Chapter 9
NINE
I stir to the blinding glare of a campfire.
Just an arm’s reach from me, flames lick up the length of thick logs, burning hot enough to sear my cheeks and heat through my layers to my warm flesh.
Crisp foliage is cutting into my cheek—and by the tilted angle of the campfire, I must be on my side.
Sleep hasn’t released me.
I’m still in its grip, a grip that tightens more and more with each lazy blink at the fire.
My wrists are pinned at my chin.
The tether has re-appeared, bound and looped around my wrists, but that isn’t what gives me pause.
The grey sleeves of the sweater reach over my hands to my gloved knuckles.
I didn’t put the gloves back on, not before…
It flashes in my mind.
Pinned down to the soil, an invasion of powder into my mouth, hitting the back of my throat, coughing, choking, suffocating…
If I wasn’t sinking into slumber, I might flinch at the memory.
But I only stare at the gloves I didn’t put on, and the vague understanding that the warrior himself gloved my hands and bound my wrists.
I’m relaxed, too relaxed in the hum of fae conversing all around me, murmured chats that should stiffen my shoulders.
Instead, I am sinking into the soil, my gaze on the black fabric that reaches the tether coiled around my wrists—the sleeves of a jacket.
Not my jacket.
Not the one I was wearing before.
The material is different, coarser, like a rain-jacket, not soft like the Kathmandu puffer.
That fae must have had another piece of clothing for me or maybe stolen a fresh jacket from one of the captives.
It’s a distant thought that only touches my mind before a weary sound unribbons from me, and I force my head to angle back.
The strength is a dwindling flame in me.
I manage to scrape my cheek over the ground just an inch or so, neck arching, before my sight fails me.
The hand of sleep grips tighter and wrenches me back under.
It holds me for a while.
I don’t know how long.
I just know that when I wake again, I’ve rolled onto my other side, turned my back on the flames burning through the spine of the rain jacket, and I’m now facing boots.
Boots, planted on the foliage, leather dusted with frost and dirt, smeared and blotted with dried blood.
I frown at them for a moment, the muted leather, before awareness comes back to me.
My neck arches.
Stiff from a rough sleep on the unbalanced forest floor, I drag my gaze up the dark fae parked on a mossy log.
Forearms braced on his parted thighs, he lazily picks strips of strange, cured meat from a bowl that’s cupped in one hand.
As if feeling my eyes on him, his cold gaze slides to me—and for a long moment, he just stares back.
Then he bites into that otherworldly jerky, his white teeth sinking into the tough meat with ease.
His mouth moves with a slow chew, like he isn’t starving, his belly is full—
I feel the exact opposite.
The scent from the bowl snakes down at me.
The meat has a mild spice to it, but there’s a familiar play-doh fragrance reaching me, too.
But I’m so hungry that saliva is fast to wet my mouth.
I swallow, my gaze flicking to the meat pinched between his fingers, and I just now notice the oddness of his fingernails, not unlike mine, but with a greyish hue.
His hand shifts, into the bowl, then out again.
This time, he’s got a smaller piece of meat.
He offers it to me, a lazy extension of his hand.
It’s not enough.
Not nearly enough.
My stomach tells him that with a deep gurgle.
But I say nothing.
Can’t risk him taking it away from me.
Lethargy weighs me down as I reach for it.
The rope is back on my wrist… but just one wrist. The first time I woke, my wrists were bound by the tether, but now one is free.
It lures a frown to my sleepy face, probably puffy and marked by the pressure of the foliage I’ve been sleeping on for however long.
I reach out that one bound wrist, and the tether dangles, tickling the tip of my nose, as I grasp the strip of meat.
The cold fae watches me as I stuff it into my mouth—and swallow.
No chewing, no tasting, just devouring scraps where I can get them.
I get more.
The winter fae scoops his ungloved fingers into the bowl and lures out strings of thick noodles. The length rises and rises, until the tips drag over the edge of the wooden bowl and dangle closer to me.
Now I know what the play-doh smell is. Some sweets have that smell, too, some fresh breads and wraps and bao buns. And noodles.
I try to push up, at least my upper body, but my muscles only clench for a fleeting moment before I’m melting back into the frozen soil and my lashes are lowering.
The warrior knows it.
Knows I can’t bring myself to sit up and eat.
Whatever that powder is that he forced down my throat, it has me weaker and fading on the foliage.
He brings the dangling noodles to my mouth.
Distantly, I wonder where they got them.
Do the dark armies gather preserved supplies along the way and feed off the scraps of our world?
The thought is quick to drift from my mind, the very moment that the soft noodles touch my bottom lip. He lowers them into my mouth, then releases them. I turn my cheek to the soil so they don’t catch at the back of my throat and choke me.
This fae might be feeding me, but I’m still not wholly convinced of the lengths he’ll go to keep me alive.
On my side, gaze returning to the boots and mossy log, I chew, and chew, and chew. It’s a slow, tired process, and with every heartbeat that passes, my lashes are lowering more and more.
That wretched sleep is not done with me.
It comes with screams. Nightmares. Memories.
I don’t want to go back.
But I don’t have a choice.
All around me, the faint murmur of chat, of barbed languages and harsh chuckles, feels too relaxed. Like these warriors are people, too. People with interests… with friendships, with humour and joy.
I don’t like it. I don’t want to even think of them having names.
In my nightmare, they always have faces—but never names.
This time, the faces merge into just one.
A face chiselled from ice.
He stands over me, my own shotgun in his grip, and he cocks it over and over and over.
The empty shells rain down on me.
I’m begging, weeping, but I don’t quite hear the words mumbling out of me.
He aims the barrel at my face.
I scream—
But my scream is the blast of a shotgun.