Chapter Two #3
It wasn’t that I’d never seen a handsome boy before. I’d simply never met one who wasn’t sneering and throwing dirt at me.
This didn’t look to be his intention—smiling wider until a slight crook bent his lips and dimpled his cheeks. Hair shaved all the way around, he left only the top of his head be, and braided it in one long whip hanging past his shoulders.
“You’re quite young. Even more commendable that you’d decided to do your duty for the king and Lyrica. Please,” he said, sweeping out his hand. “Come and enjoy. I’d like to hear your story while we eat.”
I tried again to get through and the women crowded in tighter around me.
“There’s been a mistake,” Myrna said. I could barely make out the hem of her sleeve. “She isn’t here to do her duty. She’s leaving.”
“Is she?” I couldn’t see him anymore, but his tone hadn’t lost its light joviality. “Well, seems the steward was mistaken. I won’t take up any more of your time, then. Enjoy your dinner.”
They didn’t move until the door closed behind him. I fell in beside Myrna while the others gathered around the table.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Who was that man? Why wouldn’t you let me talk to him?”
She gritted her teeth, staring at the door like he was on the other side. “He introduced himself my first day here as Kaelan Moontreader. I knew from that moment to stay away from him.”
My brows snapped together. “What? Why?”
“Look at where we are, shoua. They keep us in this room all day—bringing our meals to us and only letting us out to use the privy. At night, we’re taken to the abandoned servants’ quarters to sleep.
Despite us stepping up to do our blessed duty, the palace has made us a secret.
And yet, this young, handsome faeman comes to visit us, welcome every new woman, and bring us treats? ”
“Maybe he’s kind.” My stomach grumbled in need of the saffron pudding. “He feels for you all being trapped in here all day.”
Myrna was shaking her head before I finished. “If there’s one thing I know to be true above all... it’s that a man gives with one hand, and binds with the other.”
My lips parted but nothing came out. Myrna suddenly beamed.
“I also know that he has yet to bring us anything poisoned, so eat up, shoua. You could hide behind a broom handle, you’re so thin.”
I went to eat, but not with the same speed I would’ve.
So soon after the steward received word of a new addition, Kaelan Moontreader came asking for me.
Despite Myrna’s reply, I was not leaving.
My name would go down in a book that would make me available to every soldier and nobleman in Lyrica.
Would he come back with smiles and treats then?
I shook the silly thoughts from my head.
I was no stranger to men and boys coming around to ogle the war wife.
Mama held her head high through many a town market while hooting and lewd offers followed her.
When our curves filled out and breastbands grew tight, the same filthy offers came at me and Meliora.
Meli more than me. They liked to tell us in disgusting detail what they’d do to us when we became war wives—as if there was no other path we’d take.
Moontreader may have used food and flattery, but he was no different from the rest. He came in here every day to pick his favorite.
Once the faeriken were here, we had to be available to them, but no one said we wouldn’t be available to everyone else.
That was not for me to worry about. There were older, prettier, more experienced war wives to thrill a handsome faeman like him.
I claimed a tray and took it to the far corner to eat. I wasn’t alone for long. Myrna and a few of the other women from Gutter Galley came to join me.
I wished they hadn’t.
My luxurious, royal meal turned to acid in my stomach.
“You must act as though you’re enjoying yourself, but not too much,” Shadi warned.
She was twenty years of age with dark, shadowed eyes and a smoky tenor that sounded like music.
Shadi was far and away the most beautiful of the girls I used to run around the Galley with.
Within a month of becoming a war wife, she had three noblemen offering her broker obscene amounts to take her into their home.
A month after that, she was back in the Galley.
Mykel Starsinger believed buying women took away her right to say no.
One night, he forced himself on her and she beat him with a candelabra.
They had yet to take away our right to defend ourselves, so she wasn’t punished.
Unless of course you considered it a punishment that most of her callers disappeared after they heard what happened, and she was so in need of coin that she was in that room with me.
“If you get too boisterous, they’ll take it as an invitation to pump harder. The last thing you need your first time is to have some sweaty, grunting lump flopping and flailing on top of you while trying to shove his reed dick deeper.”
I flushed hot. Even the mental depiction of that made the food taste bad on my tongue. Why get mad that Shadi assumed I still had my maidenhood? This would be my first time, and that is what I had to look forward to.
Tamar, another girl from the Galley, nodded in agreement. “Also, if you want it to end quicker. Cup their balls and lick—”
“Thank you,” I cried, cheeks on fire. “That’s enough for now, I think.”
Shadi smirked. “This isn’t the conversation you want to avoid.” She jerked her chin at the women seated at the table. “See that woman in green?”
I followed her gaze to a slender, blonde woman with pale skin and a long, jagged scar on her cheek.
“Of all of us, she’s the only war wife that’s gone to war. There’s a reason none of the others who’ve seen the faeriken on the battlefield even thought of collecting that one hundred and fifty kiruna. If you ask her,” Shadi said softly, “she’ll tell you why.”
I gave the woman in green a long look. “Will what she has to say make what’s coming easier or harder to bear?”
Shadi didn’t answer.
“Then I’ll let her enjoy her meal in peace.”
I wish I could say they let me enjoy mine. For the rest of the night, I was treated to their collective wisdom of dealing with every unsavory, unwashed, overly aggressive situation. I thanked Meya when a servant came in and said it was time to retire.
She led us down a winding, torchlit hallway. The hustle and noise from the busy kitchen had gone silent. It was then I realized why we were made to stay in that room so long after sunset. We were only allowed to pass through the halls after everyone else had gone to bed.
Irritation beat at my calm. It shouldn’t surprise me.
All my life I’d witnessed how war wives were treated.
I used to dream all the facts and knowledge in my head would amount to something useful.
I’d open a shop or give something to Lyrica that could only come from my mind, not my magic.
The kiruna would flow, and I’d give my mother and siblings a new life.
Instead, I was another castoff slinking through the back hallways.
“In there.” The servant girl gestured at two doors on opposite sides of the hall. “You’re not to leave your rooms until I fetch you in the morning.”
With that she left, not even offering so much as a good night.
I followed Shadi and Myrna into the room on the left. Fifteen cots were scattered about the stone prison. I wanted to call it something else, but no other word came to mind. There was nothing inside barring the cots and four walls.
“They didn’t place a cot in here for you,” Myrna said. “I know where they’re kept. I’ll get another and you can take mine. You’re dead on your feet, shoua. Get some rest. The world’s better in a dream.”
It wasn’t until she said it that a wave of exhaustion bowled me over.
My knees buckled, dropping me to the stone.
I styled my hair to hide the hard lump from Kirwan’s attack.
Didn’t prevent it from thrumming a deep, pricking pain that reminded me with every breath that my life was about to change forever.
Shadi pointed out Myrna’s cot and I collapsed, dropping on the thin blanket with my slippers still on.
Life’s better in a dream.
It was earlier that day that I told Savia the only happiness for her was in a fantasy. Let there be some waiting in mine.
Closing my eyes, I drifted off into darkness.
I WOKE UP.
As simply and abruptly, one moment my eyes were closed, then they were open.
My vision cleared on a figure standing above me. He bent down, beaming his crooked smile directly in my eyes.
“Oh yes. I knew you were perfect,” he whispered. “Come with me.”
I kicked off the blanket and stood, following him without a word. A calmness settled over my mind. The part of me shouting and screaming not to go with him. Screaming to call for help, was getting quieter and quieter.
Kaelan Moontreader led me out into the hallway and ordered me to shut the door. Then, he started talking.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you, sweetling.” He stroked my cheek, his fingers gliding down to take my hand. “All those other hags were useless to me. Too old, too fat, too scarred, too tall, too short. I almost gave up... then you walked in.”
We left the abandoned quarters and turned right instead of left down the only familiar path I knew. A narrow staircase invited me up, its walls hugging my shoulders imparting the coolness of its stone—a final kind embrace before he took me somewhere I knew I would not want to go.
“It’s a disgrace,” Kaelan spat. “That it took me this long to find someone suitable is unacceptable. The king himself sounds the call for you whores to serve your kingdom, and barely any answer. It’s our duty—nay, our privilege to do our part to end this war and the threat of the curse.
“Today, you are given that privilege. You will do more for Lyrica and the war effort than anyone in this kingdom. Be proud of that, girl.”