don’t understand.
But I understand enough to know he was offering some kind of reassurance or regret.
He was comforting the beast before he killed it.
More than any dark fae has ever given us humans.
I wonder if he loved the steed or was at least fond of it enough that it hurts him now that he’s killed it.
I hope it hurts him.
Even if those creatures are horrifying with their hairless grey skin and razored-whip-like tails, I don’t relish in the death of any animal.
Fuck, I was vegetarian as far back as I can remember, and vegan for my adult life. Once I watched the videos, there was no going back.
Not like it’s a problem anymore.
Any animal in confinement, in slaughterhouses or on those crammed farms, will be dead, just like the humans.
Most of us are gone, and the ones like me who are still surviving don’t have much of a chance.
Bee can make all the promises and deals she wants, whatever hope she can grip onto in the dark, it doesn’t reach me.
I’m not delusional.
But I’m smart enough to keep small and quiet by the cart, to not fight my restraints or kick against the fae that walk by, much too close to my boots.
And I stay very fucking still the moment I see him—emerging from the darkness across the camp.
Dirt and blood still stain his leathers, but with a fresh black glisten. Takes my sluggish mind too long to realise it’s the steed’s blood.
I wonder if he was off burying the corpse or just moving it away from camp.
Whatever he was doing, he was doing it alone.
Now, he’s a looming silhouette of inky leathers and striking marble skin emerging from blackness.
There is no softness in this warrior.
There’s a tension in his sharp jaw, one that slashes a muscle down his cheek, and reaches down his body, a body chiselled from solid stone.
I cringe back into the cart.
The wood presses hard against the back of my skull, but I push myself even harder against it, as though I can fall through the cart and disappear from the purposeful steps of this warrior.
I don’t disappear.
He advances undeterred, until his boots stop at the soles of mine, and he’s looking down at me, shadows lashing up his face.
I drop my gaze to his legs.
But the moment I do, he slowly drops to one knee in front of me.
Still, he’s taller. A towering statue crouched at my boots, looking down on me.
I don’t lift my gaze.
So he forces it up.
A wince cuts through me, sharp, as he snatches me by the chin. The cold bite of his fingertips digs into my cheeks, forces my lips apart, and he angles my face to align with his.
The moan that catches in my throat is unwilling.
The warrior looks down his fine nose at me.
The faint green of his eyes hooks me with a silent violence.
I don’t dare move.
I hardly breathe.
Pale strands of hair, not ice, not yellow, but a pearly blond, fall into his face. He lifts his free hand to his chest, then flattens it.
“Samick.”
My lashes flutter over sore, bloodshot eyes.
Still, he holds my gaze—and there is nothing friendly in that look.
“You,” he starts, his upper lip curling over teeth that curve my shoulders inwards, “follow me. You obey, you do not run.”
He inches his face closer to mine, the tip of his nose brushing my own, and it rattles me with a shudder.
His warning comes quiet, but not soft. “You disobey, you run—I break your legs.”
A shudder rinses through me.
I cringe harder into the crate.
All I can manage is a stifled moan in answer.
My voice is gone, lost back on the road with Bee’s capture, and Emily’s swift, brutal death.
To risk speaking…
That stare warns me of the response I’ll get.
If I dared tell him that the moss is not enough on my shoulder, that it aches in the bone, that I lost so much blood, that I am broken and bruised all over, or that the rope wound around my wrists is tight enough to slow the flow to my hands…
If I say any of that, then he might rip my throat out—just to save him the bother of my existence.
So I keep my mouth shut.
No matter the deal that was struck between the fae and Bee, no matter the alleged promises and bargains, I don’t see my survival happening.
I look into those cold, empty eyes—and mine flood with tears.
I am so going to die.