Chapter 4 #2
‘Warrior was there,’ I mutter, remembering his nasty smile, the dark goatee, and those jeweled knives of his.
‘What?’ Morgan snarls.
‘I’ll tell you the full tale once we get home,’ Locke tells Morgan before looking back at me.
‘But yes. He was there. He told Bere I was a traitor. I was set upon by five orcs and then iron bound. For many weeks while Bere and Warrior made me pay in all the ways they could think of for my treachery. Until yesterday when you freed me.’
‘But Morgan said it was but a sennight,’ I whisper, searching his face.
He closes his eyes. ‘For them it was, but time passes more quickly there. For you…and for me…it was much longer, Bryn. Likely closer to eight or nine weeks. I was…in and out of consciousness, so I can’t be certain of how many it truly was for us.’
‘Do you wish for me to feel sorry for you,’ I ask, ‘by telling me what you endured?’
‘No, Bryn. I just… I want you to… You mustn’t blame yourself for the things you did there.’
‘I don’t!’ I snarl. ‘I blame you!’
It’s a lie but at least he winces, just a bit.
‘And, after all that, did you get the information that you wanted? Was it worth it, Locke?’ I spit.
‘Yes,’ he says, looking into my eyes. ‘I got the information I went there for…in the end.’
‘Well, how lovely for you!’ I snap, feeling like beating him senseless or curling into a ball by the hearth and crying until I can’t anymore.
I’m not sure which.
Instead, I turn from him, pulling away from Morgan with a snarl when he tries to embrace me.
‘You left me!’ I hiss at him and ignore the devastation I see in his eyes. ‘You deserted me after promising me that you would make sure I got to the Light.’
‘Bryn,’ he begins just as Locke says something I don’t hear.
‘No!’ I half shout at them both. ‘I’ve heard enough lies from honeyed fae lips to last a lifetime. No more.’
I go to the corner and slide down the wall, curling in on myself and not looking at either of them.
‘It wasn’t,’ Locke says quietly a moment later.
‘What wasn’t?’ I ask in spite of myself.
‘Worth it, Bryn. Nowhere near.’
I scoff and then take no more notice of him.
A little while later, Jak comes back. He seems glad to see me. He offers me food.
I don’t look at him. He and Morgan speak in quiet tones where I can’t hear. They don’t talk to Locke at all, I notice.
Later, Morgan comes and tells me that we’ll all be leaving for the Light the next morning.
I let him know with a snarl that his joke is in poor taste, and I try to ignore the false empathy in his eyes when he tells me that he understands why I wouldn’t believe him.
I wonder where they’re really taking me tomorrow. Will they try to get close to me once more? Try to make pretend amends so that it’s all the sweeter when they betray me again?
I stare into the glowing embers far into the night and I vow to myself that I will never trust any fae ever again, let alone these three cruel pricks.
LOCKE
The next day, Morgan and Jak have to leave before us.
I don’t like it because if Warrior was able to escape the pits, he could already be lurking in Merediea, but the councils in both Halsford and in the Underhill are filled with bureaucrats as far as I’m concerned, bar one or two, and they won’t take kindly to the idea of anyone travelling the Breach in and out of the Light without their permission, which is given rarely outside of special circumstances.
Saving a ‘Dark Realmer’ would not be considered a sufficient reason.
Not these days. It’s best that no one knows that they ever left the village.
They use the slightly odd-looking amulet Morgan got from somewhere to call the Breach in the dark corner of a cellar in an abandoned warehouse not far from the room I keep in the White City.
We’ve known of this place, this secondary anchor for the Breach for a while.
We and other spies of the Underhill have used it many times since it was found by accident, and, in fact, the fae now own the entire building to ensure no one else stumbles across it.
It’s on a practically derelict street down by the docks, but I still keep an eye out in case anyone got through the wards somehow, or Warrior is waiting. Jak and Morgan step into the void with final looks at Bryn, which she ignores, and they disappear, leaving her and me alone.
‘It won’t be long,’ I say after a few moments of standing in silence, trying to reassure her…and myself, I suppose, as I brush my thumb over the purple stone of my own amulet that was loaned to me by the Underhill to return to the Light from here when my part of the mission was complete.
Bryn’s eyes are on it, and I wonder if she’s planning to steal it from me and escape.
‘It only works from this cellar,’ I say quietly, ‘and it only goes to the Light, so you might as well just come with me.’
She doesn’t say anything and I let out a long breath.
Though I’m glad to be returning home after so many months in the Dark Realms, a part of me worries. The village is fine mostly, and we have a cottage that we use when we’re not out on assignment. But, in truth, we haven’t spent much time there since the fire two winters previous.
I glance at Bryn who’s standing next me.
She stares straight ahead at nothing, as if she’s waiting for me to give her an order.
Her expression is familiar, one I’ve come to understand is a mask she wears when she’s in the company of masters.
I hate it because I see now that she had begun to let me glimpse beneath it before all this. Before what I did.
Now, well, she’s barely looked at any of us, not spoken either.
She’s very angry. Rightfully so. Hurt, as well.
That, I didn’t expect. Fool that I am, I didn’t understand that she truly cared for Jak and Morgan.
I thought the regard she showed them was a trick during our journey from The Barrack to Merediea, simply a means of survival for her.
I didn’t begrudge her it, but I see now that I was wrong.
She feels betrayed by them more than me, I think.
She had truly begun to trust them, and I blew it all apart to get what I wanted.
As we wait for our own small bridge to open, I turn to her.
‘It wasn’t them,’ I say, hoping she’ll listen to me today because she refused to last night. ‘Morgan and Jak. When they left you, it was because they didn’t remember. I worked magick on them both so that I could complete the mission without them.’
‘It hardly matters,’ she says stiffly after a moment. ‘It’s not as if I’ll ever see them again, is it?’
I frown. ‘What do you mean?’
She rolls her eyes before staring straight ahead once more.
‘Come, Locke. I’ve at last learned my lessons where the fae are concerned.
Where are you really taking me? Are you going to make a little extra coin by selling me to some First Circle goblin lord?
Or to the Citadel as a cleaner? Or, maybe, you don’t have a plan at all.
Maybe you’ll just sell me to the first master who’s interested. ’
‘No, Bryn,’ I say, gently, wishing she’d believe me because I know she’s likely terrified under all this pretended nonchalance. ‘I’m not selling you. We’re going to the Light. I vowed it to you, remember?’
Snorting, she looks away from me.
‘Of course. The Light Realm. Just as you promised.’ She stifles a yawn.
She still doesn’t believe me.
I let out a sigh, wondering if I and the others should simply leave her be once we get to Halsford, let her make a new life far from these dark memories and from us.
It might be best for her. She can be with other humans, take a husband as per their customs, have a family if that’s what she desires.
I hear the Breach and pull her back toward me a little to make sure we aren’t in its way. It’ll only be a small one, but it still packs a wallop if you’re standing too close when it opens. She stiffens when I touch her and I move my hand away as soon as I can.
‘Are you going to ensure you fuck me again as well before you take my memories from me this time?’ she mutters caustically from next to me.
I open my mouth to tell her that’s not what’s happening but then close it again. What’s the point? She won’t believe me until I show her the truth. At least some of her fire is returning. She would never have spoken to me like that yesterday.
Regardless of how much better she seems to be feeling though, I find myself hating what I am, what I’ve become, more with each moment I spend in her company.
Just as I should, I suppose.
What would Nanna say if she knew what I’d done in her and the others’ names?
Doesn’t matter. Nanna is gone. They all are.
Taken and sold into the Dark Realms years ago. Likely dead now. Gods, I hope they are. Thinking of them still suffering there after all this time makes me want to retch.
I let out a calming breath as I walk toward the opening, taking hold of Bryn and keeping her close just in case she tries to run and gets lost in the endless corridors of the ether.
She doesn’t pull away though, and she looks at the passage in front of us the way I know I do, with unease and more than a little fear.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I say over the droning hum.
She ignores me, or at least pretends to, and we enter the Breach.
It’s a very short journey, at least, and we emerge on the familiar hillside on a bright day just outside Halsford. The wind whips up around us and, next to me, Bryn, in her fae disguise, shivers almost imperceptibly.
I take off my cloak and hold it out to her. She doesn’t take it.
‘Where are we?’ she asks instead.
I awkwardly put my cloak back around my shoulders. ‘We’re in the Light, Bryn. You’re safe.’
She huffs, but says nothing.
‘You’ll see,’ I say quietly, setting off down the hill in front of her.
I don’t wait for her, mostly so she understands that there’s no reason for me to keep her close here. There is no slavery. She can come and go as she pleases. Well, once Halsford’s Council has given her leave to remain, which shouldn’t be difficult. I know the head of the Council well, after all.