by Brindi Quinn
“Got anything in need of mending, lion queen?”
“My sleeve. Stitch it for me while I bathe?”
Windley didn’t answer but stared at me as I unhinged my cloak and pulled my shirt up over my hair.
“I’m leaving before you offer to wash her,” said Rafe. He bowed to me. “I’ll tend to the fire, Your Majesty.”
Down to my undershirt—promise it was modest enough—I balled up my torn shirt and threw it at Windley.
“In the fishpond, Merr?” he said as he caught it. “Did you see the slimy things Rafe fished out of there?”
I grinned over his concern. “I found a warm spring around back while gathering amaranth. Likely why there’s no washroom here. The previous owner had no need of a tub.”
Which was fine by me. Heating water in these country homes took too long. Back in the queendoms, most people used bathhouses, bursting of steam and slippery with scented oil. I had snuck away from Albie’s watch to visit them a handful of times, and once, I had even convinced Beau to come with.
“Remember that time you helped me sneak Beau out of the castle to visit the Clearing’s fanciest bathhouse?”
“Ah, yes.” Windley held his needle between his teeth and straightened out my shirt as one would shake out a rug. “Your visits are always most entertaining.”
Visits. Our monster nudged at me.
“Windley… when we get back… I intend to put in a request for your transfer to my queendom… if that’s what you want too.”
He stopped what he was doing, eyes melancholier than they had been just a moment ago. He opened his mouth to say something but ultimately decided against it and hid his gaze in my torn shirt. “Ask me again after I’ve told you.”
That finality from the previous night… it seemed it was still with him, maybe even heavier than before. I would give him time alone before attempting to raise his spirits.
I turned for the door, but his voice stopped me: “I’ll tell you soon.”
I didn’t know the best way to respond, so I simply nodded and headed out for my bath.
It was becoming a lot for me, to refrain from tackling him with love, to keep from wrenching the cork of his bottle loose. If he didn’t confide in me soon, I feared the damage I would cause by forcing him.
I didn’t know a lot about love before all this, but I had quickly come to know the difficulty of not being able to console an inconsolable heart.
While gathering greens for breakfast, I had pulled up some lavender and fae’s cradle—an herb exotic to the Crag used for calming the spirit. These mixed into an aromatic blend suitable for soaking. I washed off the days of travel, and when I was finished, I wrung out my rope of hair and returned to the others, who were now around the fire out front.
“Best not to stay too long,” Windley was saying. “We should take repose and depart tonight.”
Rafe made a grunt of agreement.
Had you been there, you may not have caught it. Rafe’s grunts all sounded the same to me at first too.
“I put extra herbs in the spring bath for you,” I told them as I approached, “assuming you want to bathe.” I looked between the dirtied boys. “You should bathe.”
Rafe went first, agreeing to sprinkle extra crow’s feathers atop the water to shield his scent.
“Aww, now I’m going to smell like him,” whined Windley. “And that wraith.”
Good, he seemed to be normal-ish again.
“Maybe if you smell like him you’ll begin to adopt his manners,” I said.
“The wraith?”
“Rafe.”
With a jester’s grin, Windley tossed me my shirt, now mended and folded neatly. I pulled it over my wet hair, and the strands retaliated by clinging to my neck and back.
“I hardly recognize you with that hair,” said Windley. “Not even a stick or branch in sight.”
“I’m a bit worried about it, to be honest,” I said looking down at the long ends. “Albie has my brush. It will be a disaster when it dries.”
“Come.” Windley patted the ground in front of him. “I’ll use my fingers.”
“R-really?”
Sure, it was normal for a guard or handmaid to comb a queen’s hair, but it was an act of nurturing, of serving. Windley wasn’t my guard; he was Beau’s; yet I had never seen him dote on Beau the way guards normally do. Before all of this, he never would have lowered himself like that for me, either.
Yet the way he looked at me now, as if he wanted nothing more, as if it was as much for him as it was for me…
“Let me take care of you, my queen.”
I nodded and left my head to the mercy of his hands, but where I expected unpracticed, clumsy fingers, I found that Windley knew what he was doing, pulling through my hair with the right amount of tension, detangling it from the bottom up.
“Windley, have you combed someone’s hair before?”
He didn’t answer.
I turned my neck to get a look at him. “Wind?”
“A long time ago,” he said quietly, eyes on the hazy horizon. “My keeper’s daughter.”
He had mentioned her once before.
‘My keeper’s daughter told it to me when I was young. It’s a common bedtime story in the south.’
“By keeper, do you mean Ascian?” The words came softly, carefully, knowing the weight they carried and the damage they could do.
He shook his head. “No, not Ascian. Ascian was my… my master.”
Just when I thought I was starting to put the pieces together.
There was hardly time to dwell on that, though. Sparked by something hidden in his mind, Windley released my hair and put his face in his hands like a person just delivered some grave news.
“Windley? What is it?”
“You.”
“Me!”
“Your confidence, Merr. It’s what’s holding me back. Though I’ve tried to warn you, you’re so certain your feelings won’t change. You’d think it would make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It makes it worse because it means a bigger blow when they do.”
I took his shoulders, delicate-like, as if he might shatter with too much force. “I can’t help having confidence, Wind. You talk of knowing a person’s spirit, and I understand it because I feel as though I know yours. I don’t see how that can change.”
When he didn’t respond:
“Windley, if you need more time—”
“No.” He looked up with cold determination. “After what you told me last night, I knew—I couldn’t let this go any further without telling you the truth. I’m telling you today.”
“What if you only told me pieces—only enough to prepare me for when we face Ascian?”
Equally cold, equally determined, he shook his head. “There’s no sense in that. You deserve to know who you’re with. I knew the second my memories returned that I would have to tell you. It’s the facing you part that’s hard. To see the look in your eyes afterwards.”
“What if you don’t have to face me?” I said, quiet.
He studied me for elaboration.
I meant what I had told him the previous night—the reasons why he had captured my heart.
I didn’t know where he had come from, but I knew the qualities of his soul, and because I knew him, I knew he didn’t need someone to fix him or absolve him, for he wasn’t broken, not really. He didn’t need a savior. He just needed someone to listen.
“We could put our backs together and you could tell me as much or as little as you like. Tell me whatever version you need to. Skew the truth if it helps. I’ll keep my frightening stare to myself until you’re ready to face it. Even if it takes days.”
Love.
That was love in his eyes as looked through his lashes at me.
Love in his fingertips as he took my cheek.
Love in his flesh as he pressed it warmly to my forehead.
“Fine,” he said. “Back-to-back. But I’ll tell you the truth, lion queen. You deserve no less.�
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Under a gray day, in a foggy field of blue flowers, devil and queen pressed our backs together.
And then he told me.
And I understood.
And the face I made after was indeed one of horror.
Be warned, captive ones, you may want to skip this next part.
Chapter 8
That Dark, Forgotten Past
Before we continue, I’ll have you know I’m sharing this with Windley’s permission. But only to you, captive ones, so please keep it to yourselves.
“Where to start?” Windley clicked his tongue. “The beginning, I guess. Way back.” He gave a reluctant, nervy sigh.
It’s okay, Wind.
I told him so inside because it was not my time to speak. Through all of this, it was extremely hard not to speak. I wrangled my tongue and held my ground as Windley started his tale:
“First off, I told you before that my race outgrew its predatorial nature long before I was born, right? Well, that’s only mostly true. Like with any group of people, there are good ones and bad ones, and it happens that I was unlucky enough to cross paths with some bad ones.”
Windley’s back was warm, the ground moist, and the stiller we sat, the more the fog laid siege to us, like it was trying to conceal Windley’s story from the rest of the world.
“My mum died of eternal cough when I was just a nipper, so my pop raised me alone in a city called Nor. Pop was a quiet bloke but a good guy, a painter. Landscapes mostly, but portraits for the right price. We didn’t have a lot, but we had enough.” He paused. “I don’t remember much of that time, though, because Pop perished in a fire when I was still pretty young.”
One of my more sensitive heartstrings was plucked.
That meant Windley grew up an orphan.
Like me.
“Where I lived, people were good at looking after the displaced, so I was sent to a boarding school in a neighboring town called Farrowel. I liked my time there, made friends with the other strays. Then, when I was around the age of twelve, a distant uncle came for me. I had never met him before, but he had paperwork enough to convince the headmaster. I didn’t know then, but he wasn’t really my uncle; I was just unfortunate enough to be the age he wanted.” Windley drew in a long breath. “That was Ascian.”
The age he wanted?
“To understand what he was after, I need to tell you about the south’s makeup. It’s humans, mostly, but there’s a decent number of Spirites too. And occasionally, you’ll get a Naiad—water folk; or a Seelie—folk with light in their veins. There are others that pass through from time to time, but they’re rare enough that you wouldn’t know what to call them—like what Rafe is.
“Back home, a Spirite’s power is known as ‘beguiling.’ It’s banned in public, but you’re allowed to use it within the confines of your own home; and the other races will pay good money for it. Most people want it for the novelty—the high of it. And some like a low dose to help with anxiety. There are others, though, that want something else out of it, like your pal, Queen batshit of the cursed Cove. You may be kidding when you call it my sex power, but…”
He shifted his weight against me.
“Keep in mind, the beguiling I’ve used on you is much more intense than what an average person would feel. That’s because you and I share fondness for each other. The energy flows more freely between us, so it’s easy for the beguiling to turn into carnal desire. There are some that seek those feelings and the impulses that arise from them.”
Carnal desire. It sounded a suitable name.
“A Spirite’s beguiling begins to manifest during puberty. Some are later, and some… well, Pip, he was an early bloomer. Ascian sought out strays like me and Pip that were beginning to manifest so that he could use us for two purposes. The first was to make money.”
I felt his posture slip forward as his voice grew more subdued.
“Though a Spirite’s power begins to manifest pretty young, that carnal desire bit doesn’t come until later. For the first few years, the most we can do is make people feel a bit floaty. Nothing… inappropriate. Humans don’t really know that, though, so most moral folk won’t touch a Spirite until they’re of age.” He swallowed. “But there are some people… really the worst of them, that… uh…”
Windley couldn’t voice it, and I didn’t want him to. And like a lantern illuminating a dark hallway, I was beginning to piece together the unsafe situations Windley had been put into as an adolescent.
“A-anyway, as you can imagine, beguiling those types can be dangerous. But those were the ones that would pay the most to be beguiled by someone underage, and Ascian made a killing off of me, Charm, and especially Pip. We learned how to look after ourselves and fend off the dangerous types, but we didn’t always get away so clean. The first time I took a life…”
Again, he couldn’t bring himself to finish. This time I was the one to shift against him, letting him know I was still with him.
“So a big piece of it was money. An even bigger piece, though, was power. Ascian was big into hexes. Still is, by the looks of it. He liked placing them on humans so that he could feed off of them whenever he wanted, slowly siphoning any magic hiding in their blood. I told you before, though, a hex isn’t like a spell. It continually plagues, so the one who casts it needs to give up that amount of magic until the hex runs its course. Ascian didn’t like that part of it; he wasn’t willing to sacrifice his own power for the sake of the hex. That’s where we came in.
“Ascian gave each of us a ring. According to him, they were set with stones mined from the First Cave, a place said to be the mouth of all life, where the first creatures emerged. Supposedly, these rings were crafted by our ancients, left over from a time when my race was still an enemy to yours. I don’t know how Ascian got his hands on them, but they allowed Charm, Pip and me to place hexes on people that permanently anchored our beguiling to them.”
Windley took his biggest pause yet. “This is it, Merrin. The worst part of all.” Again, he paused.
“It’s okay, Wind. I’m here. I’m not judging you.”
He made a long groan from the depths of his throat. “Ascian didn’t want to drink from the lifeforce of our regular customers—their spirits tended to be tainted and oily—so he would send us out to lure innocents—those with succulent, pure spirits—and when we found one, we’d draw them into a trance while secretly hexing the shit out of them. The rings from the First Cave are connected to Ascian, so if one of us places a hex, he reaps the benefit without losing any of his magic, allowing him to draw from them until their lifeforce is exhausted.”
Yet again, he paused.
“What I’m saying is that the victims we chose… were calves brought to slaughter. Without their knowledge, Ascian would slowly drain them, and there was no cure for it. They would just… dwindle while their families watched. I placed countless hexes for him over those years. I’m talking hundreds, Merr. And so did Pip and Charm. We…” His voice cracked. “We even had competitions to see who could bait the purest soul.”
This part was hardest to swallow because Windley was admitting to wickedness and murder, admitting to blood on his hands, admitting to abusing his power and preying upon the weak—all things that conflicted with my reign’s commitment to justice.
More than anything, though, this part was hardest to sit through because I could feel his grief and guilt against me, but I knew that if I addressed it, he would retreat, and once that cork was back in place, I doubted whether it would ever again release.
For now, it was best to let him finish.
“Ascian had other strays before us, and by the looks of it, at least one new one since I left. He’s stacked power upon power, and that’s what makes him so dangerous, Merr. He carries the power of everyone he’s had hexed. And after seeing your display of shadow magic, he undoubtedly wants to make you one of his pets, too. I wanted to send you back to camp with Rafe because I can’t stand the thought of him tasting you. Ther
e’s nothing worse I can think of than to let him have you.”
His voice broke, taking several minutes to repair.
It was all I could do to stay still and wait, but inside…
Inside, it was my greatest struggle.
At long last, he composed—“Almost done.”— and prepared to tell me the most horrifying part of all, the piece that turned my cheeks gray and forever fueled my vengeance against Windley’s oppressors.
“You asked about my keeper, lion queen.” He gave another of those choppy sighs. “Well, he was originally one of Ascian’s clients, a man of immense wealth, that took a particular liking to me. He wasn’t like our other patrons; he wasn’t content with beguiling or… any usual things… he was rough and mean, and he enjoyed giving pain.
“I was a headstrong little shit, and I got more than my share of lashings from Ascian when I disobeyed, but this was different. I…” His voice cracked. “Ascian saw the money to be made, and he sold me off to the man who would become my keeper. Those days were darkest. Once a week, I was allowed to return to the others, and I begged Ascian to remove me from that house, but I was at my limit with hexes—I couldn’t cast any more without breaking some—so money was all I was good for. When I tried to run away, they caught me. When I tried to stab the bastard, I failed. I might not have made it if not for…”
His tone turned soft as ash.
“My keeper had a daughter, and she was the first tender thing I knew in my time with Ascian. She bandaged me and told me stories. Made sure I had food and sleep. She’s the reason I even made it to the north. She was terrified of her father, but even so, she unlocked my chamber one night while he was sleeping, allowing me to escape.
“I ran like hell for days and days, hitched rides where I could. Once I made it to the other side of the forest, I revoked all my hexes, drank the elixir I stole from the house and never looked back… not even for Pip. Pip got picked up by Ascian shortly after I did. He was a good kid with a soft heart. He was like a brother to me, looked up to me, and I chose to forget him because I was too scared shitless to turn back for him!”
