Chapter 5
TAREK
The groan of the menagerie’s heavy oak door is the only warning I get.
“Leave me be!” I groan.
I have been drifting in a haze of pain, the throbbing in my leg a relentless drumbeat against the inside of my skull.
Hunger is a dull, coiling ache in my gut.
I have pushed myself up against the back wall of the cage, trying to find a position that doesn't send fresh waves of agony through my shattered bone.
I force my eyes open, my vision swimming into focus on the slender silhouette framed in the doorway.
“You again?” I hiss.
My first thought is a surge of raw irritation. I sent her away. I showed her the beast, and she fled as she was supposed to. Her return is a complication I do not need. I remain perfectly still in the shadows, a predator waiting, and watch as she approaches.
“Yes,” she replies.
I watch her simply kneel before the bars, her movements fluid in the dim light, and push a small, cloth-wrapped bundle through the feeding slot.
The scent of bread and dried meat hits me, and my stomach clenches with a painful, desperate cramp. I don't move. I watch her, my eyes narrowed, my pride warring with the primal, undeniable need for sustenance. She doesn't press or plead. She just waits, her gaze steady.
With a grunt of concession that feels like a surrender, I crawl forward, the movement sending a fresh, grinding torment through my leg. I snatch the bundle and retreat to the shadows to eat, my back to her, refusing to give her the satisfaction of watching me devour the scraps she's brought.
The bread is hard, the meat tough, but it is the most glorious meal I have ever tasted. It is fuel. It is life. When I am finished, I turn back. She is still there, kneeling patiently. She pushes a small ceramic pot and a roll of clean linen through the slot.
"Your wounds," she whispers, her voice a fragile thread in the vast silence. "They will fester if they are not cleaned."
Here, then, is the true test. To accept food is one thing. To accept her care, to allow her to touch me in my weakness, is another entirely. It is an intimacy I have not allowed another soul in years. My instinct is to snarl, to bare my teeth, to drive her away for good.
But I look at her, at the stubborn set of her jaw, at the unwavering resolve in her intelligent green eyes. To refuse would not be an act of strength. It would be an act of fear.
With a low groan, I shift my body, dragging my wounded form closer to the bars. I extend my forearm, offering her the deep, ragged gash there. It is a silent truce, an admission of need that costs me more than she will ever know.
Her hands are impossibly gentle as they work, her touch a foreign sensation against my scarred skin.
She cleans the wound with a cool, wet cloth, her movements efficient and sure.
I watch the way the faint light from the high, grimy windows catches the strands of gold in her hair, the way she bites her lower lip in concentration.
The silence in the menagerie is thick, broken only by the soft rustle of the other caged beasts and the whisper of the cloth against my skin. I have to understand. The strategist in me, the part that is my brother Silas's echo, demands it.
"Why?" The word is a low rumble, rough from disuse.
She doesn't look up. "Why what?"
"Why risk this?" I press, my gaze intense. "I have seen the cruelty of your masters in their eyes. They will not be merciful if they discover this treason."
Her hands still for a moment. She carefully sets the cloth aside and finally lifts her head. Her green eyes, the color of a spring forest, meet mine. The fear is still there, a flicker in their depths, but it is banked by a fire that is startling in its intensity.
"You think this is treason?" she snaps, her voice no longer a whisper, but a sharp, bitter thing. "My entire life is treason. Every thought I have that is not one of obedience is treason. Every book I read, every dream I have of a world outside these walls is treason."
She leans closer, her face a mask of beautiful, righteous fury. "They are already killing me, manticore. A slow, quiet death of a thousand small humiliations. They parade me like a prize, they silence me like a child, they plan to marry me to a monster who will own me, body and soul."
Her voice drops, becoming a fierce, trembling whisper.
"You are in a cage of iron, and I am in a cage of gold, but they are cages nonetheless.
So why do I risk this?" She gives a short, humorless laugh that holds no joy.
"Because I will not stand by and watch another creature die in a cage while I slowly rot in my own.
If I am to be a prisoner, then at least I will be a prisoner who fights back in the only way she can. "
Her words strike me with the force of a physical blow. I have seen her as a liability, a fragile human girl playing a dangerous game. I have been a fool. I have been so consumed by the shame of my own visible prison that I have failed to see the invisible bars of hers.
I look at her, truly look at her, for the first time.
I see not a frightened girl, but a fellow prisoner.
A fellow warrior. Her battlefield is the glittering, treacherous landscape of the elven court, her weapons are silence and secrets, but her fight is just as real, just as desperate as any I have ever known.
A new, unfamiliar feeling begins to take root in the barren soil of my soul.
It is not pity. It is not gratitude. It is respect.
A deep, profound respect for the small, fierce, and utterly unbreakable human woman who is kneeling in the filth of a menagerie, tending to the wounds of a monster she should have feared.