Blood ran down my face while they debated symmetry. The fae in their cages watched in white-faced silence. And when it was done, the mage stepped back and examined his work with the critical eye of a craftsman inspecting a finished piece.
“It will serve. Begin the coloring.”
The coloring was worse. Not the pain of it. That was nothing compared to the antlers. But the magic sinking into my skin, changing me, painting me gray-green—erasing the very essence of who I am. To them I was nothing more than raw material. A canvas for the king’s vision of what his daughter’s trophy kill should look like.
When it was over, my head bowed under the antlers’ weight,and I was panting through the pain. I caught my reflection in a nearby window. Antlers spreading from my skull, skin the wrong color.
My eyes were the only thing still mine.
I glance down at my legs. The gray-green is almost gone now, sloughing away in patches. By morning, I’ll look more like myself again. Whateverthatmeans after three hundred years of being someone else’s property.
The female shifts in her sleep, pulling me back to the present. I track the movement automatically—position, breathing, distance from me, the entrance, and anything she might use as a weapon. Old habits. Ones I learned long before every human in my vicinity became a threat.
I lean my head back against the wall and watch her through half-closed eyes. She’s curled on her side, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her torso. Her tunic has ridden up, exposing the curve of her ribs where the bruises I gave her are fading. The marks on her throat are still there, though. I didn’t bother healing them. She can wear my fingerprints for a few days more. A reminder of what I could do again, anytime I choose.
She fought me when I healed her. Screamed and thrashed and clawed at my arms while I held her down and fixed what I’d broken. She passed out before I finished, which was a mercy for both of us. Her screaming made my hands want to stop healing and start killing.
I didn’t let that happen. I held myself still until the urge passed.
She thought I was going to force myself on her. It was in her eyes. In the way she fought. As if I’d want that. As if years of human females taking what they wanted from me would leave me hungry for more.
The thought alone makes revulsion fill my veins. My skin crawls with the memory of hands that weren’t welcome.
I know what it is to be used. I know it better than she could possibly imagine.
The humans don’t care what any of us might have been. All they see are beasts that would make interesting trophies or beautiful bedmates.
The cages where they kept us were arranged by type. Fighters in one row—the big ones, the aggressive ones, the fae who might provide a good chase and a satisfying kill. Oddities in another—unusual features, strange coloring. Fragile creatures, most of them, who once would have gone out of their way to help mortals, not harm them.
And then there wasmyrow. The ones they calleddecorative. The ones with faces humans like to look at, and bodies they want to touch.
They put me there because of my face. I wasn’t large enough or brutish enough to fit their idea of what a fae warrior should look like. They still have no idea what they held. No idea of the things I did during the war, how many of their kind I’d killed, or the name their soldiers gave me while fleeing in terror from my blades.
They looked at me and saw something pretty. Something to be used.
I let them think that. Every year I spent in a noble woman’s bed was a year I didn’t spend bleeding out in a hunting ground. Every time one of them chose me for their entertainment, I survived …I waited… and I burned so hot with fury that I’m surprised they couldn’t feel it through my skin.
They would come to the cages looking for entertainment.A little something to brighten a long winter, they’d say.Something pretty to keep them company.They’d walk along my row, examining us through the bars, and eventually one of them would stop in front of my cage, and look at me the way you’d look at a horseyou were thinking of buying.
This one.I want this one.
The guard would unlock my cage, fit a leash to my collar, and lead me wherever I was wanted.
I don’t remember any of their names. There have been too many over too long. But I remember everything they did to me. And I remember what I wanted to do to them in return.
They’d wash me in copper tubs, hands working soap into my skin, using it as an excuse to touch me. Fingers combed through my hair while they decided how best to present me.
Hold still. Turn. Lift its arms.
I held still. I turned. I lifted my arms. I thought about holding their heads under the bathwater until the thrashing stopped and the bubbles went still.
I knelt beside chairs while they ate their meals, food passed down to me in scraps, while voices above my head discussed politics, weather, and alliances. I learned which ones had enemies, who had debts. They talked freely in front of me because I was a pet. A mindless beast who couldn’t possibly understand what they were talking about. They had no idea I was memorizing every word, filing away every weakness, and building a list of how I’d kill each one of them if I ever got free.
In their beds, they’d tell me what they wanted.Lie here. Move like this. Smile. Tell me I’m beautiful. Tell me you want this. I was displayed at parties, dressed in scraps of silk that covered nothing, positioned in corners where guests could admire me. They’d comment on my features, appraising me as though I was a painting, then they’d ask permission of whoever owned me if they could touch.
The answer was yes. Always yes.
I’d stand motionless while hands stroked my hair, my shoulders, my chest. Dozens of hands, hundreds of touches. Iimagined snapping their wrists. Driving their fingers into their eyes. I pictured it in perfect detail while I smiled and let them paw at me.
