Chapter 2 #2
Adrik looked at me unflinchingly—with caution and interest, but not with disgust, nor with the ravenous gaze of a faerie on the hunt for prized collectibles.
“I feared we would not make it to Wildemire in time. You were among the dead rather than the living. Lorell here saved you.”
“Wildemire?” I tried to recall the map, but I’d only concerned myself with the shortest trek to Eldevale, not with villages strewn at the edge of the wasteland.
“A small town at the foot of Mount Briarfell,” said Adrik. “Welcome.”
“How far are we from Eldevale?” The question slipped from me too quickly, too keenly.
Adrik raised a brow. How careless of me to reveal my intent, my impatience.
There was a watchfulness to him that put me ill at ease.
I used the traitorous heat in my cheeks to spin a lie. “Someone waits for me there.”
“Ah,” said Adrik with slight amusement. “In that case, I shall bring you paper and a quill. You can inform your lover that a ten-day ride keeps you from their arms.”
I jolted with a gasp from the cushions, croaking feebly as pain took me whole—the light dimmed and there was a crackle in my ears that did not come from the hearth. I pinched the knotted scar.
Sharp and awake.
Sharp and awake.
A ten-day ride. How could that be? I must have wandered for days in the wrong direction to have strayed so far from Mount Windrest.
I tried to mask my terror, but my voice shook as I said, “Then I must leave now.”
Lorell, whose quiet presence I’d all but forgotten, gave a soft snort. Adrik’s too-bright smile faltered.
“Your wounds are dire,” he said tersely. “You are fortunate to live. It will be weeks before you are well enough to travel.” With a glance at the window, he added, "Besides, we are snowed in for the foreseeable future. I fear you will have to make do with us for a while.”
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
A terrible inkling lurked at the edge of my mind. I grasped the frilled blanket and flung it aside, heart burning with dread. I wore a fine nightgown, bunched up to reveal a thick, bloodsoaked bandage on my left thigh.
It had not been the thirst that had nearly cost me my life.
“The wolves,” I croaked, throat tight with surging terror.
Their stiff silence confirmed what I feared. “You were unconscious for five days,” said Adrik.
I barely caught his words over the thrum of blood in my ears; over the horrible howls out there in the snow—coming closer, coming closer, coming to take me back to the swamp.
I buried my nails in the knotted scar, but I was too far gone.
As strange as a hag and twice as mad.
Darkness swept me forth.
I was alone when I next came around.
I would have preferred to linger in the deep, dreamless slumber that had, for a while, freed me from the troubles of being awake. Alas, I was well-rested.
With clenched teeth, I slid to the edge of the bed. The room filled with black flies, buzzing and humming, stealing the light. I slumped back into the cushions, stifling an anguished moan. I could not move without fainting, but if I did not… If I remained too long in this town called Wildemire…
This cursed magic of mine, the monster within, would wake come spring and turn this place into a wasteland. The hounds would find me amid the carnage and wreck what remained of the town. They would return me to the lordling and he’d make me kill—
Or worse, Adrik would strip me to the bone with his awfully alive eyes and discover my cursed power, and who knew what he might have me do with it.
I shivered in the draft hissing angrily through the door.
I could not tear my fearful gaze from the iron-wrought lock.
At times, it seemed to rattle and turn and I’d freeze, expecting the door to crack open and another faerie to sweep inside with the snow.
They could not cross a threshold unless invited, but Adrik had come and gone as he pleased and I feared that Lorell had asked others inside.
How many faeries lived in this town? How many had passed through this house?
How many might come for me should someone catch wind of my wild magic?
Faeries were drawn to such magic like flies to rotten flesh.
A kin ravenous for power, willing to go to wicked lengths for a drop of magic just to grant them a boon in their endless wars.
It had been so for a thousand winters and more.
Even the old tales spoke of faeries who hunted witches across the Lightless Sea.
Of wicked kings who collected obedient flocks of mages to harvest their powers.
For anyone to meet a courtly faerie meant misfortune. For someone with magic, it meant enslavement. A life bound to damp, dark corridors of a blackstone castle. A life amid rotten things.
Hello, little bird.
I bit back a sob, retching as a taste of hot copper spilled over my tongue.
I should have agreed to drink a drop of Adrik’s blood.
To know a faerie’s true name and to taste their blood granted protection against their glamours.
The lordling would never bend my will to his again.
I’d made certain the night I’d escaped. It would not prevent him from locking me up.
From tormenting me, should he catch me alive.
To Adrik, I was vulnerable. He might sweep into the chamber and speak one word to make me travel forth into the storm.
He might have me dance on bleeding feet until my heart ceased from the strain.
He might make me spill vile magic into the veins of the forest, and poison the lands, and watch with wicked glee as animals starved and villagers bled—
My thoughts scattered like ants and I was slow to catch them.
A knife. I needed a knife in case the hounds found me. In case I ever slipped in Adrik’s presence into a state of strange ease and mindlessness. I knew well how to spot a glamour.
I stared blurredly into the snow. Spring, it seemed, was slow to find this far corner of the world.
If I rested well and recovered quickly, I might still make it to Mount Windrest before the thaw.
I had a week, perhaps two, to heal. Once the snow melted, I’d cross Mount Briarfell’s lower pass and follow the road that snaked across cracked plains to the lowlands, from there to Eldevale.
A perilous route, I’d heard, but less fatal than heading back into the wasteland.
I grasped the frilled pillow and turned it thrice, a learned habit I could never quite seem to shed. The draft eased.
I allowed myself, at last, to weep.