“See?” I say, turning back to Brennur. “Muchmore humane. Now, let’s get back to it. What happened to the other children that night?”
When he doesn’t answer immediately, more gold ripples and pours up his arms. It hardens past his elbows, reaching up to his shoulders. “Wait!” he cries as his body jerks awkwardly, half sitting on the chair, half yanked from it. “You think the soldiers who get sent in for a mission like Bryol have the best character?” he shouts. “The ones sent were chosen because they’re the most vicious during a raid, and they don’t do so out of duty. Theyenjoyit. Pillaging, killing, kidnapping…they know how to get more coin from it. Raids are lucrative if you’re brutal enough.”
I pull back a few inches of gold. “Keep going.”
Panting, he tries to catch his anxious breath, though I can see he’s slightly relieved that I’ve stayed true to my word. “They offered me half if I helped smuggle a group of kids out. They were going to sell them to someone up the coast. I don’t know who. But then we realized we hadyou.”
My stomach twists.
“Couldn’t risk selling you. You’re too recognizable. Anyone in Annwyn could figure out who you were.”
“And the king?”
“Wanted you dead, of course,” he answers. “The whole family.”
I drag away the magic another inch, even as I start to shake with mounting rage.
“That would have been a problem for you and your group,” I muse as the pieces come together. “And selling the rest of the children wasn’t enough. You still wanted to make coin off me, but you knew you couldn’t do it in Annwyn.”
He nods. “I had contacts in Orea.”
My gaze hardens. “Of course you did.”
His lips stiffen before he lets out a cough, hacking at a scrape in his throat. “I had to make a living. Once the bridge was destroyed, smuggling things in using the fairy ring brought in a lot of coin. Buyers in Orea would pay well for fae goods, and vice versa.”
Fury fires my heated words. “Not just goods. People.Children.”
But he shakes his head. “No, I hadn’t ever dealt with flesh traders beforeorafter you,” he says, as if that absolves him of his guilt. “You were the only one I ever took to Orea.”
“How magnanimous,” I say flatly.
“Connecting a ring within Annwyn is one thing. Connecting it to an entirely different realm takes far more power. That magic left me crippled for days. I used it sparingly.” He tips his head to gesture at his arms, and I grudgingly pull away more gold. It’s below his elbows now, but his released skin is discolored from where the metal pinched.
“I saved your life,” he repeats again. “Once the soldiers realized they weren’t going to be able to get anything for you, they were ready to just kill you like the king wanted. So I told them I’d end you. They took off with the other kids, and I made a ring and smuggled you into Orea instead.”
My voice seethes. “You didn’t take me there to save me. You took me there tosellme.”
“Better sold than dead.”
I laugh coldly, thinking of my childhood in Derfort Harbor. Thinking of what I endured. For him to say that, with his tone so horribly benign, makes me want him to suffer.
Behind him, Slade ripples with rage.
“So you sold me to Orean flesh traders,” I say evenly. “Then what?”
“The king was quietly informed that you and your family were dead just like he wanted,” he says with a shrug. “So when it was rumored that you’d returned…he was looking to point fingers.”
The gold slips down to the middle of his forearms.
“But that finger didn’t land on you?”
“Of course not,” Brennur replies, actually having the audacity to look offended. “I made sure nothing could come back on me.”
Every single one of his confessions makes impact. His words rupture me from within, sending shards flying, dust spraying.
Kidnapped for coin. I was taken away from everything I knew. Ripped from safety. Abused, used, destroyed. All forcoin.
How cheap it makes me feel. How utterly devastating that someone decided what my life was worth.
