Chapter 7
SEVEN
Fire eats through every building in the town with a ravenous hunger. The siege is so violent that it billows tunnels of black smoke up into the darkness.
But the smoke doesn’t reach us here at the top of the hill. It should. The breeze that whistles over us comes from downhill, from the town, but as if some invisible force redirects the smoke, we are untouched.
Yet the heat of the blaze sears my face.
My cheeks burn hot, that chill in my bones is warming, the stubborn damp spots on my leggings are drying, and it’s the first scrap of comfort I’ve had since I left the hospital.
My jacket crinkles as I wrap my arms around myself and rest the bone of my chin on my knees.
Since we followed the main road that splits the town to here, up the wet hill, I lost Connie in the throngs of captives.
The new woman sits with the tattered ones.
I count them.
A group within a group. A haggard, exhausted clique of thirteen humans.
The others, seven of them, are women. I see one as young as her early twenties, another in her forties maybe. But each of the humans not in that core group of tattered clothes and calloused hands are women.
It furrows my brow and coils something ugly in my gut—because they look better kept.
Not well kept, just… better.
I don’t want to think about that.
I don’t want the sick feeling in my belly growing.
So I consider the guards.
Still, they surround us, but their attention is on the burning town. Like the rest of the dark fae, they watch—and there’s a serenity easing through the band of warriors, a calm that can be found on their faces.
I flick my gaze to the cold warrior.
Against the backdrop of the trees, he is a brushstroke of ice and ink.
The fae around him are washed in the glow of the blaze, but he stands further back, at the edge of the shadows between two trees, untouched by the warmth.
There’s something unnatural about him.
Where the female with translucent hair is perched on a boulder, and a dark-haired male leans against the tree, and both watch the blaze, the cold one is standing, still, motionless.
He watches the blaze like the others, but alone he’s dispassionate. I see no hunger brightening his eyes, no fever alighting him.
He just stands, stiff as a statue, wholly unnatural, and a blank face angled toward the burning town.
It’s the first moment I’ve seen him without rage or purpose, without his steed’s throat in his hand, without a mutinous stare aimed down at me, without that ice of his curling around him like live tendrils.
I wonder, fleetingly, if this is him relaxed.
An unfeeling statue in a winter garden.
But a murderous one.
Blood stains his cheekbones, a few smears running down his jawline, as though a bloody hand tried to grab at him.
He found a human in the town.
No doubt about it.
Those bloody marks are fresh.
Maybe that’s the reason for his current calm.
He found his peace in another’s death. That peace holds until the blaze starts to settle and the buildings are fading to ash and rubble.
The smoke is still billowing up into the darkness above when, at the peak of the hill, the general moves for her horse.
Horse.
If it can be called that.
The movement of the general ripples through the unit. Bags are slung over shoulders, bloody hands are wiped down thighs, the quiet of the walk softens the murmurs into whispers.
I shift onto one side and plant my hands on the mushy road. Aches spring through me, like I’m struck by lightning, and a guttural sound traps in my chest.
Across the road, the cold warrior’s gaze latches onto me, as if he heard me.
Under his arctic stare, I freeze.
Twisted around, my weight presses down on my shaky arms, and I’m still—until he lifts his hand and gives a curt, unenthused gesture.
Come.
I twist my face in answer, a grimace that steals me as I push up to my feet. My boots are uneasy beneath me, and I stumble a step.
Slow, I straighten my spine.
The captives move as uneasily as I do, like we’re all paper pamphlets tacked to a wall and battered by winds.
Behind me, there’s the faint grunt and thump of a fall. I look over my shoulder at the scrawny man who collapsed back down onto his knees.
Hands reach out for his arms and hoist him up to his feet. But even with the support of his fellow captives, the two women that flank him, and loop their arms around his, his shakiness threatens another fall.
It pauses me.
The worry that pinches the faces of the two women—the ones with long, straight hair and sharp angled jaws and hooked noses—holds my attention.
Sagged, the sickly pale one is held upright, a slight glisten of sweat on his rashy forehead, but even his worry shows in the raspy breaths that ribbon from between his parted, pale lips, and the side glances he throws at the guards…
My own weight sways on my boots, and I can hardly keep myself straight—but then a guard swerves into my line of sight.
A stroke of gold.
Golden hair, golden-hued skin, golden eyes, and yet there’s nothing warm about him. He is cold, a sword, and his stare on the sick man gleams with anticipation.
A prickle of ice touches my cheek.
I flinch against the sudden sensation.
It wrenches my attention away from the guard and the sick man, and I swerve my stare to the cold warrior.
I expect him to be standing next to me, touching my cheek… but he’s where I last saw him, over by the trees, his eyes on me.
Again, his hand lifts, higher this time, and his fingers flick inwards towards his palm. It’s such a curt gesture that I feel his prickly irritation in the command.
Come.
I don’t waste another second before I’m pushing into a staggered, uneasy step. My boots thud on the sleet, the snow softening into slippery slush.
These boots aren’t meant for the snow.
The grips are, frankly, shit.
So I watch my steps as I squeeze by the captives that start to spread out from the tight-knit circle.
I’m sure I walk with a gait of some kind, a limp.
It slows me down as I stagger towards the guard in my way—the one who turns his lilac eyes on me.
A stack of stone piled into a body, the fae towers over me, a harshness etched all over his burn-scarred face.
My lips part around nothing for a beat before I find the words and the will to lift my finger. I point at his arm, the one obstructing my path. Beyond it, the arm of solid muscle, is the warrior.
My voice trembles, “I’m just go—”
The words are struck right out of me.
The back of the guard’s hand collides with my jaw, like a fucking slab of concrete whacking across my face.
The impact is blinding. Stars erupt in my sight as suddenly as the hot sensation of blood fills my mouth.
It’s all I know as the road rushes up to meet me, a startled numbness—then I hit the ground, hard.
I’m blinded.
Darkness is speckled with dancing lights and swirling colours. My eyes squeeze against it, the distorted nothingness, and faintly, I’m aware of my legs moving, writhing, against slush.
I hear nothing beyond the buzz that hums in my ears, a static with the volume cranked all the way up.
Strange that I feel the cold, wet threads of my leggings against my skin before the sudden burst of hot pain in my mouth.
A groan wisps out of me.
I roll onto my side, face scrunched against the onslaught of sensations.
It all floods back to me in a heartbeat.
The slush soaking through my sweatpants to my leggings, then icing my flesh; the dizziness thumping in my head, pulse, pulse, pulse; the hot metal blood falling out of my mouth; the ringing in my ear; the haziness of my sight that, as I squeeze and squeeze and squeeze my eyes, clears more and more.
I aim my crinkled glare at the leather-wrapped guard.
Lilac eyes flicker with a softness they shouldn’t wear, a softness that doesn’t reach the feral twist of his mouth, an almost snarl.
Boots planted firm on the road, he watches me, as if waiting for my next move, to see what I do.
But before I can do anything, the chill of ice spreads over me. I throw my watery gaze to the cold warrior just as his shoulder brushes the guard’s.
He turns a cold look on the guard—and holds it.
A silent moment pulses between them, and whatever is said in that look, without a word, the guard falls his weight back onto one boot.
The slightest retreat, one I would’ve missed if I’d blinked, if I’d looked away or wiped at my tears.
The cold one swerves his sharp green eyes to me, but the green is faded, frosted. Unkindly, he swipes down for my arm, grips it too tight, and hauls me to my feet.
The sudden lift is confetti in my head, an eruption of dizziness that has stars dancing in my vision.
I blink against it, another squeeze of the eyelids.
Beneath me, my legs move on instinct, tugged out of the circle of guards.
Fae watch us.
None of them laugh, like they did when I was carted into their camp, wet with my own urine. That’s dry now, but the stink lingers.
Whatever the difference is now, I don’t know, I just know they don’t laugh anymore.
But they do watch.
It’s a vulnerable feeling as I’m hauled, bloody faced, to the treeline.
I bury my mouth into the crook of my arm. My other arm sways with the movements of the rope as the warrior fastens it to his belt again.
My breaths hitch against the sleeve of the parka.
I’ve never been struck before.
Not like that.
Sure, I’ve had a few scraps on a night out here and there, mostly in my twenties and fuelled by booze, but never has a man—a male—just smacked me clear across the face.
If any man ever did do this, I think I would’ve been struck with the shock for a moment, maybe a few moments, before I brought a glass bottle down on his head, or bit his fucking nose off.
This…
This is different.
The fear has kneaded so deep into me that I think I’m losing myself, like I’m fading, of weak body, but weaker mind.
I was something else before the blackout.
I was someone else.
I was cocky, rude, a fighter, definitely arrogant, and protective, I was powered by adrenaline and rage, I was angry and loud when I had to be, but I was also quiet and watchful, observant of those around me.
All of that has muted around them.
The dark fae.
I’m a mouse, now.
No, not a mouse.
A rat.
Because I will chew my way through others to find my own escape, my own safety.
Is that who I always was?
Does it matter when, at the end of it all, my hands are bound together and the tether tugs, jerking me back to this cold, harsh reality?
The look I lift to the warrior is watery, I know it, and I know I must look as pathetic as I feel.
The frost of his eyes has settled, but not yet fully returned to the green, and he considers me, runs me over from cheekbone to cheekbone—then he tugs away from the treeline.
His pace into the flow of the unit draws me along with him—and the female warrior walks with us, just on the other side of me.
Her sharp chin bobs with her steps, and her gaze stays straight ahead at the backs of her comrades.
That white hair of hers, strands have that faint edge of translucence, are in tousled braids along her scalp, dishevelled and marked with ash and soot.
But no blood.
She didn’t find people in the town.
I don’t feel any safer with her on my right, and not with the cold warrior on my left, and not with the heavy-handed guard way at the back with the captives.
That’s the only predictable part of my new reality. How fucking unsafe I am.