Chapter Five - Rhea
I gasped, sucking in as much air as I could through my mouth and nose. My lungs burned, and my eyes stung, but I was alive.
Alive and in Arelia.
I was still bound, still riding in front of Dante on the horse that carried me from my homeland. But there were no shadows choking back my words, though I couldn’t find any to speak at the moment.
Around us, the forest had fallen away. A rough tundra of small bushes and spongy, blue and green moss lined the ground. On all sides I could see from the saddle, huge snowcapped mountains surrounded us. A bright blue lake nestled between the two tallest peaks directly in front of us, as if painted there by some divine creator. To the left and right of the thin path our horse now walked down were lines of wildflowers, taller than my shoulder and waving their colored petals towards us as if in greeting.
Tears stung my eyes again, but not from pain.
In Havern, I had seen many a mountain. But they were ant hills compared to the raw, ancient crests that split the world here.
“Where are we? Is this Arelia?” I turned in the saddle to find our escort gone. It was only Dante and I and the horse beneath us. I wasn’t sure why the thought of less fae captors had me more terrified than before.
I looked behind me to find Dante staring ahead of us, the square line of his jaw tightly drawn.
“And where will you take me now? Is there a city that these lords you mentioned will buy me in or just some auction house like where farmers purchase their livestock?”
Shadows crept up my arms and stroked against my cheek. I swallowed. Point taken. If I kept asking questions, I’d lose my ability to talk again.
I turned back to the road, happy enough to admire the scenery as we rode to the top of a high ridge. My breath caught as there below, nestled on the shores of the clear blue lake, were the sparkling lights of a city. It began at the crest of the ridge below us with small, modest homes of stone and wood. The majority of it spanned across the valley floor, touching the lip of the lake to its east, but ahead at the far reaches of my vision, I could see huge stone manors sweeping up in the rocky face of the mountain.
“It’s magnificent,” I breathed, more to myself than to my riding companion.
The horse stopped beneath me, and I looked up to find Dante dismounting. He rustled in the saddlebags and pulled out a cask of water, which he drank deeply from. I watched his hands holding the neck of the bottle as he drank. There was something mesmerizing about the shape of them and the way they moved.
His violet eyes watched mine as he closed the cask, then held it out to me.
I looked it over, suddenly feeling the dryness in my throat. I would need food and water soon if I wanted my strength and my wits with me. But I couldn’t risk what might be in that water. I couldn’t risk ingesting anything that might cloud my mind in these next crucial hours.
I smiled. “None for me, thank you.”
Dante’s shadowed face remained indifferent as he replaced the cask in the saddle bags and took the reins, walking the horse towards the city below us.
The sun was creeping low behind the peaks of the western mountains, and I found myself nearly immediately missing the warmth of his body behind me. The air was cool and crisp here, though it had been the height of summer when we’d crossed over through the veil.
The walk to the city below wasn’t long, but each step towards the beautiful fae structures had fear and apprehension growing in my chest. I had been momentarily blinded by the beauty of this place, but as the sun sank lower and the buildings loomed closer, I was reminded of what waited for me here.
At the gates of the city, the guards standing at attention straightened upon seeing us approach. They bowed crisply to Dante, giving me curious looks as he led the horse between them and into the city. I shot them a smile and bowed my head to them, earning confused looks from them both.
My breath caught in my throat as we entered the city proper. It was alive with fae males and females, families and couples, old and young. I watched in awe as blue- and magenta-haired folk hurried by us.
I didn’t fail to notice how they all parted as Dante walked through, as if there were some sort of invisible wall around him that no one dared to breach.
As the sun finally disappeared behind the peaks to my left, the street became alight with a bright, warm firelight. I blinked as my eyes adjusted, unable to pinpoint exactly where the light was coming from.
I wanted to ask Dante the thousands of questions swirling in my mind, but the noise of the streets and the strangeness of it all made the words impossible to speak aloud. Not to mention the stiff shape of his body as he walked, which made him less than approachable.
Ahead of us stretched the icy expanse of the tallest mountain peak. I squinted my eyes at a flickering light on a high outcropping of rock. There was a marbled manor there, though it was hardly distinguishable from the rock around it, save for the bright white of it.
But I didn’t have time to admire the architecture of it as Dante tugged on the horse’s reins, leading us to the right down a shadowed alley between buildings. I did my best to still the pounding in my chest as it seemed our journey was coming to an end.
Dante stopped in front of a dark wooden building, unmarked and unwelcoming. He hitched the horse to a post beside the single doorway and turned to me.
With some effort, I managed to smile at him.
“I suppose this is the end of our travels together. It’s too bad, really. Your sullen silence was just beginning to grow on me.”
I let out a yelp as he gruffly pulled me off the horse by the waist. I stumbled on the cobblestone of the road, finding it difficult to keep my balance with my hands still tied together.
“I suppose the feeling isn’t mutual,” I muttered in his direction as he took hold of the rope around my wrists. “Here's hoping my new master has gentler hands.”
For a heartbeat, I could swear I saw something like anger flash beneath the shadows that swirled as if in agitation around the sides of his face.
But then the door behind us opened. Dante turned from me, striding up the steps to the doorway and pulling me through. As I stepped into the dark room, I took long measured breaths to try to quell the fear. When it refused to release the cold hold it had on my heart, I began reciting to myself the creed the High Priest would make us recite when tortures became unbearable.
I am not my body. Pain is not to be feared. When the pain passes, though my body bears the scars, I am left stronger.
Dante’s grip on the rope on my wrists tightened as a man stepped into the gloom in front of us. From somewhere deeper in the building, I could hear pulsing drums and smell some kind of musky, intoxicating smoke.
The male stepped up to us, his huge frame taking up nearly all of the narrow hallway. Dante looked at him, and when their eyes met, the men fell backwards a step.
“My lord,” the male said, dipping his head and twisting his hand across his chest in a strange gesture. “Forgive me, I never thought to see you bringing a slave girl here.”
Lord? I glanced sideways at Dante, wondering what his place was here. And what his business had been in the outer cities on the human side of the veil. Dante only continued to look bored as he handed my rope to the male in front of us.
“What’s your price?” the male asked, cinching the rope to a holder on his belt. The ease with which he performed this motion sickened me. How many human women had he been handed in the same manner? I wondered for a brief moment if it would be worth the headache to snatch his dagger and dig it into his chest.
Dante shot me a sideways look as if he’d read my exact thought. I only looked at the ceiling with my most charming smile on my face.
“Just take her,” Dante said, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
I blinked. Why would he have brought me here if not for a price? What other motive did he have for luring me into the woods and transporting me through the veil?
The large male who now held my life in a loop on his belt looked similarly surprised. He turned his eerie yellow eyes to me and looked me up and down, unlatching me to spin me around skillfully.
“Are you certain, my lord? She could fetch a hefty price with an arse like that.”
That angry light burned in Dante’s eyes, unmistakable this time. But before anything else could be said, he was gone, leaving nothing but shadow behind him.
The male stared for only a moment before shrugging and yanking me unceremoniously down the dark hallway. I was shoved into a room a few moments later, and the door slammed closed behind me.
I had hardly gotten my bearings in the cold, tiny cell of a room before three shrouded women came in. I did my best not to lash out at them as they stripped me of my leathers and any hidden daggers my previous captors had missed.
They roughly washed my body with soap and cold water from a bucket. Hardly a luxury, but I didn’t mind getting clean after a hard day of riding. It was something I could never get used to, even after all of the terrible things I endured. I still hated the feeling of dirt on my skin and beneath my nails.
“Any chance you have any oils? I hate smelling of horse.”
One of the women looked at me as if I had hit my head on a rock before coming here, but none of them deigned to answer me. I sighed. Was every fae going to be so boring?
The woman dried and dressed me in a white paneled gown. If you could even call it that. It was really just two strips of cotton cloth tied in the middle with a bit of rope.
Fit for a king or a fae lord, I supposed.
A sound like metal scraping on metal sounded from the wall behind me. The women all hurried to leave through the door as I turned to see the wall lifting. Bright yellow light seeped into the room, which I suddenly realized was no cell but an auction block.
In front of me, where the dark wall had been a moment before, now was a hazy smoke-filled room. I blinked and did my best not to tear up as the lights threatened to blind me. This had been much faster than I’d anticipated. I’d hardly had time to prepare my mind for what was to come.
Perhaps the doe-eyed surprise was working in my favor, though, as a murmur of appreciation went around a crowd I was just beginning to make out through the lights all pointed towards me.
The large male appeared to my left. He grabbed one of my arms and lifted it above my head, turning me in a circle.
“Human girl from the outer cities, 20 years of age, fine health and fertile,” he said in a voice I’d only heard before at fish markets. I frowned at the comparison as he stopped me with a hand on my lower back, forcing me to step closer to the gathered crowd of buyers. “Bidding starts at 20 gods’ gold.”
I stilled my heartbeat with three slow, calculated breaths, then looked up at the crowd. My eyes had adjusted. I watched as they appraised me with eyes of yellow and black. Silently, I made myself think only of my goal, the fact that I was behind enemy lines and on the precipice of gaining a position to end the war that had cost thousands of human lives.
All I needed to do was secure a master who could be easily manipulated, a male who would think more with his cock than he would with his mind.
I appraised the crowd in front of me, the varying levels of boredom and hunger, of loneliness and violence. I let my eyes soften and my lips part slightly, toying at the hem of my cotton skirt as if I were a timid, nervous little thing. I watched the eyes that watched me until a pair of violet eyes caught mine.
Dante, watching from the back wall. As uninterested as his body language indicated he was, his eyes burned into mine.
With some effort, I dragged my gaze from his. Why was he still here? Just to watch my torment? I wondered again what his motivations behind bringing me to this place could possibly be.
But then my attention snapped back to my unwelcome suitors as the bidding began.
“Thirty-five gods’ gold,” a particularly vicious looking youth shouted. I did my best not to wince, instead twirling my skirts towards a more timid, ancient-looking male. He at least would be too weak to be anything but gentle with me. Or so I hoped.
I batted my eyes at him, and to my delight, he raised his own voice to place a bid. Thirty-five gods’ gold. I smiled at him, keeping our eyes locked and conveying as many promises of delight as I could through the curve of my smile. The bids continued, but he matched each one. He licked his cracked lips as the final bid of 55 gods’ gold was made.
In the silence that stretched for only a moment, I felt my heart thundering against my ribs. A feeling of panic rose in me, settling itself in the palms of my hands, where it burned with the electric need to run, to get far, far away from this den of vipers.
I tried to swallow down the dread, feeling the smile fading from my lips. I didn’t want this. I didn't want any of this. The thought of being taken home, being taken to bed by the silver-haired fae male in front of me, of feeling the parchment of his skin on my body.
My breath came in quick waves as the male beside me called for any final bids. And suddenly, I was wishing to be anywhere but here. I wished to be the little girl who watched the sea rise and fall from her childhood bedroom window long before the citadel and the prophecy, before the blood that coated my blade and the crossing of the veil.
Desperately, silently, I screamed in my head to be gone from here.
Then, the final bid was made. I blinked, the dread in my chest turning to shock as I saw who had placed the bid.
The male beside me seemed just as shocked as he cleared his throat, quieting the murmur that had gone up in the room. “So be it, 100 gods’ gold, to my lord Dante Reignsor.”
I looked towards the back of the room just in time to see him disappearing out the back door, shadows flowing in his wake.
I hardly felt the hands that closed around my wrists, nor the pull of those hands leading me from the auction platform. My plans had all but burned away now that I had been bought by the one person who had already proven more than capable of besting me, even fully prepared to do so.
The dread that had sunk into my palms crept over every inch of me, and for the first time, I was terrified to be behind enemy lines. I had never felt more human or more alone.