Chapter 12
brYN
When I wake, I have a monstrous headache.
I touch the side of my head with a groan and feel a large lump there.
I sit up carefully, leaning against what feels like a damp, stone wall.
As I crack my eyes open in the low light, I see metal bars, and a floor covered in rotted reeds black with mold and decay.
I feel for the knives Morgan gave me. They’re gone.
Of course they are. I had them in my hands when I was taken.
By Warrior.
I remember that.
Swallowing hard, I look beyond the cell.
It's dim, but I can make out other figures. Humans. Some are whimpering low. I can hear children and babes crying quietly, and being hushed by their mothers. But many adults are openly weeping as well. Some are slumped over and looking desolate, while others angrily pace the cages they’re locked in as much as they’re able considering there are so many in such a cramped space.
Faces I know appear in my vision in the cell next to mine as my eyes get used to the gloom.
Tavish, some of the men who work for the merchant, and others from the village who I’ve helped in the healer’s rooms. Tavish’s men are eyeing me warily, four in particular stare at me as I survey the dungeon we’re locked in.
If they’re the ones who beat me by the river, they should be afraid of me, but if we’re where I think we are, I'm the least of their worries.
I’m alone in my cage. I get to my feet and stagger to the front of my cell, trying the lock.
'There's no use in bothering,' I hear Tavish mutter.
He’s leaning on the bars of the cell next to mine, watching me. ‘They’re all well secured.'
'Where are we?' I ask in case he knows more than I do.
He sneers, but he keeps his voice low. 'Do you not remember them rounding us up? Working some dark magick on any who tried to fight? Or, perhaps you were with them. Did you lead them straight to our doors, Dark Realmer?’
'I wasn't even in Halsford when they came,' I tell him. ‘Locke, Morgan, Jak, and I were sent to Kitore two days ago so that I could be captured. That was the city her agents were meant to be taking the humans from. You should know at least some of that, Councilor.’
‘Is that where they caught you?’ he asks with a scowl.
‘No, they never came to Kitore,’ I look around the dungeon and frown. ‘They went to Halsford instead.’
There’s a pregnant silence.
‘We found the village deserted when we returned…today, I suppose,’ I finish. ‘I was caught there. One of them was waiting for us.’
Or just for me.
'They arrived in the early morning,’ a woman’s voice from the cell on the other side of mine says quietly. ‘It was still dark when they came.’
I peer through the dim light. ‘Claudia?’
‘Aye. Somehow, they got through the ward. They took everyone. Brought us here.'
‘Is Orry with you?’
I belatedly see the pale boy at his mother’s skirts and let out a sigh both of relief and trepidation. At least they seem to have kept everyone together, though, for now.
‘So, is this Fiana’s court?’ I ask.
‘As if you don’t know,’ Tavish grinds out after a moment.
I roll my eyes. 'This wasn’t my fault and if you truly think it was, then you're a fool, Tavish,' I say. 'Or, maybe you’re trying to put eyes on me because you’re the traitor.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he hisses.
‘Well, they were meant to be going to Kitore. Why didn’t they?
How did they know where Halsford even was?
How to get through the wards?’ I snort. ‘Or maybe you aren’t the traitor at all.
Perhaps you're just annoyed that your men didn't do a good enough job and left me for dead when they should have killed me properly. '
My lip curls at him, and he looks surprised. Next to him, a woman shifts, turning to face us and I realize it’s his wife, Dawn. Her face is tired and wan and she’s holding Taramel close.
'What's she talking about, Tavish?' she asks, looking upset.
‘I don’t know, my love,' he answers softly. ‘I promise you that I don’t.’
'Enough of this!’ she whispers urgently. ‘Bryn is a healer. She isn’t a spy, or a betrayer.’
‘She’s a Dark Realmer!’ he says loudly enough that some of the villagers in the other cells look over at us.
‘Aye,’ one of his men mutters. ‘A deceiving Dark Realmer.’
My eyes narrow at him. ‘I know your voice,’ I say softly.
I don’t, but he pales and puts his back to me, giving himself away. I take note of his face, and the other three who stand with him. Maybe Tavish wasn’t there at the river after all. He certainly doesn’t seem to have any inkling of what I’m talking about.
‘She helped me with Taramel when she had that fever,’ Dawn says to her husband. ‘Jak told me later that without the tincture she gave me, our babe might not have survived.
She pokes Tavish hard in the chest.
‘Jak is loyal to her,’ Tavish protests. ‘They are bound by the old laws. He’d say anything to paint her in a good light.’
‘Oi!’ I hear Claudia snarl quietly. ‘Don’t you be saying nasty things about Fae Jak. Most of us here have been healed by him at one time or another.’
There’s a murmur of ascent in the cells and Tavish looks uncomfortable.
‘I just mean that?—’
‘No!’ Dawn growls. ‘Bryn is one of the village. She’s shown us that. Stop treating her like an outsider. She’s shown that she cares. Where was the Underhill? They were meant to protect the village if we were ever in need. But where were they, Tav?’
Her eyes narrow. ‘This is that fae’s doing, isn’t it?’
He shakes his head. ‘Of course not , I don’t know what you’re?—'
‘You said you’d no longer do his bidding. You told me he was false.'
'The fae didn't do this,' he snorts.
'There were fae in the ranks that took us,’ she argues.
‘We were betrayed,' I say. 'Don't you understand?’
The merchant looks away.
'Where was the Harbinger?' I ask.
'She was called away to the Underhill, as were her mates. When they got through the ward in the early hours of the morning, the village was defenseless.'
‘Convenient,’ I mutter.
‘You think Lia did this?’ Claudia asks from behind me.
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘But two days ago, some of Voss’ students lured me out to the river. They pushed me down the hill and left me there, and then four men whose faces I couldn’t see beat me, stabbed me, and left me for dead.’
‘We didn’t stab her!’ one of the men beside Tavish exclaims.
Dawn gasps. Even Tavish looks shocked.
‘Donnal?’ he asks. ‘Harry?’
None of his men meet his eye.
‘That fae said it had to be done. Said she had to learn her place.’
‘Who?’ he whispers.
‘The enforcer who’s always with Councilor Calder. But we never stabbed her. We was just meant to make sure she didn’t get above her station, think she was like us.’
Dawn has covered her mouth with her hand. Tavish looks the kind of horrified that can’t be pretended.
‘No,’ he says. ‘We get them out by using the law now. We don’t lure a woman into the forest, four to one, and beat her. Gods! What were you thinking?’
The men shift, looking down at the ground. ‘We just thought?—’
Tavish shakes his head, glancing at me and then away.
Dawn lets out a sound of revulsion and moves away from him, taking the baby to the other side of the cell and sitting with her back to them all.
‘Fuck,’ Tavish mutters. ‘I didn’t know.’
He looks through the bars at me. ‘I wasn’t part of that.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I say. ‘But if your men didn’t stab me with that knife, it means that Voss likely did. But I was the best hope of luring Fiana out. It’s why Calder made the deal. So, why would Voss try to kill me?’
‘He wouldn’t,’ Tavish says very quietly. ‘Unless he wasn’t working for the Underhill at all.’
‘He could be the traitor,’ I agree. ‘Or it could be Calder working through him.’
Tavish looks up at me sharply, but doesn’t have chance to say anything to my accusation regarding his friend because we hear faint footsteps at one end of the large dungeon, and a key turning in a lock. Everyone quiets, and I slink to the back of my cell.
Three guards come down the walkway. They're dressed in black, and look very foreboding. One of them is a tall, fae female who’s sharp eyes bore into every human she sees.
They look cruel. Like masters.
I shiver.
They open one of the cells on the other side of the dungeon and make the women inside come out.
I don’t recognize any of the faces. They’re not from the village.
All of them are made to kneel on the floor.
The fae female walks by slowly, peering closely at each one, taking their chins tightly between her fingers if they don’t look up and making them whimper.
'The breeding farm in the Sixth,' she says, and a woman is placed into an opposite cell.
She goes down the line, giving each woman a designation. When she gets to the males in the adjacent cell who also don’t seem to be from Halsford, she doesn't even bother having them leave their cells.
'The fighting pits,' she says, sounding bored.
'And the young, Vashelle?' one of the other guards asks from behind her, scribbling on a wooden board with a piece of parchment on it.
'The lady Fiana will choose which of the brats she would like for her experiments. The ones younger than two summers…' she shrugs. 'We have a surplus in the Seventh, don’t we?'
‘We do.’
‘The breeding farm in the Fourth for now. They had an outbreak of fever last month and half the younger stock succumbed, so that’ll help with their quotas.’
Gasps go up from the women, and she sneers out at the dungeon. 'Silence, slaves, or I’ll have your young ripped from your bosoms at this very moment!'
Many of the women from Halsford are crying in earnest now, though none of them have been sorted yet, and the fae rolls her eyes in our general direction.
'And this one?' the guard points at my cell. ‘She’s the one who was brought in by Warrior after the rest from the raid on the village in the Light.’
Her glance is dark. 'Bring her out. Fiana wants to see that one now.'
The cage is unlocked, and when I don’t come out as ordered quickly enough, the guard drags me from the cell by my hair.