Chapter 10
The sunlight glinting off the water was an onslaught, blinding to Audra’s eyes.
She wasn’t sure how long exactly they had been stuck in the belly of the ship. Wilder had been right; it was near impossible to keep track. Their best guess was two weeks, maybe more. Without windows or a timepiece, it was impossible to be sure. She held a hand high, shielding her eyes.
She walked carefully behind Margaryte, keeping close to the young mother, who was still drugged into complacency every day by the priestesses.
The woman’s gait was unsteady, her gaze elsewhere, far from the here and now.
Audra worried she might pitch forward, flip over the edge of the ship.
Her sister, Camyle, must be similarly worried as she kept a hand fisted in her sister’s skirts, just in case.
Audra ignored the stabbing rays of sunlight and squinted to determine their surroundings.
The ship was anchored outside, from her vantage point on the deck, mountainous cliffs that rose from the water as if the fae gods themselves had chosen to fortify this land.
The cliff face was leached of all color—nothing grew, the sleek wall of rock reflected the sunlight, deckled slabs of blinding white.
Audra glanced away, toward three identical ships flanking theirs. Blurry specks she knew to be other humans were lined up on the decks, as they were.
A shadow fell over her, and she stopped squinting, looking up at the giant beside her.
“This is bullshit.” Callum swiped at his bleeding lip where a soldier had just smacked him with a staff for daring to ask where they were being moved to.
She did not doubt that if that piece-of-shit soldier hadn’t been backed up by a small retinue, Callum could have thrown him overboard effortlessly. One-handed. He was easily taller than most of the fae guards.
“Just keep your head down. We’ll find a way to escape, but right now doesn’t seem like the best time,” Audra told him, trying to calm his fury. The blacksmith’s hands were shaking.
He stepped into line behind her before steering Cersha between them.
He seemed most at ease when his sister was in his direct line of sight, and Cersha didn’t seem inclined to stray far from her brother.
Audra didn’t blame her. There was something comforting about the sheer size of him.
And his muscles. Which rippled through his long-sleeved shirt as he flexed and unflexed his hands.
Itching to tighten them around that guard’s throat and squeeze, no doubt.
“This might be our only opportunity, though,” Wilder whispered from beside Audra.
Audra shuffled her feet a few steps toward the ladder as the line inched forward.
“How would we escape, and what would we even do if we managed to get away? Row back to Khaveah? We’ve no food, no fresh water. Do you know how to read the stars?”
“I’m not sure. No. And … a little,” Wilder admitted. Looking pissed about it.
“Well, I certainly don’t. Not much use for the stars in a forge,” Callum’s voice rumbled from behind Audra.
“We will find another way.” Audra tried to sound confident, but the truth was she wanted to run and jump overboard, even if it meant she swam home. She wanted to do anything but climb into one of the rowboats bobbing on the sea beneath their ship.
When it was her turn to follow Wilder down, Audra’s hands shook so badly it was almost impossible to grip the rope ladder.
She reminded herself that this was familiar territory.
She’d played with ropes just like this her entire life.
Learned to knot them in dozens of ways. How to secure a boat to a dock in a matter of seconds.
Their captors may be fae, but their ropes were threaded the same, their weave a tapestry familiar to her.
The high winds shaking the ladder and the spray of icy seawater soaking the ropes weren’t helping to calm her nerves, though.
Her hands burned with cold by the time she reached the last rung.
Despite her achingly slow descent, she eventually dropped from the ship into the smaller boat with a thud and quickly scurried out of the way so Cersha could climb in behind her.
Audra offered her a hand, easing her into the boat, before Callum followed.
His large form rocked the vessel an alarming amount.
Audra took a seat beside Wilder and focused on keeping down the smoked fish she’d eaten. From sea level, the cliffs were even taller and more foreboding. The sheer whiteness of the cliffs resembled bleached bone more than rock, as if they belonged to the fortress of Death itself.
By the time there were seven or so of them in the boat, the fae guards began to row toward the cliffs. Another boat took its place, ready for the next batch of shivering humans.
They rowed parallel to the cliffs for a while, until they arrived at a sliver of a cave entrance cut into the rock like a gaping maw in a skull.
The fae guards were strong and practiced. They rowed quickly, in perfect unison, as if of one mind. Some of the guards eyed the humans with interest. Others ignored them. Some glared with thinly veiled hostility. But the worst was the leering.
Callum shifted until he blocked Cersha completely from view of the large guard rowing across from his sister. Even as the soldier pumped his arms in sync with the others, his eyes roamed over her body.
Cersha, to her credit, kept her back straight and chin up, looking out to sea, her red hair whipping about her face. Her wavy tresses, too, seemed angry. She ignored the unspoken threats in the fae guard’s eyes.
Unfortunately, Audra was used to looks from sailors who, after months at sea, regarded her body as if she were a freshly cut piece of meat, cooked to perfection.
She and Callum shared a glance. They’d spoken earlier as they were hurriedly led above deck.
If, by chance, they were separated, she would do everything in her power to keep his sister safe.
She’d promised him that the moment they felt the anchor drop.
“Hey, Callum, do you think the boat will capsize if I shove this creep over the edge for staring?” Audra asked, raising her voice so the guard would hear, though she kept her eyes on Callum, the guard in her peripheral vision.
Callum grinned. “Not if we toss him over together.”
The guard broke away from staring at Cersha and eyed Audra and Callum, who squared their shoulders.
Two more row lengths, and the tension was cut as darkness drenched the boat, the world, as they passed out of the open ocean and into the cave.
Audra squeezed her hands into fists. Wherever they were going, she would survive this.
But the dark swallowed her courage just as readily as it did the boat.
There were no torches to light their way.
No bioluminescent worms or crustaceans sending their soft pulsating glow down from the ceiling like in the sea caves at home.
They weren’t taking a straight path, but one with twists and turns, and even in the dark, she could feel that some of the caverns were narrow—the rock seemed to press in on her, suffocating.
She imagined this was all by design.
The soldiers would have trained in the maze’s twists and turns, whereas outsiders might be swallowed forever.
Margaryte began to cry.
After an eternity of listening to Margaryte’s sobs, disembodied in the darkness, they exited the cave. Audra winced as the harsh winter sun blazed across her face, though her eyes adjusted more quickly this time.
The cave spit them out into a mountain basin.
The cliffs above the caverns rose, leviathans at their backs, though on this side they were no longer bleached a chilling bone-white. The dark gray rock was just as bare of trees or shrubs, just as impossible to climb. They were on a small lake, waves lapping gently along a pebbled shore.
Other prisoners were lined up along that shore, huddling together in search of warmth. The basin created a sort of wind tunnel, and the gusts shrieked through at high speeds, ripping Audra’s loose curls from the loose pineapple formation atop her head she’d coaxed her braids into earlier.
The rowboat glided toward the beach, carried by the wind.
The sound of the teakwood of the hull scraping the rocks along the sandy bottom ricocheted through Audra as the boat came to a juddering halt.
She looked around with everyone else, her heart beating a rapid rhythm in her chest, wondering what would come next.
She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
The guards began shouting, ordering them all to line up on the shore.
The boat was a ways from the pebbled beach, but there was nothing else to do—they tumbled from the rowboat like marbles spilled from a jar.
Audra’s breath hitched as black water enveloped her legs like glacial fire.
It took everything in her to wade through the ice-crusted lake, each step sinking into the muddy bottom as water tangled her skirts and kissed her thighs with icy lips.
She felt no respite when she burst forth from the water, stepping onto the beach. She crowded in among the humans, her boots squelching with every stride, huddling together with the others for warmth, their breaths puffing into a single cloud.
They were at the base of a village. Sagging shops and windswept homes fanned out, all assembled with the same black brick.
A road carved the village in two, winding uphill toward a chilling castle that towered above it all, its black spires resembling sharpened daggers stabbing the sky itself, as if attempting to cleave cloud from sky.
In the distance, shadowed mountains loomed like sentinels.
Audra stomped her boots, trying to keep her burning feet from going numb to no avail.
So, this was the fae realm. Audra had to admit, she was disappointed—she’d heard that the fae realm still had seasons of old, and she’d wondered if she might experience spring or autumn or a scorching summer.
But here was a landscape of death and decay, frost and ice.
Scraggly trees dotted along the beach were bare of any leaves.
Ice crusted the salted lake and piled up on the shore.
As at home, winter appeared to be at its height.
Audra parted chattering teeth to wet lips chapping furiously in the cold.
She gazed down the beach, toward a flock of ravens circling a black tree whose twisted, spindly trunk struggled to defy the frigid gusts of wind, the ice clinging to its bark, threatening to shatter it.
Any distraction from the wretched sensation of being utterly trapped among her fellow humans as soldiers prowled around them, wolves corralling their prey.
She watched as one raven dipped and dove straight toward the water, pulling up at the last second before it plunged into the icy lake.
But her gaze tripped away from the raven preparing for another dive; as if she were a moth, the tree a flame, her gaze returned to the tree’s twisted, gnarled trunk.
She was just about to tear her gaze away when, there, something broke away from the tree’s shadow—a lone figure—by the sheer size, shape, the arrogant stance, a male.
The stranger wore a long dark coat that hung limp around his calves, barely swaying at all against his boots, despite the fierce wind that quaked the spindly branches stretching out above him.
He was too far down the beach to make out his features, but she felt her heart skip and stutter—because …
No, that couldn’t be … And yet, despite the commotion, despite her being just one among hundreds of humans huddled on the beach, she was sure that he was staring straight at her.
That while she studied him, the stranger studied her.
Her neck heated as an odd warmth raced across her body, her face, her limbs.
He was.
He was looking right at her. If only she could see his eyes, but the tree’s shadow cloaked the figure entirely. Unbidden, Audra took a step toward the figure; something about his stance—the sensation of his gaze on her—was unnerving.
She wanted to see, needed to be sure that he was looking at her.
“Ow.” A slight pain twinged Audra’s arm, and she jumped, turning around.
Wilder had pinched her to get her attention.
She followed her friend’s gaze to where a fae male stood on a raised platform before the shivering humans.
He read from a scroll gripped tightly in gloved hands to prevent it from being swept away by the howling, angry wind.
Distracted by the man in the shadow, Audra hadn’t even heard him begin speaking.
She glanced back toward the figure—the tree—to see if he was still looking at her, but … A cold sensation washed over her.
The lone figure had disappeared.