by Eva Chase
“We’ll get through this,” August tells me, and steps away.
I haven’t even heard the sound of the front door, but my pulse stutters. As I circle the table, my heart keeps on beating at a nervous tempo.
The plan is that I’ll wait here standing by the corner of the table, next to my chair. Aerik and his cadre will get to see me standing solidly and then taking my seat without my having to do much actual walking before their eyes.
Of course, that depends on me keeping my head through my growing panic. I thought I was prepared for this moment, but now that it’s actually happening, my skin has turned clammy and the knot of my stomach is churning with queasiness.
Voices carry from the other end of the keep. The front door thuds shut. My spine goes rigid, and I have to take several breaths to relax it.
Why did I agree to do this? Why did I let myself believe I could handle seeing my former tormenters again? What if they take one look at me and see right through the magical disguise?
I close my eyes, willing down my bubbling panic. Sylas wouldn’t have agreed to this plan if he wasn’t sure he could keep me safe. As long as I don’t collapse in a trembling mess at the sight of them, it’ll all go smoothly.
If only that didn’t feel like such a tall order right now.
The voices travel down the hall, getting louder with their approach. I try to concentrate on Sylas’s measured baritone and Whitt’s jaunty interjections, but I can’t tune out the flat rasp that belongs to the man I now know as Aerik, the one who watched his cadre torment me with constant disdain, or the sharply nasal tenor of the equally sharp-limbed one with the blue-white hair.
Cole. Just the thought of his name turns my stomach all over again.
A bead of sweat trickles down the back of my neck. My fingers curl around the edge of the table until I force them to release it. August promised he’d come in before them. I’ll see August—I can focus on him and pretend the others aren’t even here.
Yeah, right.
It’s actually Sylas who strides into the dining room first, looking downright regal in his embroidered vest over a stiff-collared dress shirt. He stops just inside the doorway to conduct the others in, the confidence in his bearing reinforcing my own. Then August hustles past him. He flashes me a smile and comes around to stand beside me just as the visitors enter.
I can’t stop my gaze from jerking straight to Aerik’s face, topped with that daffodil yellow hair. A hint of a sneer is already playing with his lips, and it hardens at the sight of me.
My heart thumps even faster, a wave of dizziness surging through me from gut to forehead. Everything blanks from my mind but the memory of him looming over me while I crouched, aching and grimy, in his horrible cage—
Strong fingers close around my hand where it’s fisted beneath the level of the table, holding me tight. August’s arm rests against mine from wrist to shoulder. My thoughts tilt and scramble, and I grip his hand just as tightly, yanking my awareness back to the present. Back to the men who’ve sworn to defend me, who I know would enjoy nothing more than to rip the throats from the villains they’ve admitted into their home if they could get away with that retribution now.
Sylas’s voice reaches my ears as if from much farther away than the other side of the room. “This is Talia, a recent… acquisition of August’s. He’s rather attached to her at the moment. I assure you she won’t disturb our conversation.”
My former captors never asked my name or used it, so as far as we know they can’t connect it to the girl they stole. I stare at August’s muscular chest in its fine shirt for long enough to get a grip on my nerves and then dare another glance toward our enemies.
All three of them have entered now. Cole and the portly fae man who always did the cutting and collecting when they took my blood flank their lord. I manage to keep all of my attention on Aerik, to avoid the even more vicious jolts of terror I suspect the others’ faces would provoke. His nose has wrinkled, his sneer still in place, as if I’m a dog turd someone has left on the dining table.
For all his apparent disgust, I catch no sign of recognition in his expression. With a shiver of relief, I force my mouth into the briefest of smiles and then look to August again.
My lover slings his arm around my shoulders just for a second, with a broad grin I know is as forced as my smile was. “She’s a shy thing. Wouldn’t speak to anyone but me for the first week. I don’t like to leave her alone for very long.”
Aerik lets out a huff as if this kind of deviance is only to be expected from a cadre like Sylas’s and moves at the other lord’s gesture to his spot across from August. “I’m sure we’ll find her of no significance.”
From the corner of my eye, I think I see Cole’s piercing gaze trained on me. Thankfully, Sylas directs him around the table to sit beside August, where he can’t study me very easily. He still gets in a snarky remark: “Doing her hair up like that won’t make her any closer to fae.”
August gives a laugh that only sounds a little stiff, still gripping my hand. “Oh, I wasn’t the one who chose this color. She had her own ideas of fashion well before I found her.”
The fae avoid lying as much as they can—Sylas explained to me that it damages their connection to the Heart of the Mists, which gives them their magical power—but August is purposefully making it sound as if I’d already dyed my hair when he met me without saying anything untrue. If Aerik believes August really did grab me from the human world just a little while ago, he’ll be even less inclined to connect me to his missing blood dispenser.
August tugs me gently to sit down as he does, and it’s only as I sink into my chair that I recognize how wobbly my legs are, how rigidly I’ve been tensing the muscles in my calves to keep myself from visibly swaying. The second my ass hits the wooden seat, those muscles turn to jelly. I stare down at my blurred reflection in the silver plate, wondering how I’m going to manage to swallow any of the lovely food the pack has prepared.
Even as I think that, the kitchen helpers glide into the room carrying platters with the first course of appetizers. Aerik views them with only slightly less disdain than he showed me, and some small part of me that isn’t frozen with fear bristles on behalf of Sylas’s—of my—pack-kin.
“I haven’t scented any other humans around,” he says to Sylas. “I heard you preferred to keep your domain clear of them.”
“Not due to any aversion,” Sylas says. “My other cadre-chosen, Kellan, has a particular animosity toward them that it’s been best for all of us not to provoke.”
“But you’re changing your tune for the young one? Where is Kellan?”
Another treacherous subject the men of the keep will need to tread lightly around. Sylas can’t easily explain why he had to end Kellan’s life. I stare at the fried dumpling and fresh-picked salad that August sets to my plate rather than risk watching the conversation play out. My heart is pounding so loudly it’s a wonder it isn’t deafening me.
Sylas spears a few sprigs of greens with casual ease. “He departed a few weeks ago by my decision. He had many concerns about how we’ve been handling our affairs and wanted to investigate other options. I don’t expect to see him back any time soon, and on such a return, if the girl is still with us, at least she’ll have had a chance to settle in.”
If we count his death as a metaphorical departure, it’s all true. Kellan did have concerns; if he did somehow return, I’m quite settled in now. The smoothness with which the fae lord disarms his enemy’s curiosity soothes my nerves enough that I bring the dumpling to my mouth. If I don’t eat at all, they’ll wonder why.
The other lord appears to buy the story, but he isn’t done prodding. “She’s still the only human you’re keeping here, then?”
At least he doesn’t seem to think I’m the specific human he’s searching for.
Sylas nods. “For the time being. I promised August a trial run after he made his case. If that goes well, we could consider bringing over a few servants to help
with the running of the keep.”
Cutter grunts. “It does seem as though your pack is stretched thin enough, sparse as it’s become.”
Sylas doesn’t let the mild jab affect his poise—or even acknowledge the words. He keeps his gaze on Aerik. “Are you looking for more humans to add to your own staff?” he asks in a slightly wry tone that implies he finds it odd that the other lord is so fixated on his dealings with mortals.
Aerik’s shrug doesn’t look remotely casual. “I have no issue with quantity of manpower,” he says, which feels to me like another subtle sneer at Oakmeet’s pack. But then, to my immense relief, he drops the subject of humankind completely, as if he’s already convinced he was barking up the wrong tree by suspecting Sylas.
“The Unseelie bastards have stooped to new lows, haven’t they?” he says in a tone that suggests the outcome of those battles affect him very little anyway, and the men all fall into a discussion of the ongoing conflict.
I want to pay attention to the threads of that discussion, to better understand the tensions Whitt sketched out for me, but it’s hard to keep my thoughts in order. Every minute or two, one of my former captives snaps out a comment, makes some gesture, or rasps out a laugh that yanks me back weeks ago to the bone-white room where they set up my cage. The spurts of panic hit without warning, blanking my mind and clamping around my lungs, over and over.
So I look at my plate or at August, still gripping his fingers without any complaint from him even though he wouldn’t normally eat left-handed, and pick at my dinner bit by bit. By the time the kitchen staff takes away our plates in preparation for dessert, not even the honeyed notes drifting through the air can soothe my frayed spirits. I’m so exhausted I’d lay my head down on the table if these guests weren’t here.
August brushes a reassuring caress over my knuckles. All I had to do to claim victory was survive this meal, and I’ve just about managed that. To achieve anything else was probably asking too much of my shaken nerves, stripped raw all over again in the presence of these monstrous men.
Aerik leans his elbows onto the table and considers Sylas with a more penetrating expression than before. “I’ve appreciated the food and the talk, but let’s not beat around the bush any longer. You must have had some particular reason for inviting me to enjoy your pack’s hospitality.”
My pulse hiccups, but Sylas offers a reserved smile, as if he expected that question. Well, he probably did.
“Tensions have been high throughout the summer lands in recent weeks,” he says. “I’d rather mend bridges than burn them down. It was important to me to show you that we hold no animosity over past… oversights.”
Snubbing them when distributing the tonic, he means, as Aerik can obviously tell from the distasteful curling of his lips. “We had to make our choices as we saw fit,” he says, as if they couldn’t have stolen a tiny bit more of my blood each full moon to produce a slightly larger batch of tonic. “And I did have to consider how any favoritism toward your domain might look to the arch-lords, after they consigned you to this distant spot.”
Whitt leans back in his chair. “After all these years, I’d imagine the arch-lords have seen they have no reason for concern when it comes to our loyalties.”
Cole lets out a harsh guffaw that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. “Arch-Lord Ambrose and Lord Tristan don’t exactly speak highly of the bunch of you still.”
Aerik’s gaze flicks to Whitt for only a moment before returning to Sylas. “When you make a misstep that grave, it’s a wonder anyone bothers to remember you’re here at all, unless they happened to take a mind to wipe the realm of your pack completely.”
He speaks with an odd lightness, as if he means the cruel words as some kind of joke, but I can taste the acid underneath. His disparaging tone takes me from cringing to bristling on Sylas’s behalf.
“If the arch-lords felt our crimes were severe enough to warrant that level of sanction, I’m sure they would have carried it out in the beginning,” Sylas says evenly, with just a hint of a growl as the softest of warnings.
“No doubt it’s convenient to view circumstances as you do when one is out to scrape up whatever favor they can from crumbs dropped for them,” Whitt adds.
Aerik glowers at him for longer than his previous glance before cutting his gaze to Sylas once more. “I trust no one in your pack resents our making use of what resources we had at our disposal to raise our standing. It would have been ridiculous not to share that boon and reap the benefits.”
The boon of my blood. “Reap the benefits,” he says—how much prestige did these monsters gain from using me, tormenting me, while Sylas’s pack languishes so far from their real home? And this jerk thinks that’s something to be proud of, something he earned, when it was nothing more than a bit of horrible luck that he stumbled on me?
Real anger stirs somewhere in between the tightness in my chest and the knot of my stomach. The thought that any part of me helped these awful fae win glory makes me want to vomit—and to punch that smug expression right off Aerik’s face.
He’s nowhere near the leader Sylas is. If anyone should have been banished, it’s him and his people. But no, here they are expecting some kind of red carpet to be rolled out for them while they mock my pack’s hardships.
My free hand balls into a fist where it’s resting by my thigh. I bite my tongue. There’s nothing I could say even if I dared to open my mouth that wouldn’t make things worse for the men I care about.
“Certainly I wouldn’t have expected anything different of you,” Sylas says to Aerik in an inscrutable voice, and then the kitchen workers arrive with glistening pastries topped with dollops of peach-colored cream, and the men all have something other than talking to do with their mouths for a little while.
As I pick at the dessert, my anger simmers inside me, gaining vigor by the second. By the time I’ve choked down as much as I’m capable of, delicious as the treat is, the furious energy thrums through me so strongly that I almost believe I could walk without a single hitch the whole length of the keep if I needed to.
And maybe I will need to, because the careful way Aerik is eyeing the kitchen helpers suggests his suspicions aren’t entirely put to rest. He licks the last of the cream off his fork and says offhandedly, “You built this place from the ground up, didn’t you? I wouldn’t mind having a look around.”
Not even asking for a tour, just expecting Sylas to leap to offer one. More indignation sparks inside me—and then Cole leans his knobby elbows on the table, his slim form tipping unavoidably into my view. His mouth curves into the vicious smirk that always came before he’d ram me into the cage floor.
“Yes, let’s see what you’ve made of your crumbs,” he says, and thumps one elbow on the table hard enough to rattle his plate.
Like the rattle of the bars as he’d clamber into the cage after me. The smack of his elbow as he’d pin me down. The sound reverberates through my back with an ache between my ribs as if he’s bruised me there all over again, and a silent wail of horror snuffs out the power of my anger in an instant.
A tremor runs through my limbs before I can stiffen against it. August’s hand clamps firmly around mine. I drag air through thinly parted lips, grappling desperately to fill my terror-clenched lungs without outright hyperventilating so the visitors won’t notice my reaction, but the dinner has worn me out so much, the control I’ve been holding onto has unraveled—
August stands, offering a respectful bob of his head to the guests even as he scoops me out of my chair. My body settles against his solid chest, his warmth washes over me, and his scent floods my lungs. With my face tipped out of sight against his shirt, I gulp just enough breath to keep from suffocating.
“I’ll join you for that tour once I’ve tucked this one away where she belongs,” he says, putting on a cheerful front. “It’ll be easier without her underfoot.”
He must give a convincing enough performance, because the only response I hear is Aerik’s chu
ckle followed by, “Yes, and I’m sure you’ll want her well-rested for later.”
“Don’t be long,” Sylas tells him with an impression of exasperation, as if to say this is all youthful folly, and then August is marching out of the room with me in his arms, leaving my former tormenters behind.
He ducks his head close to mine the moment we reach the hall, and the tension gripping my muscles starts to unwind. I’m abruptly aware of my bare feet dangling beyond his arm—they’d have been in plain view of all three of those monstrous fae men—but maybe that’s a good thing. They didn’t spring up with accusations of theft, so the glamour must have fooled them. August provided them with one more reason to believe I’m just a regular, random human girl.
We’re halfway up the stairs before he risks speaking, in the quietest of undertones. “You were amazing, Sweetness. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been. Be proud of yourself.”
Unexpected tears prickle my eyes, driven by a swell of affection that chokes me up. I curl my fingers into his shirt and nestle even more closely into his embrace, utterly protected. But at the same time, the jeering words of our enemies flit back through my head. The anger they stoked flares again, spreading with a steady burning through my abdomen.
No one will ever use me like Aerik did again. I get to decide who I’m a “boon” to from here on. And I’ll do everything in my power to see that Sylas, his cadre, and the rest of the pack return to the home they deserve with their reputations restored so well the fae like Aerik won’t dare insult them ever again.
Chapter Ten
Sylas
As I walk into the kitchen, I’m struck again by the shift in energy between August and our shared lover. There’s a synchronicity to their stances, their expressions, as they exchange smiles and remarks over the lunch preparations. When I first noticed it a few days ago, I caught a whiff of their mingled scents as well, undeniably intertwined. Something happened between them that day other than training and sparring.
