Chapter 22
I sit on the floor in front of the low table of the sitting room, and I fear I may be eating my feelings, because I started attacking the food like a rabid dog as soon as it arrived.
The barley soup and the chicken pie go first. Then the small bowl of stewed cherries immersed in wine that I slurp up.
The chicken is tender, the soup succulent.
My lips are sticky from the cherries, but I wish I had a vat of them.
I’m already full when I start in on the apple tart, but I devour that too, indulging in every flaky layer.
Apparently, I have a lot of feelings to eat through.
By the time I finish, I feel a bit nauseous, but focusing on the delicious tastes allowed me to shove away the homesickness crashing over me.
I haven’t had this kind of food in months.
Not since before the Flies blistered across Hamelyn, and even then, nothing this fine.
Despite how hard my aunt and I work to make and sell paper in the city, we’ve never had an excess of anything.
We have enough to make do, and that in itself is a blessing.
But usually, it’s a thin soup for dinner, a simple sandwich for lunch, and porridge with fruit for breaking our fast.
Still, I would choose making do over this sort of excess if it meant I was with my family. I don’t know who I’d be without them. They’ve shaped me. Settled me. Filled in the cracks of life’s fissures.
Most fiends don’t have a family. All first-generation fiends I know of were dropped off at abandonment houses after they were born, the fae women too ashamed or too hurt, unable or unwilling to keep the fiend child they’d birthed. And that’s if the mothers lived through the birth at all.
Luckily, fiend parents now don’t abandon their own fiend children, but for my generation, it was common.
After all, no one knew what to make of children born from the Bane species at first. It was frowned upon for fiends not to be given to the city’s abandonment houses to be watched, because the public needed to ensure we posed no real threat.
So I’m incredibly blessed to have a family who loves me, and that’s all I need to focus on. Getting back to them.
I know they must be worried sick. And I also know I can’t act with too much haste and too little forethought.
I’m halfway across the continent, miles away from Hamelyn.
If I’m going to get back, I need to find that leyline pathway again.
Maybe it works in reverse and will return me to the forest. If it does, then I have a true chance of getting home.
That’s my plan—and having a plan helps dry out my dampened spirits.
Feeling better, I drag my finger across the cherry bowl and pop the last bit of sauce into my mouth just as the door opens. I drop my hand, stiffening as the Piper strides inside.
He’s dressed in similar clothes like he wore when we were traveling.
Dark trousers and boots, a black tunic—simple but finely made.
His sleeves are rolled at his forearms, showing off the veins that run the length of them and his suntanned skin.
His hair is still loose, the ends reaching almost to the tops of his shoulders, but it’s combed, neater than before, the brown strands mingling with subtle hints of blond.
This time, he’s not wearing his cloak, though he does have the pipe strapped to the belt at his waist. As soon as I look at it, I see the grayish vapor smoking from the flared end and circling him.
Brown eyes flick around the room before landing on me. “Why are you sitting on the floor?”
I lift a shoulder. “I was eating, and the table wasn’t close enough to the chair.”
“And you couldn’t just move the chair?”
“It’s not my chair.”
He sighs, as if my not shifting around his furniture is irritating to him. “I was informed you were awake.” He turns to look at the food tray, the lava-stained tips of his ears peeking out from his hair as he moves. “I see you’ve eaten.”
I nod and get to my feet, feeling wary. “Yes.”
He stares at me, and I twist my hands in front of me, nearly flinching when he starts coming forward again. I back up a step as he settles himself in the plush chair facing me.
“What’s your name?” he suddenly asks.
I lower myself to the sofa. “My . . . name?”
“Did they not assign you one at the fiend abandonment house?”
I grind my molars. “I have a name.”
“Then what is it?”
“Esti.”
He frowns. “I want your full name, not some bastardized short version.”
His irritating tone doesn’t squelch my surprise. “How did you know it’s shortened?”
“Your name, blight.”
I huff out a breath. “Estinya Zeta—” I slam my mouth shut before I give him my family’s name. I meant to be petulant, not stupid. First and middle are enough.
He nods. “Estinya.” My name caresses off his tongue. Ess-tin-ee-uh.
A shiver erupts down my neck.
No one ever calls me my full name, not even my mother. But Fates, I never knew it could sound like that on a tongue. Could rasp quite so darkly.
I swallow hard, trying to banish the way it echoes in my head. “I thought you were just going to call me blight forever.”
He studies me, drags a hand over the dark brown stubble across his jaw so I can hear it scrape. “We’ll see.”
Heat embeds my cheeks.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, and I falter.
“Um. Good. Better,” I answer with stilted unsteadiness.
I have no idea what to make of him.
He’s watching me so intensely, gaze sinking past my skin, and I can’t help but fidget beneath his blistering focus.
“Thank you, for taking me away from that . . . healer,” I blurt. “And for not letting me die.”
There’s a pause.
“Even if you did do it for your own selfish gain,” I add.
Slowly, his hand drops from his jaw. “Gain, yes. But not a selfish one.”
His rumbled reply perplexes me. “What does that mean?”
He doesn’t give me an answer.
For a few moments, we sit in mincing silence. I can hear the clock on the mantel ticking, and through every second, the Piper keeps staring at me.
“Why did you sit at my bedside?”
The swell of his biceps tenses and then he leans forward, notching one elbow on his knee. “Who told you that?”
“I—” My mind scrambles. I don’t want to get Frena in trouble, so I say, “I noticed the chair pulled up next to the bed. It reeked of you.”
“The only one of us who reeked was you.” His gaze casts over my still-damp hair, the wavy ends spilling into my lap. “Though I see that problem has finally been remedied. For now.”
I doubt there’s enough food in this entire castle for me to eat all my feelings surrounding him. One moment, he seems to be kind, and then another flip of the coin, and he’s cruel.
It leaves me unsettled. Confused.
“Why am I here, Piper?”
The tic in his jaw appears. “You’re asking a lot of questions, and you’re forgetting you have no right to answers.”
“Why don’t I have the right?” I ask incredulously. “It has to do with my life.”
“As I said before, this is your new reality. Get used to it, and things will be easier for you.”
How could this man who’s speaking so callously be the same person who stayed at my bedside and helped me heal?
It doesn’t match up.
“How old are you?” he asks.
“Why are you asking me personal questions?”
He seems to consider this. “Because I’m interested in you.”
I rear back at his wording. “Interested in me . . . why?”
That’s the last thing I want.
He just stares at me, waiting.
Blowing out a breath, I answer, “I’m twenty-five.”
His head tilts. “So you were one of the Banes’ last offspring before they were all killed off.”
I don’t like him referring to me as offspring. “And what about you?” I counter. “You look old.”
I’m lying, of course. He looks perfectly in his prime. I’d peg him to be early thirties. A fully virile, muscular man, grown past all hints of boyishness—save for those streaks of blond in his hair.
The corner of his mouth curls, and the sight makes my pulse clamor. “Liar.”
I shrug a shoulder, trying to disguise the flurries in my stomach. “What are you, eighty, ninety?”
Amusement sprouts through the mulch of his brown eyes. “I was twenty-one when the earth cracked.”
I wince as I look him over. “Yikes. Rat-piping and people-stealing has really taken its toll on you. You look terrible.”
He unfolds from the chair and I instinctively jerk up to my feet, a flash of worry going through me.
I guess he isn’t amused anymore...
He prowls closer and I go rigid, the vapor from his pipe still belting around his waist in smoky rivulets.
When he stops right in front of me, I jerk my head up, trying to diminish our height difference, but it does nothing.
I don’t like to feel small, but how can I not when he’s so big?
Not just physically either—every inch of this room seems to be shadowed by his overwhelming presence.
I feel my pulse clang, his nearness knocking against me. Slowly, his eyes flake over my face. Peeling past layers.
The intense studying makes me choke on my breath.
Then his hand lifts right in front of me.
My eyes go wide. “What are you doing?” I demand, though my voice comes out like it’s locked in a fist.
Instead of answering, a single finger skims over the heat of my cheek, freezing me in place. He drags that touch from the corner of my eye to the bridge of my nose.
“What are these?” he asks, voice dropped down low, like an ember waiting to be doused.
My heart is beating so hard he must be able to hear it. “. . . My freckles?”
“They flicker like stars.”
His gaze goes from them to my hair, his finger drawing down to the sparkling strands hanging over my shoulder.
“Strange,” he murmurs.
He releases me, but his touch still sears down my skin, just as it did that night in his bedroll, when his hand was on my neck, his thigh on my legs.
My inhale is stirred up and whirling. If I don’t change the subject, I won’t be able to get out of this current.
I clear my throat and back up a step, grateful for the space. “Where will I be taken now?”
His head cocks. “What?”
“Now that I’m not dying of infection. I’ll be taken with the other fiends . . . right?”
He says nothing, and my anxiety heightens.
“Where are the others you stole?” I press. “What have you done with them? Are they okay?”
The expression on his face solidifies with displeasure. “I’ve already warned you about your questions. Don’t make me tell you again.” My eyes flare in indignation, but he turns and strides to the door, tossing an order at me from over his shoulder. “Come with me.”