I keep seeing the cages, row after row of them, filled with the stench of excrement and urine. I see the male whose spine showed through his skin, the female bent into a permanent stoop because the cage was too short for her height.
I see Cowen … smiling while he explained how they’d need to put her down soon, because they needed the space.
And I see the one who came into the tent that first day and looked at me. The one who spat at me. I see the guard with the iron rod, and I hear the sound it made when it hit her ribs. I see the way she didn’t flinch or make a sound while he beather again and again.
I didn’t stop him.
Every morning I wake up gasping, one hand at my throat feeling for the collar. It’s there. It’salwaysthere. Cool and smooth and inescapable. A constant reminder of what I’ve become.
Just like the wound on my arm is a reminder of what happens when you speak up against how my kind treats them. It’s healed now. On the second or third day, Cairn unpeeled the make-shift bandage I’d used, and ran his finger along it. Whatever he did sealed the edges, but left an angry red scar behind. I try not to look at it.
I’m sitting on the platform where I sleep when the flap moves. My body goes rigid. That’s what days of captivity have done to me. Every sound makes me flinch. Every shadow makes me freeze. I’ve become a creature of nerves and fear.
Cairn.
He makes me kneel whenever he’s in the tent. Sometimes it’s only an hour. Sometimes it’s longer. My knees ache constantly.
He calls me ‘pet.’ The word burrows under my skin, hot and shameful. I’mnothis pet. I’m a princess. I’m the daughter of a king. But every time I drop to my knees at his command, I feel less like what I was and more like what he’s turning me into.
But it’s not Cairn who comes inside. It’s a female, with pale hair. She moves carefully, and she’s humming under her breath.
Iknowthat melody.
I’m back at the Dell in a heartbeat, standing in front of her cage while her voice rises and falls in scales that don’t fit any music I’ve ever heard.
“You,” I breathe.
She stops humming and turns her head toward me.
“You know me?”
“I … heard you. In the cages. Your song …” I lick my lips. “I hearit sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep.”
She sets down the tray she’s carrying on the table. “You should eat more.”
“I’m sorry.” The words spill out before I can stop them. “For what happened to you. For what they did to all of you. For what I—” My voice breaks. “For what I was going to do.”
She looks at me, eyes moving over my face, down to the collar at my throat, then back up. I don’t know what she sees. A princess who walked along the rows of fae and did nothing to ease their suffering, or a collared human paying for what her kind did to them?
“Eat,” she says finally. “Apologies don’t fill stomachs.”
Then she’s gone, and I’m alone again with a bowl of porridge and the ghost of her humming echoing through my head.
The hours crawl by. I eat the porridge without tasting it. I pace from one end of the tent to the other. I’ve memorized every curve of the silver walls, every shift in the light. I test the collar twice, pushing against the invisible barrier at the entrance until the collar starts to burn.
The other fae female comes by after my second attempt. She doesn’t enter the tent, just pushes the flap aside and looks at me.
Her eyes are cold as they sweep over me, contempt radiating off her. “Still breathing, then.”
“Still breathing.” I repeat her words softly.
Her lips curl. “Pity.”
She walks away, leaving me standing there staring at the place where she stood, with the sound of the iron rod hitting her ribs sounding in my memory.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t make a sound. She just stared at me with the same hatred she’s showing now.
