Chapter 8 #3
That instinct of defiance still flickers in me, a flame gasping at waning oxygen.
I utter the answer with too much breath, and not nearly enough strength. “You’ll look.”
His eyes flash, and in a gasp, my neck is in his hand, and my boots are lifted from the ground.
The warrior lifts me up, brings the tip of my nose to his, and in a fraction of a second, in a blur of movement I couldn’t quite see, I’m dangling.
His eyes are sheets of white, hooked onto mine.
Gone are the hues of green behind a winter mist, his eyes are white like blizzards now, like the summits of mountains.
My lips are parted, not around breath or words or whimpers, but just pushed apart by the pressure of his suffocating hold.
Can’t speak a word, even if I tried. The pressure of his grip is too tight, too deep, and my voice is silenced by it.
For a long moment, he stares into me, through the flesh of my eyes, and into me, as though he can reach with his gaze alone down my body to my ribcage and rip out my heart.
I see nothing but pure, unfiltered rage in him.
It comes in his tone, too. It comes with a battled, whispery warning, one that tells me he’s fighting himself right now, fighting the urge to just snap my neck like a twig.
“I have never desired a human.” His lip curls into a silent snarl of pure disgust. “Your body is filth, it is perversion.”
He snatches for my hand on his wrist, his fingers fisting around my thumb—and he tugs it, bends it backwards.
My cry is silenced in his grip.
The pressure builds in my face, the air cut off too long, and my legs are squirming now—but all I can feel is the pull of my thumb bending back and back and back…
He’s gonna snap it right off.
“The thumb of a hand.” The blizzards of his stare are unwavering.
“Stumpy.” He tugs my thumb a touch more, and the bones scream.
“Short.” Tugs again, and the tendons are aching.
“Unappealing.” He brings his face closer to mine, the tip of his nose inching too close.
“Suggest it again, and I will take what you are… the thumb of a hand.”
He releases me.
Just like that, his fist is gone from my neck, and I crumple to the earth.
I don’t feel the impact of the ground rushing up to meet me. I hear my landing, distantly, like an echo from another place. All I feel are the pulsations in my head, thumping and thumping, and the suction of a ragged breath clawing through me.
I worm onto my back, my hands clutched to my throat.
The warrior advances on me with a single step.
The foliage should crunch under his boot, but it doesn’t make a sound.
The whispery rage of his voice swirls around the snow, “You are my ward. My captive to keep alive—or kill. You decide that fate. You decide if you ever see your friend again… or if you bleed out at my boots.”
I squint up at him, the glow of red around his lean, strong silhouette, and the sight of it has my body tensing.
His stare is a glass sword aimed down at me. “If I give you an order, you obey. Now wash—or I will do it for you.” He kicks the cloths closer to me. “I will not be gentle.”
I scoot back.
The heels of my boots push me just a reach away from him, a feeble retreat.
But it’s one he allows.
His stare follows.
He watches as, gradually, my hands slip away from my neck, and slap down to the earth.
My breaths start to ease, though my throat is still sandpaper, and I have to throw my gaze down to his boots, because the rage is stirring in me.
The urge to kick out at him is strong, to boot into his shin or his crotch. An echo of the old me, the one before the blackout, who felt cornered too easily, threw hands too quickly.
Maybe I’m a little relieved she’s still in there, somewhere, even if she doesn’t emerge more than a flicker.
As though he can sense that flicker, the potential strike that might steal my instincts and outrace my rationale, he is unmoving, standing, watching me.
A grunt draws through me like a grater to my lungs as I roll onto my knees. I keep the hot anger of my red cheek to him as I angle myself towards the pile of clothes.
The rage starts to settle into bitterness.
It twists my swollen, bloody mouth as the words murmur in my mind, ‘Thumbs aren’t unexceptional, they’re evolution, they are literally what separates us from apes, but you do you, fucker.’
Can’t exactly say that, though.
Doubt I’ll survive the full retort.
Emily’s pretzeled body streaming blood through a swaying net flashes in my mind—and flinches me.
That could be me next.
So I keep my mouth shut as I unzip my winter jacket, then drape it over the foliage, like a little picnic blanket to protect myself from the cold ground.
The warrior’s gaze follows me as I shift onto the spread jacket, my movements stiff against the aches searing through me.
If he hears my winces, the groans catching in my chest, he doesn’t acknowledge them.
Instead, his steps start slow, a gradual pace. “Before you dress,” he says, disinterested, “use the oil on your flesh.”
My frown flicks to him, to his uncaring gesture—and I trace that to the brown jar next to the pile. I almost didn’t notice it, a camouflage on the disturbed snow of the forest floor.
I don’t reach for it.
The cold one doesn’t care, or doesn’t notice, not now that he’s circling me, his gaze dragging over the trees, like he’s keeping watch, walking the perimeter.
Before I strip down to my bare skin in this stagnant cold, I sift through the clothes folded neatly on the foliage.
Next to the pile, a pair of thick, brown socks is nestled beside a boulder, as though it has fallen from the neatly stacked sorting of clothes.
With a fleeting glance at the socks, I decide they are soft and thick enough to keep me warm in these godforsaken boots.
I start sifting through the pile.
A grey cable-knit sweater, soft to the touch, but about two sizes too big. The long-sleeved top is thinner than it should be for such a cold winter, but then again, it might be thermal, since it’s got that strange satin-like feel to it but without the gloss of satin.
I peel the top layers off the pile and tug out the pair of tights.
A bud of relief blooms in me.
Not everyday tights, these ones are fleece-lined and cosy to the touch, maybe brand new and fresh out of the packaging, or washed with the lushest fabric softener.
I tug them off the pile to reveal the bottom folded layers—and my cheeks flame.
The strappy camisole isn’t what heats my face, but what’s next to it.
Plain cotton knickers folded over three times.
I pinch the edge of the fabric and lift. They unravel a few inches—and I guess these are about the right size.
I toss them aside, then grab the thick black material, the final layer.
That bloom of relief tickles with something new, something lovely.
Plush, thick sweatpants, the expensive kind, the kind I want to hug, melt into, like I’m on an advert for the market’s best fabric softener.
These are new, too.
Without tags, but obviously brand new with that faint store smell that’s part perfume and part dust.
This beastly fae could have chosen anything, like slacks or even jeans. And that would have added to my nightmare. So uncomfortable for long wear, and not warm enough for this weather.
But he chose sweatpants and fleece-lined tights, and a cable-knit sweater, and thick socks, and…
It strikes me.
Fingers snapping in my head.
He chose these.
Actually picked them out.
These clothes weren’t in his bag when I watched him pack up from the last camp.
The only time he wasn’t right next to me is when he dumped me with the captives in the town, and when he returned, he was spattered and smeared in blood.
He killed someone. I don’t doubt that.
But he also stole some time to…
To what?
Loot through the clothes of the stores and the homes around that forest town, pick out the warmer things he could find?
Not hard, given the overall climate of this area, most of the clothes from the people who once lived here would be on the warmer side.
Still, he went out of his way to loot these things for me. He picked out an entire wardrobe.
I must stink a hell of a lot more than I thought.
I have a nose, and it works. I do smell it too, that stale ammonia stench, but maybe there’s another layer to that, the stagnant residue of the old water in the tunnels I waded through before this warrior trapped us.
Guess he wasn’t lying when he said my odour offends him, or whatever the fucker said exactly.
I have half a mind to stick to my stench, just to get under his skin, but I don’t have nearly half the courage to do that.
I sigh a dreading breath, then start the awful process of peeling off my layers. One by one, leggings and tops, kicking off my boots—it fast exposes me to the cold.
The trembling starts before I’ve even peeled off my underwear.
I throw a narrowed look at the warrior, as though I’ll find him in a lie, staring at me, but he walks that slow, steady circle around the perimeter of this little nook of the forest, a wandering pace, a patience that has him.
My hands quake under the assault of the cold, but I take the cloth to the pour of the waterskin, then lather the soap.
It froths nicely, with the strong scent of…
I don’t know what.
Something not of our world, I guess, but close to the citrusy zest of lemongrass and the sharpness of mint.
Whatever those scents are, they are undeniably fresh—and a whole lot better than I smell right now.
I start before the cold can kill me.
I don’t just wash, I scrub.
I scrub every bit of my body I can reach, until my flesh is red and raw and scratched, then I use the other cloth, wet but not soapy, to rinse.
And fuck, it hurts.
Every touch of the cloth cuts a wince through me or twists my face or bares my teeth. And through all of that, I make sure to keep my crotch hidden from the fae’s view.
Folded legs beneath me, if he deigned to look my way, he wouldn’t see anything. Even as I push the lathered cloth between my thighs, I hunch over to shield myself even more.