Chapter 4
brYN
Ihear low chatter as I slowly waken. It makes me feel happy. Safe.
My body is warm and cozy. My belly isn’t torturing me with its hunger and thirst for once. I’m not in danger. I can sleep longer.
No, that’s not right.
I escaped the pits. I’m traveling with a master, which means?—
My eyes are open and I’m jumping from the bed immediately. My body hits a wall and I’m looking around in earnest, trying to take stock of my surroundings as quickly as possible.
There are three of them.
One lolling on the bed. One standing in front of the door to stop me leaving.
A third, the one who brought me here, sits at the table with a mug of something hot in front of him, looking half dead.
His other eye is swollen now. Some of his fingers are at odd angles.
He’s the one who helped me escape, the one who’s taking me to the Light. Locke, they called him.
The other two…found me here late last evening. I felt…
I stare at the bed for a moment.
Between my legs is sore.
I look down and see that I have no trousers on.
I give them an accusing look. I can’t pretend to be the meek slave girl this morning, I find. Not after they…
But that’s not how it happened. They didn’t force me. They didn’t have to. I clench my eyes shut, embarrassment making my cheeks heat. The smaller of the two strangers… We fell on the bed. But it was I who took from him, not the other way around.
‘What did you do to me?’ I whisper. ‘Was it some magick or a potion to make me want…’
I look over at the bed again and then away. They both made me feel pleasure more than once, and that somehow makes it worse.
‘It wasn’t us,’ the large one rumbles slowly.
My hand covers my mouth as I gasp. My only thoughts in those moments on the bed were of survival. I’m not sure why I did that, when I should have been fleeing instead.
Did I force a master?
I glance at the smaller one, some foolish part of me wanting to make sure he’s not harmed somehow, to tell him that I’m sorry.
I push that ridiculous notion away. I did only what he would have done to me. At least it was on my terms this time.
‘It’s all right,’ the largest of them begins to say to me in a tone that belies the lack of calm I feel.
I shake my head.
‘It’s not all right,’ I snarl. ‘None of this is all right.’
I look at the one who’s at the table. He’s mostly awake now. He’s looking at me with guilt in his eyes.
‘Take me to the Light Realm as you promised,’ I order. ‘Do it now, mage, or, I swear to you I will make sure we are all caught by the city guard and I will tell them that all of you are slave thieves.’
Locke opens his mouth to answer, but the large one speaks first. ‘For fuck’s sake! Fix whatever you did to her, Locke, and do it now!’
He nods. ‘I think I have the strength to do it, but I’ll need a healing potion before I attempt it. In—in case it’s difficult to remove…’
‘You didn’t think of that before?’ the smaller one snarls.
The larger one glances between them. ‘Just get it done, Locke!’
Locke looks down at his mangled hand. ‘I know you want me to suffer, Morgan, and I agree that I should but…I’ll need the potion for strength in case the conjure is stubborn…and also because I won’t be able to perform the necessary movements with my fingers broken.’
‘Jak, pour a potion down his throat!’ the large one, Morgan, commands.
Jak slams a vial down in front of Locke without a word. Without delay, the mage pulls the cork out and tips its contents into his mouth.
‘You better be able to make her as she was,’ Morgan snarls, ‘or I swear to every god in the Dark and Light, I will snap your neck, like I did Warrior’s and leave your corpse in this room to rot.’
‘That’s fair,’ Locke mutters with a nod, not looking at his friends, nor at me.
My eyes narrow a fraction. These are more delaying tactics. Locke isn’t taking me anywhere. I’m out of the pits. I should count myself lucky and try to escape.
Survive.
I surreptitiously survey the door and then the casement, wondering if I can make it before this mage works whatever magick they’re talking about on me. Gods only know what kind of a trick this is, what he’s actually planning to do to me.
‘Don’t even think about it, Bryn,’ Morgan rumbles, touching his nose and looking rueful.
But I can’t not.
Survival is the only thing that matters.
I notice the bracelet he took from me last night on the floor by the hearth and, with not one more moment’s thought or hesitation, I swipe it as I throw myself across the bed, landing on my feet right in front of the casement.
I don’t look back as I fling it open and dive out.
I think I’m free. For a moment I feel as if I’m flying, but then a meaty hand grabs me by my shirt and my hair. I hear the cloth rip as I’m pulled swiftly back into the room, my shriek stifled by the big one’s huge hand once more.
He looks more long-suffering than angry at me though, and he pulls my long shirt down in an odd attempt to preserve my modesty.
‘Good catch, Morgan. Fuck! I thought she was going for the door.’
‘You foolish woman,’ Jak says harshly, looming over me and making me cower because I think he’s going to hit me.
But Morgan pushes him away. ‘Leave her be. You know she isn’t right. Locke, do it before she flings herself to her death just to be away from us.’
‘No!’ I wriggle in his arms, trying to gain purchase on anything to escape his clutches.
I smack his face, but all he does is scowl at the mage, who’s walking toward us looking much better. His eyes aren’t so swollen and his fingers are moving, turning in the air in front of him.
I flinch and tense, digging my fingers into the arms of the large fae who’s holding me.
Survive.
‘Please, my lord,’ I whimper, pretending to submit. ‘Don’t turn me into a beast or make me grow roots from my hair!’
‘It’s done.’
I open one eye, and breathe out slowly. My head tingles a little. My eyes bore into the mage. ‘That’s it?’
‘Bryn? Do you know who we are? Do you remember us?’
‘Morgan!’ I exclaim. ‘Locke!’
My grin is wide. I scramble out of the large one’s arms and the idiot lets me go.
I immediately dive for the casement again and he swears. The cunt is faster than he looks because he’s able to grab me once more and holds me while I strike at him and curse him, his mother, his children, and his horse.
‘It didn’t work!’ he thunders, but Locke doesn’t seem overly perturbed.
‘It may take a little time for her memories to filter back in, but the conjure is gone.’
‘Make her sleep then!’ Morgan growls. ‘She’s slippery as a fish. I can’t hold her!’
All is quiet. I can hear birds chirping outside. I’m curled up on something soft, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable. I’d rather be in front of a warm stone hearth, I think as I yawn.
‘Bryn?’
I blink and see Morgan sitting on the bed. I give him a grin, still half asleep.
He smiles back, a little tentatively.
‘Is it time to get up?’ I ask, glancing at the closed casement.
He tenses a little when I look at it.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine. Why?’ I shift in the bed. ‘Well, except that my body aches. Everywhere.’
I sit up, closing my eyes, grasping the side of my skull with one hand. ‘My head hurts.’
‘That’s to be expected,’ I hear Locke say quietly.
He sounds different. I look at him. He stands by the hearth, watching me with wary eyes.
‘Where’s Jak?’ I ask.
‘He went to get some food,’ Morgan says. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
I nod and then I look around the room and frown. ‘Where are we?’
‘Merediea.’
I look down at the coverlet and rub my head, trying to think.
‘How…long have we been here?’ I ask carefully, feeling as if I’m coming out of a long dream.
‘Since yesterday.’ Morgan shifts closer and takes my hand. ‘But, Bryn, this is the second time you’ve been here. It’s been over two weeks since we all arrived here together. Do you remember that?’
‘Of course,’ I say, looking at him in confusion, and giving him a small smile. ‘But if so many days have passed, then where have I?—’
I feel the grin drop from my lips.
‘The pits,’ I whisper, letting out a harsh breath as I remember exactly where I’ve fucking been.
I pull my hand from Morgan’s and I stare at Locke.
I’ve never seen the mage before, I realize. Not really. I leave the bed, stalking toward him.
He at least has the decency to not look me in the eye.
‘I’m sorry, Bryn. I never meant?—’
I hit him with my closed fist in the side of his cheek and his head snaps to the side. He makes no move to defend himself. I hit him again, and again. And he just sits there in the chair.
I can’t see, I realize. I angrily dash my tears away.
‘You…you snake. You fucking viper,’ I whisper. ‘You…’
I remember the days after Morgan and Jak disappeared… How he found me wandering.
‘You brought me back to this room that night. You…’ I flinch at the memory of him fucking me in that very bed while I begged it of him in my haze of need… ‘and then in the morning, you did something to me.’
‘A conjure. I took your memory of us, Bryn.’
‘And you took me…’ My traitorous lip quivers, ‘to that place instead of the Light like you promised. Gods, you made me believe… You made me hope and then you robbed me of it, you took me from myself and then you brought me to that place…the pits…’
My fists clench.
‘I killed in that place.’ I close my eyes. ‘I didn’t even care. Was that you as well? Did you…make me like that? An animal who fought others for scraps, who murdered for them without remorse?’
‘Yes.’ He says it so matter-of-factly, not even sounding the least bit sorry. ‘A secondary conjure.’
My eyes clench tightly and my stomach twists. ‘Why?’
‘I…made your need to survive surpass all else in your mind. To ensure you lived long enough.’
‘For what? So, you could get your information?’ I whisper.
‘Yes.’ He pauses. ‘And because…I was never intending to leave you there, Bryn. You must believe me. It was going to be a matter of hours, days at most, and then we were both going to escape back to Merediea and then to the Light. But, when we arrived?—’