by D. N. Hoxa
As she should, a voice in my head whispered, a voice that sounded exactly like my father’s.
Yes, as she should. Because ultimately, I would be the monster who killed her.
Until then, I tried not to let the guilt keep me from sleep when I lay down on the cold sheets. The cold for me was life. It was energy. It was peace.
For now, it comforted me. Tomorrow was another day.
Chapter 9
Elo
Talking to myself no longer felt like an act of madness. Now, I knew that somebody was listening. I told the Shade stories of the elflands, of my people, of my parents. Of the war. I was connected to it on a level I didn’t even know existed. It was like my magic was the Shade’s magic and vice versa. We were almost the same being. So, I gave magic to the stone floor every now and then while I spoke, just a small charge of energy. The Shade needed it to live. I wouldn’t for much longer.
The food I’d found next to my head in the morning had still been warm when I woke up. I’d been alone. I hadn’t heard the fae prince come in or leave, but when I woke up with sunrise, he wasn’t there. And I was still warm.
He didn’t come back until the sun was high up in the sky, and when he did, he found me looking outside at the forest and the mountains. I didn’t turn, didn’t need to look at him at all. Whatever he was here for wasn’t my concern—even if it was to take my life.
Which I was beginning to believe was never going to happen, as sad as that made me.
But the prince did have something that concerned me, apparently. He had clothes.
When he stopped next to me in front of the window, he put two folded fabrics over the stool by my hands. One of them was made of white wool, the other of dark brown fur, similar to that of a bear.
“You’re not going to take a bath, are you?” he asked the question like he already knew the answer. “Put the clothes on,” he ordered next. I turned to him, locking away the surprise and the desperation deep within me. Just now, so close to the sunlight, his eyes didn’t look as black as before. They had color in them—a bit of brown. They had a bit of life. “Or are they not to your taste?” The mock in his voice brought shivers down my back.
What kind of a beast hid behind that perfect facade? What was he trying to accomplish by bringing me food and clothes? Did he really think that I would allow myself to get comfortable here, in his room, chained to this wall?
The food I did need.
The clothes? Not anymore.
So, I took them in my hands, and I threw them out the window.
I don’t know why, but as I leaned out the window to see them falling, I smiled. It was an act of rebellion, however small. I might have been at his mercy, but all he owned was my life—not my trust or kindness or loyalty.
My throwing his generous gift away should have made the fae angry. I expected it—a slap, a fist, anything other than laughter, but that’s all I got.
He laughed his heart out, and the sound echoed in the high ceiling. It was a beautiful echo.
“Pray you don’t get cold again,” he said before he turned around and went to his wardrobe. It was his promise that that was the last time he was giving me clothes. Good. I didn’t need clothes from him.
But when I heard the sound of his armor as he put it on, it was impossible not to look. He put every plate over his body like he’d done it a million times before, and when he saw me looking, his eyes never left my face. He knew every strap by memory, and he never flinched, even when he reached behind his back to strap in the chest and shoulder plates. He just watched me while his hands worked.
I don’t know why he made me so curious. I had seen battles from afar before. I’d seen body pieces of fae when my people brought them back as testimony of their victories. What was it about this particular man that intrigued me so much?
Was it the intensity of his pain? Or was it because he hadn’t killed me yet? Or beat me, tortured me—even raped me?
“Tell me your name,” he said when his armor was in place, and he tied the sheath of his sword around his hips. “What is it? What do they call you?”
For a second there, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to speak out my name. I knew his. It was only fair that he knew mine.
But fair had no place here, in this room. So, I kept my mouth shut and continued to watch him, even when he smiled like he was being challenged—and he liked it. I didn’t want to challenge him. I just wanted him to do what we both knew he was going to do eventually.
For now, though, all he did was turn around and leave the room.
Only after he left did I realize what it all meant. He’d worn his armor. He was going to fight today.
How many elves was he going to kill before he dipped his hands into my blood?
The thought followed me for the rest of the day.
My body must have consumed all the food I’d eaten in the morning. By nightfall, I was weak again, but the warmth was still there. Even the wind that blew through the windows over my head was warm. It hadn’t been the day before. That’s how I knew that it wasn’t natural.
Every once in a while, I looked up at the ceiling, hoping to find Hiss wrapped around a pillar, watching me. I missed him because he talked back to me. The Shade didn’t, even though I was sure it was listening to my every word.
I was in the middle of telling it the story of when I was a girl, five or six years old, and I first saw my father coming back from battle, barely holding himself together on his horse. There had been blood all over his golden armor, and his eyes had been only half open. I had read about war before, heard the stories, but had never seen a battle with my own eyes. I hadn’t seen what it could do to a man. Until then, tales of blood and gore had been just that—tales. But from that day on, they became real. From that day on, when I nearly lost my father for the first time, I hated the war exactly as I should have hated the fae.
The story was almost coming to an end when I heard the footsteps. The panicked shouts.
My heart trembled. My instincts said to stand up, be prepared for whatever was coming—a lot of heavy footsteps, growing louder and louder each second. They were coming in my direction, and I needed to protect myself.
Then I remembered that I didn’t need to move. I was already chained to a wall.
The door burst open, and I held onto my dress for dear life. Had the other fae finally come for me because the prince refused to kill me?
The pain hit me first. There was so much of it, and it was physical. It signaled my magic much faster than the emotional, and I felt all of it as if every wound was on my body. Gritting my teeth, I wrapped my arms around my knees and pushed the pain back with my magic as far as possible so I could see.
The fae prince, his arms around the shoulders of two other fae—both soldiers. His eyes were closed, his head down. He wasn’t conscious, yet the pain in him was alive and breathing like a living thing. The men holding him barely managed to lay him on his bed before they began to take off his armor.
Four other men in the room, and a woman. She had a bowl in her hand and towels over her shoulders, and she waited behind the men who were undressing the prince.
“Not so hard!” one of them who’d carried the prince said. His tall, slim body held half the amount of pain. “Careful, watch the arm!”
“I’m trying!” said the other, whose hair had a reddish hue I had never seen before. Most elves had white hair, sometimes dark blonde. Never red. It was like someone had shaved a fox and attached the fur to his head. Unnatural to my eyes.
I focused on them, on what they were wearing, their armors. I focused on their weapons. I focused on the woman with the bowl and the towels, waiting patiently, a curious look on her face as she watched me. Her beautiful golden hair was tied in a thick braid over her shoulder, not unlike how I wore mine back home. Her grey dress covered her to the ankles and her apron was stained in several places, yet it still looked clean. Her dark eyes analyzed every inch of me while I did the same.
Anything but to feel the pain of the fae prince and that of the other four soldiers. Anything but to feel afraid for the prince’s life.
It was not my right. Whether he lived or died was not my concern.
Yet when I heard his moan, it was all I could do not to jump to my feet to see his face. To heal him, take all his pain away. My eyes closed and I kept them closed as the prince moaned and his men talked to him, and the woman wiped his skin with her towels.
It is not my concern. I wouldn’t heal the prince or any of these men. Their pain was not mine to take.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel it.
A body was like an instrument to my magic. The pain inside it, especially physical, was like a beacon, shooting waves around itself to signal to me where it was, what was around it, what it was affecting.
If I wanted to, I could release my magic into those beacons to suck out their lights and their waves and mend bone, organ, muscle, tissue, veins—everything it touched.
If I wanted to, I could release my magic into those beacons to destroy. It saved lives just as easily as it took them. Any living body was completely at my magic’s mercy.
To control it was hard at times, impossible at others. Like now, when there was this much pain around me. I couldn’t block it out. I couldn’t shut my senses to it. I felt every ounce of it, and it nearly drove me mad. I couldn’t think of anything else except it.
So, when a cold, rough hand touched my face, I was shocked because I hadn’t heard anyone approaching me.
My eyes popped open, and I saw the face of the man with the reddish hair. He was right in front of me, a sick smile on his face, his small black eyes gleaming with evil. He wrapped his hand around my chin and turned my face to the side.
“There she is,” he whispered. “The elf whore.”
I used all my strength to push his hand off me, and it almost wasn’t enough. I knew how to fight, but my body was weak. I hadn’t eaten properly in days. Until the night before, I’d been constantly freezing. I’d let out so much magic to the Shade all day, too.
“Can’t wait to get a taste of you,” the fae said, and the prince moaned again from his bed. The wound that was causing him all this pain, that wouldn’t let him wake up, was right in his stomach. Whatever he’d been attacked with, there were pieces of it inside him, and they wouldn’t allow him to heal. His soldiers and the woman were trying to get them out, causing him even more pain as they did.
But the moan distracted me. I didn’t see it when the redheaded fae grabbed my hands in one of his and wrapped his fingers around my chin once more. His tongue slid up my cheek, making my stomach turn, making my magic very angry. It searched his body, the small wounds on his arms and legs that would heal by morning, and it wanted to destroy him completely through them.
“Chastin!” a man called, and the fae let go of my face, jumping to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing?”
It was the other fae, the tall and slim one, throwing daggers at the redhead with his eyes.
“Just a taste, that’s all,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he threw me another look. And a smile that made me feel lucky he wasn’t the commander. The things he would have done to me…
“Get the fuck back here and help us,” the other fae said, and he did look at me, but there was no malice in his eyes. No lust.
Just pure, raw disgust.
And the soldiers did help the prince. By the time the woman left the room, all four of her towels were now in her bowl after she’d cleaned off all the blood and dirt she could from the prince’s skin. Minutes later, the tall fae put a blanket over him and put the armor they’d taken off him on the desk on the side of the room.
Once more, he looked at me with so much contempt, it was like a physical attack. That’s what I’d expected from a fae. That’s what I’d expected from the prince, too.
Only now did I realize that he’d never given me that look before. Almost like he didn’t hate me for existing.
The tall fae looked at my chain next, as if to make sure that it was still intact. The other three men kept staring at me, smiles on their faces, the kind that repulsed me. The redhead pulled out his tongue at me, then winked, as if the reminder of him licking my cheek was a good one for me.
I watched them, too, unable to look away until the tall fae reached them, practically pushed them out, then closed the door.
Silence.
For once, I was so thankful for it. My heart hammered in my chest and all my senses were focused on the prince, while my mind insisted on replaying every dirty look those other fae had given me. Even the woman. She hated me, too. A shame. She was too beautiful to feel so much hate.
I held on to the wall and stood up, slowly, afraid to make a single sound. I just needed to see the prince, even though I knew he was alive. He wasn’t even moaning anymore, but the pain was still there.
His eyes were closed, his face twisted, his hands fisting the blanket his soldier had put over him. His skin glistened, still covered in blood and dirt in some places. He was feverish. Whatever poison he’d been infected with, his body would heal him of it by morning.
He was going to be okay.
I don’t know why that mattered, but it eased the fear that had gripped my heart. If he died, what would happen to me? Because I already knew what his soldiers would do. It had been very obvious.
And if they tortured me, tried to rape me, what would I do? Would I take it, or would I try to fight back?
For the first time since I’d woken up in this room, I felt a tingling of hope that I might do the latter.
Chapter 10
It was too much. I couldn’t take it.
It ate at me, consumed my every cell, every thought in my mind. It breathed fire down my throat, worse than the poison that had knocked me out before I found myself a fae slave.
I raised my head, so angry, so desperate I wanted to cry. But the tears didn’t come. The stone floor was warm all around me. My cheeks were flushed. The Shade didn’t let a single breath of cold wind reach my skin. I was thankful for it, but I couldn’t ask it to stop what was going on in my chest, in my head.
Because the Shade couldn’t do anything about that. Only I could.
It drove me mad. The black of the sky had begun to turn grey to the east. The sun was preparing to come out to this side of the world, and if I waited until it did, I was going to jump out the window.
It was inevitable. I was going to heal that fae, take his pain before it took my sanity.
But before I could do that, I heard footsteps. I pressed my cheek to the stone floor again and held my breath. The tall fae had come in three times, all night, to check on the prince. The way his pain amplified when he looked at him told me that he wasn’t just the prince’s soldier. He was a friend. He cared for the prince.
His visits didn’t last more than a couple of minutes, but this time, those minutes felt like hours to me. Now that I’d decided I was going to do it, my magic was even more impatient. I heard the fae’s footsteps as he approached me, just like he had the other three times, but he didn’t touch me. He didn’t spit on me or call me names or say anything. I only imagined him looking at the chain to make sure it was still locked.
Then, he left.
Common sense said to wait for a bit, to make sure that fae wasn’t coming back. It was a possibility, but my magic wouldn’t hear it. It set my body on fire, and it didn’t stop, even when I undid the lock and made my way to the bed of the prince.
He was still glistening with sweat. Even the air around him was warmer than in the rest of the room—except for my place by the windows. I’d forgotten just how cold it could be when the Shade wasn't giving me its warmth, and within seconds, my teeth were chattering again, my whole body shaking. That wouldn’t stop my magic, though.
I tried not to feel fear or panic as I looked at the fae. I went closer to see his face, every line of it filled with pain, even in his sleep. I reached out my ha
nds over his chest, an inch away from his sweaty skin. I let my magic out, and my lips opened to let out a cry. I held it back by some miracle. It had been so eager to get out, to get a taste of that pain, to consume it until there was no more left.
And that’s what it did.
There was more of it than I thought there would be. There were still two pieces of metal inside his stomach, and they had to come out, pushed by my magic, before the damage could be mended. My knees shook, but it had nothing to do with the cold this time. I’d used my magic a lot today, and I was in no physical condition to withstand that kind of energy loss.
But soon, it ended.
The prince turned his head from one side to the other. His lips moved, and he sometimes whispered words I couldn’t make out. He moaned and he grunted, but when my magic was done fixing him, he let out a long sigh. His face was no longer twisted in pain.
He was healed.
Now, all he needed was rest.
Now, I was going to get my rest, too. My magic was full of pain, and it wasn’t going to need more for a while.
But before I went back to my place, I saw the two tiny pieces of metal, now over the skin of the prince’s stomach, red with his blood. I don’t know why I reached for one, but curiosity got the best of me. I grabbed the biggest piece, a quarter of an inch wide, and the second my fingers touched it, I knew what it was.
Heivar armory. My House’s work.
I was so consumed by it, wondering how it had happened. How had a Heivar metal broken into so many tiny pieces inside his body? That was only possible with one thing: magic. And the majority of elves didn’t have magic.
But my distraction, once more, cost me. I didn’t see the hand until it wrapped around my wrist, shaking the piece of metal off my fingertip and onto the floor.
My heart all but stopped beating. My magic roared inside me when I looked up at the fae prince and found his eyes open, staring right at me.
