- FOURTEEN #4
"Maybe, at least now that we know she can do that, it can be an asset," Doyle suggested.
"I don't want her to fucking use that. If you could have felt what that was like, you wouldn't ask her to do it either," Jasper spat.
"Jasp... it's the fucking camps," Doyle said, and there it was again, the hollowness in his tone, the darkness in his eyes.
"Doyle, what are the camps?"
"They're... they're fucking hell on Earth, sweetheart. They're the worst possible place anyone in any realm could be."
"But how..."
"I grew up in the camps, Cece," Doyle cut me off.
"What... how?"
"You met the nymphs," Doyle said with a humorless laugh. "I think you can see that they don't exactly have the ability to be attentive mothers."
"But what about your father?"
Doyle sighed, sitting down, reaching into his backpack. "You get how they, we," he corrected, "work. The longer we are in The Green, the more uncontrollable our sex drive."
"Yeah..."
"My mother grew up in The Green. She never left.
She was just a sex drive in human form. She wasn't exactly discerning about who she slept with.
No one knew who my father was. All anyone knew was there was a screaming, filthy, hungry, naked baby in the meadow with the nymphs.
So a couple of Light fae happened by, picked me up, took me in.
When I was eight, they were brought up on some bullshit charge and sent to the camps.
You know how in North Korea, the work camp so-called criminals have to pay three generations deep? "
"Ah... yeah," I said, stomach twisting at the stories I had heard.
"They must have gotten that idea from the Dark fae.
My adoptive parents got brought in, so did my mom's dying father, and so did I.
It didn't matter that I wasn't really theirs.
It didn't matter that I was a kid. We all got dragged in and separated and put into different parts of the camp.
" Jasper walked over, clamping a hand on his friend's shoulder for a moment, picking up on things I couldn't, more than was being said.
It struck me then how hard it must have been for Jasper, what kind of emotional strength it must take just for him to live with everyone's emotions moving through him as well.
Maybe that was why he was so guarded, so hard to know at times, because he was trying to not let all the anger, sadness, joy, pain, frustration that wasn't his own to completely take over him.
"The work camps are supposed to be for criminals, but over time, they started getting loose with the rules and just dragged random, helpless people in to work as well. There's a rather high... casualty rate at the camps."
"They work people literally to death," Jasper picked up when Doyle couldn't go on. "And if you're young and strong and don't die from the work, the hunger, the thirst... the guards like to have fun with you."
I swallowed the bile that rose up in my throat. "Doyle..."
"The beatings aren't so bad. You almost get used to them after a while. It's watching others get the same treatment, or in the women's cases, worse, that really fucks with you, that eats away at your soul."
"Did you eventually... work off your crimes?"
"I waited until the guards were busy terrorizing a field full of women and made a break for it like a fucking coward when I was fourteen."
"Oh my God, you weren't a coward," I said, moving over to him, wrapping my arms around him, wanting to block out the images his memories formed in my head, trying to not think about Jade in a similar situation. "You were a kid. You didn't do anything wrong."
"You don't know what it was like, sweetheart. You can't say it wasn't cowardly. For fuck's sake, I could have at least tried to take someone with me."
"Doyle," Jasper said, his tone a little harsh and I looked up to shoot him a look which he, of course, ignored.
"Snap out of it. This isn't doing any of us any good right now.
We need your head in this without the emotions.
We need to know where the camp is exactly and where the weak spots are.
We need to know where they keep the women. "
"There's no way you're getting in and back out alive, Jasp."
"Risk I'm willing to take for Jade."
"Yeah," Doyle agreed, untangling from me and standing. "Yeah, I agree."
"So where are we going?"
"I was young, man. My sense of direction was a bit warped with my fear. All I know is that once I got out of the iron gates and hit the woods, it wasn't much further than maybe half an hour to the human realm."
"I have this," I said, drawing their attention to me as I reached inside one of the folds of the dressings on my ankle where the girl, Rose, had tucked the stone Baba Yaga had told me about that would help me find my way back to the human realm.
"What is that?" Doyle asked, brows knitted at the strange white-ish stone.
"I don't know exactly. Baba Yaga said it would light up when I am in the right path toward the human realm and black out when I'm not. We can try it, right?"
"Never thought I'd say this," Jasper said, looking amused, "but thank fuck for Baba Yaga."