No!No! I’m watching people die. I’m seeinghumansdie. I should be horrified. I should be sick. I should be thinking about the families these men might have and the people who will mourn them.
My body doesn’t care about any of that, because it’s watching the way he moves.
“Please.” The man holds up his hands. “Please! I’ll give you anything. Money, property, whatever you want. Just let me live.”
Cairn stops in front of him. His head tilts slightly in a move I’m starting to recognize as him considering something.
“You transport my people in chains. You sell them to humans who break them for sport. You profit from their suffering.”
“I’m just a merchant! I don’t … I don’t hurt anyone. I treat them well, I make sure they’re fed and—” The blade moves too fast to track.
The connection snaps closed, and I’m back in my body, kneeling with my hands pressed against the earth. My heart is racing. My skin is flushed. And between my thighs, I’m?—
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe.
What is wrong with me?
Minutes pass. Maybe hours. I don’t know. Then Cairn’s voice cuts through my mind.
Come here.
I make my way toward the road on shaking legs. The smell hits me first—copper and iron. Then I see the bodies.
The road has become a slaughterhouse.
Bodies lie where they fell, guards crumpled to the ground with their blood soaking into the earth. The merchant’s head has rolled against a wagon wheel, and his dead eyes stare in my direction. It feels like he’s judging me. His body lies several feet away.
Cairn stands in the center of it, the blood still wet on his armor, his blades held loosely in his grip. When he turns to look at me, something flickers in his expression, and his mouth curls ever so slightly.
I look away first.
“Break the collars.” His voice snaps back to command.
Therin and Vel move to obey, and I make myself look at the wagon again. The fae inside haven’t moved. They’re watching with wide eyes, bodies rigid, like animals preparing to flee.
My stomach turns.
Therin climbs into the wagon. He kneels in front of the first one. She shrinks back from him, chains rattling.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice is gentle. “But I need you to trust me.”
Vel drags one of the surviving guards to the wagon. The man is shaking, tears running down his face as he pleads incoherently. Therin takes his wrist, and slides across his palm with his sword, Vel pressing the bleeding hand against the female’s collar.
I’ve seen this before. Cairn did this with my blood to break his own collar.
The collar heats, the metal beginning to glow, and the female makes a small, pained sound. Therin murmurs something too low for me to hear, and her hand lifts to grasp his. A second later, the collar cracks and falls away.
He squeezes her fingers, and moves to the next one … and the third. The guard’s face turns gray as more blood is drawn. Vel works through the other three with a second guard.
When the final collar breaks, the guard Vel’s been using starts to babble.
“Please … I don’t want to die. Please?—”
Vel cuts his throat mid-sentence. The blood sprays across her face. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, and kicks the body out of the wagon.
Therin’s guard stays silent. He’s staring at the body, and the blood covering Vel’s face. He doesn’t beg or plead. He just closes his eyes and waits for the killing strike.
I should be more horrified by this, but my mind is too busy working through what I’ve been watching. Not once did any of them drink the blood from the palms they cut before breaking the collars.
