Chapter 19
Nineteen
Downstairs, the mess hall was another enormous room, with long tables filled with laughing, talking shifters.
Anayla took a few quick steps ahead of me to throw her arm over Maura’s shoulders, the two of them turning inward to whisper.
They looked close as sisters, their hair mingling as their mischievous faces dipped to each other’s ears.
I’d often felt alone in my village. I was even more alone here, where they all bantered so easily, pushed each other in teasing or slung their arms over each other’s shoulders. I hadn’t had such ease with anyone I was a little girl running in the schoolyard, before my friendships frayed.
There was an enormous buffet in front of us. I cut to the right, wanting to get away from the clan, and followed the lead of some others who were picking up plates.
The tables were heaped with more food than I’d ever seen in one place.
I’d ended up at a table with a variety of savory and sweet hand pies.
We were surrounded by more tables with more food than I’d ever seen in one place, and my mouth watered; I was torn between wanting to take two of everything and needing to escape.
I grabbed a meat pie and plopped it onto my plate, then another.
As I turned away, a shifter grabbed my arm. I looked up at him in shock.
“There’s a spill,” he said, pointing to a wet streak on the floor.
Before I could respond, someone else pushed a mop into my hand. I didn’t take it, so it started to fall, and I caught it before it could. I turned, but I couldn’t even see where they had gone.
I stood there for a second with the mop in one hand and my plate in the other, not quite sure what to do.
Suddenly Fieran was there. He took the mop out of my hand, pushed it across the spill, and then carried the mop in one hand as he half-pushed me toward the other side of the room.
“That’s not all you want to eat,” he said, handing over the mop to someone else. It was whisked out of sight before I could see where we were going in the crowd.
“I’m not hungry,” I told him.
“Mm.” He nodded to a seat at a long table filled mostly with unfamiliar faces, though Anayla, Maura, and Dairen were nearest us. “The rest of the clan is here.”
It was an overwhelming number of people. “I don’t—”
“Sit.”
I glowered at him, but he sat down himself, obviously certain I’d take the seat beside him. I glanced around at the exuberant chaos of the room and realized every clan had their own area; I couldn’t exactly bumble around trying to find a place to sit.
“Unclaimed recruits sit over there,” someone said near me.
I twisted to see who was speaking and realized they weren’t talking to me. They were speaking to someone else as they pointed toward a series of tables at the other end of the room, furthest from the food.
I took my plate and headed toward those tables.
I wasn’t part of Fieran’s clan, after all.
“Mortal, here you go.” Someone set their plate on top of mine. I stared up at them in shock as their plate tilted toward mine, spilling sauce down my front. Bits of chicken leg and half-eaten, buttered bread landed on my once-clean tunic. Their napkin slid off the plate and landed on my shoes.
My dinner was ruined.
Fuck this. I was going back to my room. Even though the room smelled like roasting meat, fresh bread, and caramelizing sugar, I headed toward the doors.
They felt distant when there were shifters brushing all around me, barely registering my presence.
I was so much shorter, it felt as if someone was always about to trip over me.
Someone’s elbow slammed into my arm. A jolt of pain shot up to my shoulder, and the stack of plates wobbled precariously in my hands. The offender didn’t even glance back.
The shifters around me felt like a blur. My palms were slick like I might drop the damned dishes.
I just needed to find somewhere—anywhere—to ditch the plates. Maybe then I could abandon my humiliation along with them. The doors to the corridor gleamed ahead like a promise of escape.
Someone else thrust their plate toward me, trying to dump it onto my stack. “Here you go,” they said magnanimously.
“I’m not a servant,” I told them, dodging it.
“Then what are you doing here?” The silver-haired shifter seemed to actually see me for the first time; he gave me a look as if I were stupid as he thrust the plate at me again. “It’s your job to serve in any way we see fit.”
I reached for it just to get them to leave me alone.
“Don’t you dare.” Fieran’s voice was low and dangerous, right beside my ear. I jumped, my heart slamming against my ribs. His all-consuming presence rolled over me like a gathering storm.
His gaze was intent and angry on the man across from me, who jolted as if he felt the storm too. He dropped the plate. It didn’t shatter, but clattered noisily between us. Conversation in the room seemed to pause curiously.
The silver-haired shifter gave Fieran a wide-eyed, terrified look.
That immediate fear and awe didn’t seem to fit with the Fieran I knew from the village, who had been playful and charming.
This version of Fieran was cold and commanding and projected an air of just-barely-restrained-violence.
Anayla’s words about his many masks returned to me, along with an unsettling prickling along my spine.
Fieran glanced down at the scattered food at our feet. “Fix that.”
I hesitated, but the shifter didn’t. He dropped to his knees and frantically swept up the bits of food. His head bobbed in front of us as if he were bowing over and over, and embarrassment on his behalf swept over me. I needed to get out of here.
Fieran reached for me, but stopped himself short of putting his hand on my back, as if he remembered he wasn’t allowed to touch me. My cheeks felt hot; everyone in this room was watching us now.
The shifter on his knees scrambled up, holding his plate, and gave Fieran a wild-eyed look.
“You may go,” Fieran growled. He took the other plates out of my hand and handed them to the shifter before he left. “Try again. Be useful for once, Henkel.”
The shifter’s eyes widened with horror at Fieran using his name. He must be from another clan, because he seemed surprised and dismayed. “Thank you,” he blurted out, clutching the plates to his chest like a prize, and then turned and fled into the crowd.
Fieran gestured for me to walk with him. I scoffed but followed, perhaps out of a sense of morbid curiosity. Unfortunately, I was tied to him, and the sooner I understood him, the sooner I could untie myself—and Tay.
“You got lost on your way to our table,” he said softly, as conversation picked up around us again.
“I’m an unclaimed recruit,” I reminded him. Now no one bumped into me; the shifters gave us a wide berth so that Fieran and I walked side-by-side easily despite the crowd.
He gave me a long look. “Who looks like a mortal.”
“Yes. Because I am.”
“What you are is maddening.” He moved toward me, and I moved away, driven toward the hanging tapestries covering the wall.
I couldn’t stand to have him close to me.
I hated that I still felt a rogue pulse of desire when he was close by, just because he was tall and muscular and commanding and far too handsome; I despised him, but the Fae were able to command mortals for a reason with their damned immense beauty. I had to get away from him.
He swept the tapestry aside, and I found myself herded into an alcove. I’d fallen into his trap as I tried to escape.
“Why are you running away from me?”
It was an intimate half-circle of a room, carved into the wall of the mess hall, perhaps for private dining.
Fieran let the heavy purple fabric fall in place behind him. I was far too keenly aware of the power and heat of his body, the need I felt when I was close to him, even though he was a rotten bastard.
I scoffed. “I’m not running.”
“If you weren’t running, you wouldn’t be afraid to sit at a table with me,” he said in a reasonable tone that he did not deserve to use one bit.
“I’m not afraid. I don’t want to sit with you. I don’t want to look at you.”
His brows arched, but he let my rancor pass without comment. Perhaps it was beneath him.
“I want you to pretend to be my servant. That will protect you from anyone else trying to toy with you.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “You brought me all the way here to have me do your laundry?”
His mouth curved faintly, somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “No. I need you here to train until I present you in the Recruits’ Trials, but it will be safer for you if everyone sees you as my servant they cannot touch…”
His expression, as he studied my face—and the feelings I let show there clearly—tilted heavily toward exasperation. “Are you determined to do this the difficult way?”
I smiled at him sweetly. It was unfortunate enough that everyone here saw me as a servant, but I’d be damned if they saw me as his special servant. I was sure they’d assume he was fucking me, and that was never going to happen.
He sighed as if that were answer enough. “When you get in trouble, call for me.”
I slid past him, carefully keeping our bodies from touching, and pushed the curtain away. “You won’t be able to hear me in this racket. But I can take care of myself.”
That was a blatant lie in this strange shifters’ world, and we both knew it. Fieran had brought me here for some reason, and I was sure he would not abandon me.
He rubbed his temple with one hand, as if I were giving him a headache. I hadn’t abducted him out of his life, though, so that seemed a little dramatic. “Try me. I’ll hear you.”
“I need some peace. Some space from you.” I let the curtain drop behind me, leaving him alone on the other side. Perhaps he would contemplate how stupid he’d been to force me into his life.