Shameless Fae (The Fae Bounties Book 1)

by Cilla Raven

  However, just as fast as that surprise had shown up on his face, it just as quickly disappeared, and as he pulls a length of rope from somewhere behind him, that little broken part of me pouts like a bitch as he binds my hands together, yet again.

  “You will go into the tavern, walk to the bar, and stand behind the fourth stool. You are not to say a word. When you get to the stool, you will keep your head down and your hair covering your face. Do you understand me?”

  “Now, why the fae would I do that?” I ask, my anger at him for ordering me around, and my anger at myself for liking it, causing my mouth to run away with itself.

  Quinn grabs my arm again, and says, “Because I said so, and if you don’t, I will make you regret it. Don’t test me today, Princess.”

  “Fine,” I snarl at him through gritted teeth, and again, I have no idea why I agree.

  Turning toward the door, Quinn comes over to open it for me, and I walk inside with him trailing behind me. I can just feel his eyes burrowing into the back of my neck as I trudge ahead. It’s like I’m paying attention to where I’m going and everything that’s happening around me, but most of my awareness is on Quinn… how close he is or how far back, the sound his boots make as he takes each step across the stone floor, the deep sigh he exhales as I make it to the fourth stool, and he takes a seat.

  “Head down,” Quinn snarls under his breath, and I drop my head, so my hair falls in my face. I caught a glimpse of Quinn’s demeanor as he sat down at the bar. His back was straight, his jaw tight, and his left leg bounced as his forearms leaned against the bar.

  “What can I get you?” the barkeep asks.

  Quinn lowers his voice and says, “I need to make this birdie fly.”

  “This one here?” the barkeep asks, excitement entering his voice where it wasn’t there before.

  Quinn huffs, “No, the one I left in the cart. Of course, this one.”

  I have no idea what they’re talking about, and I’m really wishing I could look up to read their body language and the room, so I could understand what’s going on, but the situation seems like Quinn needs me to act this way right now, and I don't want to let him down.

  “Don’t start jaw jacking, or I’ll kick you out of here, and you won’t get paid.”

  “Then quit jerking me around. Yes, this one,” Quinn says, and I see him turn his body somewhat towards mine. “She’s a pretty birdie, isn’t she?”

  The barkeep clicks his tongue a few times before he whistles, slowly saying, “That she is my friend. That she is.”

  Immediately, my stomach drops, my heart rate pounds, and my skin tingles as my palms sweat, and an almost overwhelming urge to run sweeps through me, but something keeps my feet plastered to the floor as if these ropes bind my feet as well as my hands.

  Where the fae has Quinn brought me, and just what kind of shit is he really involved in?

  I can feel Quinn's eyes on me without even having to look up, but for what feels like an eternity, neither of them speaks, and every second that ticks by, my anxiety grows. I study the stone floor and notice the dirt trapped in the cracks as the aroma of whiskey penetrates my nose, and every little sound surrounding me, pricks against my psyche, telling me that I’m in a very dangerous situation right now.

  “Alright, you can go on back. Give this flower to the fae in the back corner, so he knows I sent you,” the barkeep says. I can sense the smile he’s sending my way, and it makes me want to cringe.

  Quinn gets up from his seat, grabs me by the arm again, and whispers in my ear as he guides me through the tavern, “Stay like this no matter what you hear. Nod if you understand.”

  On instinct alone, I know, now is not the time to fight back because the stakes here are high, not only for me but for Quinn as well. I can feel it.

  I nod my head as Quinn pushes through a door, guides me through, and closes it tightly behind him, the sound of the lock clicking, setting my already frazzled nerves even more on edge.

  We walk through the space, and I can tell that there are far fewer people in here than were out in the main room of the tavern, but somehow the air seems heavier, like the eyes that fall upon us as we move are analyzing us far more closely than the ones back in the main room were.

  Pretty soon, Quinn pulls me to a stop, and I hear someone say, “Let’s see her then.”

  Quinn grabs my hair and pulls my head back roughly, my hair unshielding my face and my vision at the same time. I wince from the pain, sucking in a breath through my teeth, but as the purple winged noble in front of me starts talking, I shut up as even more fear grips me.

  “Well, aren’t you a pretty little bird,” he says as I take in his appearance, just as he takes in mine. He’s wearing the usual garb for a noble, but what strikes me as odd is that this fae is covered from head to toe in jewelry. Yes, nobles tend to wear their riches around like a suit of armor, but this fae has taken it way too far, with rings on each of his fingers, too many necklaces to count, hanging around his neck, and so many earrings, I can barely see the indicative point of his ears that make him a fae.

  Quinn hands a potted flower over, and the noble takes it and sets it down on the table in front of him as if he couldn’t care less about the plant, which works out for me, because as I eye it, I notice the flower is literally shaking.

  I guess it knows how I feel, I think sarcastically, hoping no one else notices it.

  “I’ll take nine hundred for her,” Quinn says sternly, his hand still firmly grasping my hair as panic seizes me.

  This fae fucker is trying to sell me? Oh, fuck no, he’s not, I think as I send an elbow out to Quinn’s stomach so hard, he grunts in pain, and I try to pull away from him, but his grip only tightens in my hair, holding me in place.

  I’m about to start attacking him again when he reaches out his other hand and wraps it so tightly around my throat that my knees actually get weak, and he lifts me by my neck so that only my toes are scraping the floor as my whole body starts to shake. I can’t move anything except my arms, but since my hands are bound, all of my movements are useless. I can’t pull away. I can’t do anything while he holds me like this, and as I feel myself starting to black out, I hear the noble chuckle without humor.

  Quinn sets me back down on my feet, loosening his grip just enough so that I can pull some much-needed air into my lungs, but not before tears run out of my eyes from how much pressure he was putting on my neck. “I will snap your neck right here if you do that again,” Quinn says.

  “You’ve got a live one here,” the noble fae says. “I’m going to have to break her in. That should give me a discount for all the trouble she’ll be.” He takes a second to rake his gaze over me before he looks back at Quinn and says, “I’ll give you five hundred for her, no more.”

  As soon as the words leave the fae’s mouth, Quinn takes his hands off of me, pulls a dagger from his hip, and slices it across the noble’s neck so fast I have to wonder if I’m actually seeing straight.

  Coughs wrack my body as spots show up in my vision, and I send my hands to my neck as I stare wide-eyed at Quinn.

  But he’s not paying me any attention.

  He’s turned around, and at the gleam in his eye, I turn around too, in order to see what he’s looking at.

  Four different fae start charging toward us from across the room, and I end up just standing there, watching in awe as Quinn takes down each and every one of them with that same dagger so quickly, my mind can hardly keep up with how he does it exactly.

  But when it’s over, when all of those bodies lie unmoving at his feet, he turns around to face me with bloodlust still swirling through his eyes. He’s fucking scary looking, and as he walks over to me, it’s everything I can do to just stand there.

  However, after a second, after enough blood is flowing through my brain that I can actually think straight again, my fear and anxiety turn to sheer hatred.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask as Quinn grabs me by my arm again, and starts pu
lling me back through the room toward the door we came through.

  “Shut up, and put your head down. Act exactly how you did when you walked in here. Now,” he says as he opens the door, and it all suddenly clicks in my mind as I drop my head again.

  He wanted to kill those fae in there, he just needed a way to get inside, and I was his ticket. I doubt Priya would’ve ever subjected herself to what I just went through, and if Quinn had been trying to get to those fae for a while, I must have seemed like easy bait to use.

  Quinn pushes me through the front half of the tavern and then back outside, where everyone else is already ready and waiting for us. He grabs me by my waist and lifts me into the cart before he jumps into the driver’s seat, and gets the horses going again, not even checking to see if I’d sat down yet or not. I hadn’t, so as the cart jerked forward, I fell back into Lazlo’s lap as I slung a slew of curses at Quinn.

  “Now’s not the time, Ghosty,” Lazlo says as he puts me in the seat beside him and takes the rope off of my hands without me even having to ask, all the while, continuously checking behind us as if he’s afraid we’re being followed.

  I check back behind us as well, but I don’t see anyone coming to atone for the people Quinn just murdered, and after a few minutes, I fall back into my seat, crossing my arms over my chest as my wings twitch my anger and irritability at my back.

  I swear I don’t care where we’re going, who we’re going to see, or what my consequences will be. When we get to wherever it is we’re going, Quinn is going to learn real quick that I’ve fucking had it with his shit.

  Chapter 16

  The road between the village and the rebel camp is long, wet, and boring, and the longer we ride, the more my anger subsides, despite how much I want to cling to it.

  Yes, Quinn ordered me around like he had every right to do so, made me think he was going to sell me to that noble, and yes, he murdered all of those fae in that room in cold blood with no mercy. However, I know what those fae were, what they made their living doing, and though Quinn’s methods needed a complete overhaul, I can’t deny that those fae needed to be stopped from doing what they were doing.

  My thoughts go back and forth between being so pissed off at Quinn that I can barely sit still, to giving him the benefit of the doubt, finding little reasons here and there to justify his actions.

  I’ve never really condoned or supported killing someone, regardless of their transgressions. My stance has always been to stop the criminals that I catch from ever committing their crimes in my nation again by sending them to Eruxus, so the rest of Arorial doesn’t have to deal with them either.

  There’s only ever been two times during my entire bounty hunting career that I’ve had to take a life, and both times were instances and situations where I didn’t have any other choice. It had been my life or theirs, and I’d made sure it was mine that came out on top. Nevertheless, their faces still haunt me, and I still have moments where I wonder if I did the right thing. Moments, where I try to imagine what could’ve happened had I done something different.

  Does he even feel remorse? I wonder as I eye the back of Quinn’s head.

  Probably not, I answer my own question as the cart bounces around over a particularly rough patch of road.

  Roan and Priya are lost in their own communication bubble for a while, gesturing with their hands in their secret language. Though it’s impossible to follow, eventually, I know their conversation has turned to me because they keep motioning in my direction and glancing my way with different expressions.

  I try to ignore it and use what they’re doing as another reason to fuel my anger, but when Priya turns to me with her arms crossed over her chest, and says, “Okay, Zinnia,” accentuating my real name with an attitude, I can’t help but want to laugh at the way she says it.

  I keep the laughter in, but only just barely as she continues without knowing my internal struggle. “There are a lot of questions I want to ask, but I’ll boil it all down to the one that’s the most important and will tell me most of what I need to know,” she says, and I don’t hesitate at all to nod my head at her, letting her know I’ll answer whatever it is she wants to know.

  “What made you, the princess of the most powerful nation in all of Arorial, want to hunt down bounties during your spare time?”

  I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t think I’ll have a justifiable answer to give her, that she thinks this is the question that will prove I’m just some royal out looking for kicks wherever I can get them, but as I feel my eyes glaze over, thinking about that night thirteen years ago, I see her resolve begin to thin.

  “My mother was raped and murdered by members of the rebellion, and I have been hunting them down as best I could ever since,” I say, my voice conveying a level of malice even I didn’t know I was capable of.

  Everyone turns to look at me, including Quinn, their eyes wide with surprise or confusion, I’m not sure which, but after a second or two, everyone looks away from me as if they can’t meet my gaze, which just makes my anger rise in my chest.

  “What do you know of that?” I finally ask when I can’t take their silence anymore. The faraway looks in their eyes let me know that they know something, and dammit, I’m not going to let the subject rest until they tell me what they know.

  Lazlo is the one that speaks up for the group, saying, “We all remember the queen’s death, Ghosty.” He takes a deep breath, then turns to me in our seat to look at me more closely. “Now, we weren’t with the rebellion when she died, we were all too young at the time, but I’m pretty sure, once you see the rebel camp, you’ll think the way we do.”

  “And what way is that, Lazlo?” I ask.

  His blue eyes soften as they gaze into mine, and he says, “I don’t think it was the rebellion that killed her.”

  My mouth opens at the sheer gall of this fae man. “What the fae do you mean, you don’t think they killed her? How would you know anyway? What? Do they list out all of their crimes from the past when they bring in new recruits? Is that how you think you know?” The words fly from my tongue without much thought, and I couldn’t care less about trying to keep it in check.

  Priya gets my attention by clearing her throat, and I shoot my gaze over at her.

  “You have a very skewed view of the rebellion, Zinnia,” she says, almost sympathetically, but then she turns her words toward Lazlo. “I think it will be better if we show her. She’s not going to believe anything we say without proof.”

  “What? What won’t I believe? Fucking try me,” I nearly scream at her I’m so riled up with pent up emotions.

  “You’ll see soon, little Ghosty,” Lazlo says softly as if I’m one of his little siblings he’s trying to keep from having a full-on temper tantrum.

  “No, tell me what you know right now,” I demand, knowing I might seem a bit overdramatic to them, or at least, extremely emotional, but again, I don’t fucking care right now.

  “We’re here,” Quinn says loudly over his shoulder, shocking me almost entirely out of my rage for the time being as I take in my surroundings with renewed effort.

  Quinn stops the horses, and as I look around, I see nothing other than thick forest on both sides of the road, confusing me even further. Still, my questions die on my tongue as I watch them all jump out of the cart, and start moving the foliage to our right, uncovering a heavily traveled path that I never would’ve noticed was there unless I knew to look for it.

  Quinn hops back on the front of the cart and drives it down the path, just far enough for the cart to pass through, then stops it again so he can go help the others close up the path behind us.

  However, even though I know that’s what they’re doing behind me, all of my focus has shifted to the scene of the rebel camp before me.

  We’re at the top of a hill that overlooks a large, wide, treeless valley down below, and from our position, it’s almost as if I have a bird’s eye view of the whole camp from up here. It kind of reminds me of a meado
w with how there are no trees in the valley, just grass, and wildflowers, but as I look closer, I can see the patchwork-like rows of food thriving in the rebels’ little farms. There are a bunch of tents set up in rows next to each square garden, giving me the impression that each tenthold is responsible for growing the plants they live beside.

  There’s a large, clear stream that runs down the center of the valley, and each side’s tents have an identical twin on the opposite side of the stream. Two arched stone bridges are connecting one side to the other that I can tell, even from this distance, were meticulously made to make them seem like they were supposed to be a part of the landscape.

  “Welcome to the rebel camp, Princess,” Lazlo says as he hops back up beside me, and I can’t help but stare in awe as we start heading down toward everything below.

  The sun has just dropped below the horizon as we make our way through the tents that collectively seem to work like a small city rather than a camp. They even have signs hanging from each of them designating the business or the family name occupying it, in sprawling calligraphy that I wouldn’t have thought they’d take the time to care about.

  Suddenly, the cart stops in front of a tent whose sign reads simply, “Base.”

  “This is it, little Ghosty,” Lazlo says, drawing my attention back to him. “A word of warning though, keep an open mind.”

  Well, if that’s not ominous, I think as we all get out of the cart.

  Each of the Doconqueh shares concerned looks with one another, but eventually, it’s Quinn who grabs me by the arm and pulls me inside beside him. I want to tell him to let me go, but I get distracted as I walk inside the large tent before I can voice my complaints.

  There are row upon row of stools set up in lines so that people can see what’s going on at the back of the tent, which is where a stage has been erected. The stage only sits about three feet above the ground, but it reaches all the way to the back side of the tent.