Myrtle’s face softens immediately, and she takes my hand, squeezing my fingers. “Yet another reason for you to sign up for the Trials. I heard some important Fae have arrived with the caravan—”
I lock my jaw, realizing that my decision has been made. “I am leaving, Myrtle.”
Enough of this. I push my chair back and head to the door. Exhaustion is already dulling my senses, but I cannot risk being discovered here.
“May your night be short.”
She opens her mouth to say something when mayhem erupts, and our little world comes crashing down.
Talysse
The Governor
The rough floor planks scrape painfully against my face, and hard knees dig into my back, pinning me down while my arms are twisted backward. Stebian’s piercing falsetto slices through the night. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy—”
Crashing objects and overturned furniture signal Myrtle’s fierce struggle. “Leave my child alone, you monsters!”
A cold male voice cuts through the chaos, “You’re all coming with us, by order of Magister Deepwell!”
Steps of steel-plated boots thunder in the tiny room. I catch a glimpse of Stebian, kicking and writhing as an older guard hauls him out. Two others wrestle down a hysterical Myrtle.
“Chain the mage with warded shackles, quickly!” The brute’s order fills the room. More hands grab me, and a gauntlet swings at my face. Pain explodes in my temple, and everything goes black.
*
Just like any other night, the nightmare swallows the reality around me, dragging me into the suffocating, agonizing, immersive experience of the most dreadful day of my life.
“For harboring Seelie Fae refugees, a crime and treason against the crown, Governor Aeidas sentences you to hang.” The words of the Unseelie clerk hang in the hot air at Gallows Hills. Public executions usually draw a large crowd, but not on that summer day.
A two-wheel cart is parked behind the gallows, and bloodied blonde locks hang through the gaps between the planks. Some dark liquid trickles from its bottom. I recognize these locks—the Seelie they have found hiding in our barn. Dead and ready to be carted off into the mass grave behind the gallows.
It’s over fast, and I start crying again because I’ve missed the final moment of my parents while trying to guess what gruesome death has befallen the Seelie.
Their feet dangle unnaturally at the height of my eyes. Mother’s golden brocade slipper is lost somewhere, and her left foot is dirty and bloodied, the hem of her pearl studded gown covered in mud. I remember that dress—my father brought it for her from his last trip to the East, and she clapped her hands in joy and gave him a loud kiss on the forehead. Father’s polished riding boots hang behind the shiny armor of the Unseelie soldiers, lined before the gallows.
“Child, you should not see this,” someone says with empathy. I open my mouth and close it, unable to form words, unable to scream anymore. How to explain to my four-year-old sister that she will never see Mommy again? That our house is torn inside out, most of our possessions burned, and we’re never to set foot in our home anymore?
I wake up gasping for air, choking a scream, struggling to put in words something elusive and incredibly painful, but just like any other night, I simply can’t.
And what would that change?
Would it give me back the years in the orphanage and living on the streets?
Would it erase the memory of Tayna being assessed and prodded like cattle, her sleazy adoptive parents feeling her joints, checking her teeth, and making her sing before leaving with her? Her screams and pleas when she realized I was not coming with her?
That day at the Gallows Hills changed everything and I just stood there, numb, unable to do anything. Seeing it in my dreams is my punishment.
I slowly shake off the nightmare. Where am I?
Something sticky clings to my eyelids, making it hard to open them. A headache of cataclysmic proportions blooms inside my skull like a bloody, fiery flower. I finally manage to crack an eye open. Humid, stale air floods my senses, triggering a coughing fit. Sprawled on a cold, wet floor, uneven stones cut into my flesh. A lone wall sconce struggles to pierce the darkness, and the solid metal bars confirm my suspicion—they’ve dragged me to the city’s dungeon. Muffled moans and whispers echo from the darkness beyond the narrow cell.
I wonder if the rumors are true—that they are keeping people infected with the Taint to observe the stages they go through before they completely lose their humanity and become blood-thirsty, brainless beasts, craving the flesh of every living being. Rumor has it that Magister Deepwell’s family was Tainted, and he keeps them locked in the dungeons, as he couldn’t bring himself to grant them a merciful death.
“First, the infection taints the eyes—all parts of them gradually darken in the first hours after the bite or scratch of a Tainted or a touch of a Shadowfeeder. The blood and the life juices of the freshly Tainted turn black, and their skin and hair—pale, while their nails and teeth grow unnaturally, and their bones expand in unseen ways. When their transformation is complete, there is nothing even remotely human to them, and they are not able to recognize even their loved ones. They roam the Wastelands thirsting for flesh…” Friar Ben was telling us in his class and his words gave us all nightmares for weeks.
A shrill shriek pierces me to the marrow, and I sit up, rattling the chains around my wrists.
This was no human voice.
