CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
C HAPTER T HIRTY- S IX
Farra was taken from the Ledge and brought before the King of Glacia in the same cruel fashion as each Ledge-dweller before her. She was blindfolded and stripped and chained before being thrown into the dungeon to wait the night. When the morning came, she and the other captives were herded up a narrow winding staircase and thrust through enormous oak doors, where the Pool of Iskra awaited, where Vasteel awaited.
Yet it was not Vasteel that caught her attention first, nor that fucking pool with its strange whispers. The room pounded a frenetic beat as the Glacians roared and jeered and thumped their empty chalices against the tabletops, but it could do nothing to distract from the Glacian that stood at the King’s side. The very Glacian whose talons had sunk into her shoulders and snatched her from her home.
He bore the marks of her fight. There was a cut along his cheekbone. A split in his lip. Her very own fingers had gouged those lines across his chest. She could see clearly where the scratches disappeared beneath his tunic. He had not put up much of a fight when they landed, releasing her as soon as they were close enough to ground. She had turned with ruined arms and drawn her knife, ignoring the screaming of her shoulders as she sliced and scratched. The Glacian had hit the knife away and taken her wrists in one of his hands, pinning her against his front within moments. Farra got the impression he could have done so sooner.
“I am sorry,” she thought he had said. But the wind was howling. Other captives screamed and shouted around them as they were held in mid-air, their tendons straining. The more Farra thought of it, the more ludicrous it seemed that she had heard the Glacian say anything at all.
He stared back at her, across the expanse of the hall, and a slow smile stretched across his face. And what a face it was. Pale and chiselled, as though cut from stone. His hair was short and a dark smoky grey. It perfectly imitated the colour of his eyes, the colour of his wings. Those wings hung perfectly still, folded inward behind the vast expanse of his shoulders. He was, in every possible way, dangerous. Terrifying. Beautiful.
And he watched her as though he might consume her.
Vasteel preached and Farra heard nothing of what was said. She focussed on keeping her sights set on her captor. She would die this night – she had already deduced as much and was shocked it had not already come to pass – and so, as her neighbours stepped to the edge of the pool, one by one, she speared the Glacian with every ounce of spite and malice she was capable of. She would die cursing him, and if the Holy Mother was merciful, she would ensure this beast never knew peace again.
“Move, girl,” a gruff voice demanded, and she was shoved forward. She stepped toward the pool with her head high, her lips pressed tightly shut, and she looked her last at the Glacian by Vasteel’s side, praying he felt her hatred.
But the Glacian had stepped forward. “Wait!” he called to her, to the room at large. “Halt!” his hand reached out and for a moment Farra thought she recognised panic. But then the Glacian’s eyes fell to his master and they became coolly indifferent. Mirthful, perhaps. “Your Grace,” he said. “Pardon the interruption. But it has been so long since I had a servant to… tend to me.”
The confusion that had narrowed Vasteel’s eyes turned to amusement. The King’s head tilted back and he laughed.
Soon, all the Glacians around the hall were laughing. Laughing at her.
Farra turned to cut them with her stare too.
“She is spirited,” Vasteel guffawed, as though she were little more than a wild animal fighting against the hold of his trap. “But we have many a human walking these halls, Mesrich. Take who you please to your chambers.”
The Glacian named Mesrich grinned. “I want this one,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice, a slip in his otherwise oily countenance. “I relish a challenge.”
Vasteel laughed again and slapped Mesrich on the back. “I see you’ve returned to yourself, my friend. Consider the girl a gift from me to you. No noble shall hunger tonight!”
The Glacians roared their approval, tankards clashed, but Farra turned her gaze to the pool before her. It glowed invitingly, swirling with some matter she could not name, and though it were inexplicable, she could hear it. It urged her closer, promised a gentle embrace.
At thirty-one, Farra had fought off her share of men who believed she was little more than a means of satisfaction. She would not fight off another. With one last loathsome glance toward the Glacian named Mesrich – the one who had dragged her across the Chasm – she held her breath, then hurled herself into the pool.
There was no sensation of falling. No collision. She fell into the depths of the pool, and it ensconced her immediately, cradling her in its warmth. She felt utterly weightless, thoughtless. The pool sung to her and she smiled. She closed her eyes obediently. What blissful relief to rest within its depths. The pool delivered her gently down its current, and she went willingly.
A tug in the opposite direction was the only source of discomfort, but even that was easily ignored. She curled herself away from it. Yes, the pool said. Stay. Sleep.
There was nothing she wanted more, but something strong had her. It wrenched her away.
Her head broke the surface to the return of wild laughter, the sting of the cold. She was mercilessly dragged over the lip of the pool and dropped onto the stone – its sharp edges prodding her uncomfortably. Farra tried to lift her heavy eyelids. How harsh this world was. Better to return to the pool. Perhaps she could roll herself over the edge.
“No,” a voice said. It reached her above the harsh echo of mirth and merriment. Cold fingers clasped her wrist. “Please. Stop.”
Farra blinked again and Mesrich’s face came into view, hovering close to hers. Grim concern marred his otherwise flawless features.
“Well,” Vasteel’s voice called, reverberating from the stone walls. “I’ve never seen you look so starved, Mesrich. What say you all? Should we deprive our friend his fill of flesh?”
There was a roar of dissent in reply.
“Or should we take what the Mother has offered us?”
A rumble of enthusiastic approval followed.
Mesrich did not join the chorus. His stare was saved for Farra.
“Ha! Very well. Then take what is yours, feral beasts! Let us drink!”
A resounding roar followed, but Farra barely noticed. She was being lifted from the cold floor, into even colder arms.
“Let go of me,” she mumbled weakly, her words blending into one another.
The Glacian did not reply. She watched the underside of his jaw strain, watched his eyes darken as they left the noise behind them, and before her eyes closed again, she thought she heard him whisper to her that he would keep her safe.
Once more, she slipped beneath the surface.
She awoke upon a bed, one wider than any she’d known to exist. She was warm. Soft blankets were laid carefully atop her. Her limbs felt oddly heavy, as though the muscle had dissolved and left nothing behind but useless weights that kept her anchored down. But she had to get her bearings, had to find a weapon, had to get out.
She wrenched herself upright, vision swimming.
“Easy,” a voice said, and then a hand was against her chest, urging her onto her back again.
She found the face – the very same face that had haunted her in restless sleep – and she spat into it.
He had her wrists wrapped up in a heartbeat. She had hardly raised them to rake down his face, to tear out his eyes. “LET ME GO!” she screamed as loudly as her lungs would allow.
But he only watched her with morbid finality. “I cannot.”
Whatever the pool’s magic, it had sapped her strength. Quickly, she found her efforts waning, she was sinking back to the bed, gasping for breath. Tears escaped the corners of her eyes. They coursed down the sides of her face and got lost in her hair. “What do you want from me?” she asked, her lips trembling. If he ripped the clothes from her body now and forced himself upon her, she could hardly stop him.
His eyelids drooped with something like disdain. His jaw ticked. “I want nothing from you.”
“Then let me go. Or throw me into the pool.”
“You will never see the inside of that pool again.” His voice became a growl. “You will rest here. Heal.” He motioned toward her shoulders, which Farra only now noticed were bandaged. “When you are well, I will help you find your escape.”
Her heart stuttered. She tried to find the trickery in the words, but the Glacian’s eyes did not err from hers, his lips did not falter from the way they pressed firmly together.
“Escape?”
He merely nodded. There was nothing sardonic about the way he perused her shoulders. The concern seemed somehow genuine. “I stitched the wounds again,” he said flatly. “They had opened.”
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
Mesrich cursed in the old language. “Of course not. But you should rest until they heal. Stay upon the bed.”
“And if I do not wish to stay?” Farra pushed. “Have you forgotten to tie me to it? Or do you intend to guard me day and night?”
The Glacian smirked in his small way, scrubbing his face tiredly. “You won’t venture far in this place, should you make your bid for escape without my help.”
“And why would you help me,” she said impatiently, her voice unsteady. “You brought me here, did you not?”
Mesrich stared at her and in his eyes, she thought she detected anguish, indecision. Some turmoil that couldn’t be voiced. He nodded. “I did,” he said. “But it was not by choice.”
Farra contemplated his words but could find no meaning in them. Instead, she simply watched him, unwilling to take her eyes from his while he remained so close.
He grinned again, despite himself, his eyes locked to hers. “Your eyes,” he said. “I’ve never felt quite so eviscerated as when you set them upon me in that hall.” He shook his head. “You have no fear, do you?”
Farra jutted her chin, preparing to lie. “No.”
“You should,” he said, finally wrenching his gaze from hers. “You will not survive here.”
“I should think you care little for my survival, Glacian.”
“Thaddius,” he said. “My name is Thaddius.”
“I do not care to know the name of my captor,” Farra spat.
“I saved you from the pool,” he reminded her, though even he did not sound convinced. “That surely grants me your name.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fearless,” he chuckled darkly, looking skyward. “Mother help me.”
“The Mother will spit on your sorry soul should you ever find yourself at Her gate.”
Thaddius Mesrich turned to her once more. “I’ve come to believe the same.” He stood then, and for the first time, Farra noticed the absence of his wings. Without them, he looked oddly… human. Large and hauntingly pale, but human. “The bath is drawn,” he said, gesturing toward a brass tub in the corner. “You should wash before the water turns cold.”
And then the Glacian left the room, closing a heavy wooden door behind him.
Farra waited a beat, then another, and then flung the covers from her body. She lurched unsteadily toward the door, but when she pulled on the handle, she found it locked. The hinges clattered but did not give and she hit it with her fist, letting loose a shriek of frustration.
She turned and let her back rest against the frame, panting from the exertion. She tried to find reason, sense. She needed to think.
She looked around the sparse room. The ceiling was adorned with an intricate candelabra she’d never seen the likes of. There was an armoire she did not recognise, and a bathtub, steam rising invitingly from its depths.
There was no escaping, it seemed. She could not break her way out of this room without causing considerable noise. Even if she could, she did not know the way, and this palace was crawling with Glacians. Thaddius was right, she would not venture far.
She shuddered at the thought of his name. She hung her head to her chest and let more tears fall. It did not seem the Glacian would kill her himself. At least, not yet. Every cryptic reply led her to believe that he was remorseful, despite the improbability of it. Whatever threat lay ahead, it no longer appeared to be imminent. She had time. With time, came opportunity.
She shuffled toward the ridiculous tub, too big for anything but a castle. The water did look inviting. Her feet ached with the cold of the stone floor.
Ridding herself of the ragged garb she’d been vested in upon her arrival to Glacia, she let the rough, thin fabric fall to the ground, and stepped carefully into the water. A hiss escaped her teeth as she lowered her body beneath the surface. The heat stung, so at odds with her icy skin, but moments later, she was groaning with deep satisfaction. Never had she felt the luxury of being fully submerged.
That is, of course, except for the magical pool she had thrown herself into.
Farra kept her ruined shoulders propped up out of the water but found they did not ache quite as badly as before, wrapped tightly in their clean bandaging. The Glacian had obviously taken measures to ensure the job was done properly. Farra looked down at her breasts and wondered if Thaddius had disrobed her in the process. She blanched.
Was it merely her body, he wanted? He had told his King as much, hadn’t he? It has been an age since I had a servant to tend to me. Is that what he intended to do with her? Keep her locked away in this room and fuck her when it pleased him?
And if she refused? What would he do with her then?
Farra thought of the pool and the inhabitants that were fished out. All except her had been docile, empty. Was that the alternative, should Thaddius Mesrich find no use for her?
Farra snarled and sank lower into the tub. There was an escape somewhere. There had to be. A way out, all she needed was time to find it.
In that moment, beneath the water, there was no part of Farra that believed Thaddius Mesrich would help her escape, that he would make good on his word and release her. She would have to make her own way out.
Thaddius would need to be stalled. She thought of the sharp lines of his face, his shoulders, and swallowed. To be a woman of the Ledge was to endure. She could surely endure this too.
She could fell a grown man with a pick, a hammer, a knife. She could go days and days without a morsel to eat. She could sear her own wounds closed. She could knock a rotting tooth from her mouth. She could bear the brunt of a blizzard as it tried resolutely to pull her toward the Chasm.
She could borrow time. She could seduce a Glacian.
Farra waited alone for two days.
Food appeared at her bedside as she slept. It unsettled her to think she had not awoken to the sound of someone entering. And yet, she remained unharmed.
She paced and gnawed on her own thoughts, waiting for the moment Thaddius Mesrich would re-enter the room, but the Glacian remained resolutely and inexplicably on the other side of the great wooden door.
She could hear him. When she pressed her ear to the woodgrain, she could discern the heavy breaths of someone standing sentry. In the night, those breaths drew longer as they slept. Farra was sure it was him.
But still, he did not enter the room.
She ought to count her blessings, she thought. She was safe in this room after all. Instead, after two days, she was wearing a path into the stone as she circled the room. She pulled on her hair and cursed with increasing frequency. Despite all the things she was capable of enduring, she thought this – this tedious anticipation – might be the thing to thwart her.
Eventually, she stalked to the door and hammered her fists against it. “Are you going to leave me in here forever, Glacian?” she shouted.
There was a rough mumbling from the other side and then suddenly the handle rattled. The door pushed inward. It caught her off guard, made her stumble backward.
Thaddius Mesrich stepped into his chambers, swiftly closing the door behind him and locking it.
“You think I’ll try to run?” Farra asked, half hysterical.
The strange Glacian did not meet her eye. “I cannot allow you to. The others–”
“Will drink my soul if I try?”
She thought the Glacian might make some snide aside. Instead, he just said, “Or worse.”
Farra wondered if it was a threat. “Surely you can’t mean to keep me in here forever.”
Thaddius frowned. “It has only been two days.”
“Two days as a trapped animal!”
The ringing pitch of her voice made the Glacian grin slightly. His eyes perused the room. “Quite the cage,” he muttered. “I assure you that sleeping on the floor in the corridor was far less appealing than my own bed.”
Farra’s stomach curled at the mention of his bed.
“Your wounds need time to heal,” he sighed, already turning back toward the door.
“Wait!” she said, her hand reaching out to stop him.
Thaddius paused but did not look back at her. Instead, he looked warily at her fingers against the inside of his wrist, as though they were something to fear.
Her mind was sprinting. She had not given much forethought to this encounter or what she would do when she saw the Glacian again. She only knew that she needed to find a way to make him drop his guard. The Glacian was vigilant, cautious. That much was clear. If she was to outsmart him, outrun him, she would need to make him pliant, malleable. He would need to believe she was of no concern.
“I am sorry,” she said, softly this time, if a little breathless. “I am not used to… to being so alone.”
The Glacian’s eyes were hard – impenetrably so.
“Please,” she said, though the words sounded false, even to her. “Stay with me. It is surely better than guarding my door.”
Something in his expression faltered. His gaze swivelled back to the door in question.
“No,” she said, diverting his attention again. This time she dropped his wrist. She walked backward toward the bed. “Sit by me,” she said. The way his eyes darkened, she knew her voice was soft enough, tempting enough. “Distract me.”
“From what?”
“Fear,” she said, and she made her voice even smaller. “Loneliness.”
Thaddius’ expression immediately solidified. He grinned once more in that icy, dangerous way she now recognised as derision. “You do not make a convincing mouse,” he said, staking her where she stood. “Fear doesn’t seem to concern you. Though, it should.”
Then he left, closing and locking the door behind him. Farra was left alone for another night. Alone, but alive.
The following days were a series of failed attempts on Farra’s behalf.
Each time Thaddius entered the room to deliver her food and water, she tried to engage him in conversation, in anything that would see him linger for more than a few seconds. Sometimes, he sent humans in – slaves with their tongues cut out. People she recognised from the Ledge. They came to collect her bed pans and redress Thaddius’ bed. They looked at her with mournful eyes and departed, unable to answer her questions. Would she wind up like them? Muted and enslaved?
Thaddius remained steadfast in his supposed dispassion for her, though she did not believe it. He had brought her here for a reason – her specifically. At times, he betrayed a flicker of interest, of attraction. But whatever emotion came to pass over him was then quickly thwarted by a stony veneer.
Farra took to sleeping as much as she could to pass the time. It was odd, how very lax she had become in such a short period. How complacent. She no longer woke to the sounds that echoed through the castle walls. She knew Thaddius remained outside and it somehow comforted her. She slept with her back to the door and did not fear she would be ripped from her bed in the night.
She was plagued by terrible dreams, mostly of falling. Each time she closed her eyes, she was tipped over the edge of some great height, and the sensation of plummeting turned her stomach over; it seized her.
One such dream was filled with nothing but that unending fall. No surrounds, no sound at all, just an interminable, sightless drop. She could not see the ground rushing up to meet her from below, could not wake herself before the collision came. This time, she collided with ground, and she felt herself burst on impact.
She awoke to the sound of screaming, to large, cool hands on her cheeks, and it took a second longer to realise the screams came from her.
“Shhh,” a voice whispered in the dark. “You are well.”
She blinked, gulping a lungful of air. The bed covers were twisted around her body from where she had likely thrashed. She wore nothing beneath them, but the Glacian did not look at the slithers of skin that were revealed. Instead, his eyes trapped hers. “It was a dream,” he said now, his voice so achingly gentle it was difficult not to melt into the hands that stroked her jaw. It was difficult not to take comfort from them.
She swallowed past the pain in her throat, raw from her shrieks, and simply stared back at the creature poised above her, over her, wiping the tears from her face.
“Normally, you do not wake,” he said in that same voice, low and melodic.
Farra frowned. “I’ve screamed before?”
He sighed quietly. “Every night.”
Her stomach fluttered. She wondered if he’d comforted her before exactly like this, without her knowing.
“What do you dream of?” he asked suddenly, uncharacteristically. In all their interactions, he had never once lingered. Now, it seemed as though he could not stop himself. He searched her face with need, with some sort of deep-seated curiosity.
Farra found herself wanting to tell him. “I dream of falling.”
“Falling?”
She nodded.
He considered her answer for a moment, then smiled inadvertently. “My greatest fear as a child was falling. I dreamt of it often.”
“One with wings still fears falling?”
“One must learn to use the wings first.” He grimaced. “It requires repeated failure.”
Farra tried to conjure an image she had not considered before – a Glacian offspring. “I cannot think of you as a child.”
“We all were once. However long ago it may have been.”
“Exactly how old are you, Glacian?”
“Far older than any creature ought to be.”
Farra had awaited a moment like this. A moment where she could make him vulnerable, make him talk to her, trust her, but instead of calculating her next remark, she found herself speaking freely. Some spark of curiosity within her had been set alight.
“When I was a girl, my biggest fear was falling into the Chasm,” she said. “I soon learned there were worse ways to die.”
“Glacians?”
“The people of the Ledge believe the Glacians devour them.”
Thaddius raised his eyebrows. “Is the truth better, or worse?”
Farra considered before answering, then sighed. “It is both better and worse. The end may be less gruesome, but you harvest humans not for hunger, but to prolong life. We die for greed alone.”
Thaddius grimaced. “Not one of them considers the cost,” he admitted.
“But you do?”
The Glacian became still. “Remorse has its own costs,” he said simply, and Farra could not guess at his meaning.
She sat upright. The sconces had long since flickered and died, and she moved to see his face clearly. She found herself much closer than she had intended. The Glacian did not veer away. He remained seated at her side, body facing her, his cool breaths glancing off her lips.
“Did you save me?” she asked, and sincerity leaked into her voice, made it quiet and feeble. She needed to know if this was a game and if he were the villain.
“Yes,” he breathed. He seemed unable to remove his eyes from hers. Farra fared no better.
“Why?”
“Do you not want to be saved, girl?”
“Farra,” she corrected. “And I wanted to be left on the Ledge. You were not so merciful when you saw me from the sky on Selection Day.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “I did not want to.”
“Then why–”
“Because I am as trapped here as you were on the Ledge,” he said. “And this place does not care for my remorse.” He made to turn away, to stand.
For the second time, Farra reached out and grasped his wrist. Her fingers barely encircled it. “Wait,” she said.
No other words came. She had no good reason to stop the Glacian from leaving the room. She could not voice this unquenchable need to speak with him, to make meaning of his cryptic remarks. She did not want to hear his even breaths through the doorframe and wonder what he was thinking, what his intentions might be. She wanted to hear it from his lips. She wanted to see his eyes when he spoke. She…wanted. And it had little to do with plans for escape. “Tell me…” she fumbled, unsure of how to articulate it. “Tell me the truth.”
He sighed and his shoulders looked too heavy. She wondered if it was tiring to carry his wings – if even while sequestered they still weighed him down. “What do you want to know?” he asked. His hand turned over slowly in hers, until their palms were lightly touching, his fingertips glancing off the inside of her own wrist, making her pulse thrum.
“Everything,” she said on an exhale. “Tell me everything.”