She was warm, and soft, and trembling, her breath coming in panicked bursts. I spun her around and pulled her back against my chest, locking my arm around her ribs. She struggled. Of course she struggled, but it didn't matter. I was stronger, even with the collar burning against my throat. I held her there, her heart hammering against my arm. After so long being the one held down, here I had a human in my grip.
A king's daughter.
Every hand that had ever touched me. Every woman who used me and died in her bed, never knowing what I would have done to her if I’d ever gotten free.Allof it rose up at once, white-hot and screaming, and I wanted to crush her. I wanted to feel her bones splinter under my arm. I wanted to hear her scream the way they mademescream.
My hand tightened on her jaw. My arm wrapped tighter around her ribs. A little more pressure and they would start to give.
I held there. Shaking with the effort of not killing her. But dead, she was worth nothing. Alive, she gave me options. So I choked it down. I buried it, the same way I’d learned to bury everything. I used her blood to break the collar, and the wards on the forest. And when her fragile human body began to fail, I healed her.
She murmurs in her sleep again, her face troubled. I watch her, and think about all the ways I could repay what her kind did to me in her flesh. The others might have died in their beds.
But this one won’t.
This one is mine.
EIGHT
ALLERIA
Weak sunlight is filteringthrough the cave entrance when I wake. My hands fly to my ribs, probing gently. The pain has gone. It’s as though they were never broken at all.
I push myself up cautiously, using the cave wall for support. Every muscle in my body aches with a bone-deep exhaustion that makes every move an effort. But I manage to sit up, and then search for him.
He’s standing to one side of the cave entrance with his back to me. The antlers are gone, and without them, his silhouette has changed. There’s nothing human about the way he holds himself. Nothing human in the predatory stillness of his body. Even without the antlers and the gray-green skin, he is completely and utterlyother.
I’m sure he knows I’m awake, but he doesn’t turn.
I use the wall to drag myself to my feet, my legs shaking beneath me. My throat hurts, my lips are cracked, and my stomach cramps. For a long moment, I stand there watching him, and wonder what he’s waiting for.
His head lifts, and it hits me that his face is raised to the sun.An unexpected wave of guilt rolls through me.
Where are they kept while they wait to be hunted? How do they live? Are they kept indoors or outside like cattle? Are any of them the animals I’ve been raised to believe they are? Or are they all as intelligent as he seems to be? As dangerous?
“Time to move.”
His voice cuts through my thoughts, and my eyes snap to him as he turns and comes toward me. When his hand closes around my arm, I shake my head.
“I’ll walk. You don’t have to drag me. I’ll walk.”
Those golden eyes sweep over me, then his hand drops. “If you run?—”
“I won’t run.”
He stares at me for a second longer, then turns and strides out of the cave. I follow him. It isn’t long before I’m gasping for breath and struggling to keep up. I haven’t eaten in … two days? Three? I don’t know anymore. But I don’t say anything. He’s already broken me once, and I have no doubt that the moment I become an inconvenience he’ll do it again.
The trees thin out, becoming gently rolling hills and farmland. A road I recognize cuts through the scenery. It’s the one I traveled on my way to the Dell. He veers away from that, moving us through fields and along hedgerows, skirting farmhouses peppered across the landscape. The land around the Dell is sparsely populated. I don’t suppose anyone wants to live too close to a place that keeps monsters. But I still see people in the distance. Farmers working their fields, a shepherd with his flock, a woman hanging laundry outside a cottage.
Every time we see anyone on the road, he pulls me down behind the bushes, or into the shadow of a tree, covering my mouth with his hand, his body tense and still until they pass. I don’t fight him. I’ve learned better than that.
My legs are burning with every step, and my stomach cramps and twists around nothing. I need food. I don’t know how long a fae can go without eating, but I’m human and I need to eat something.
We crest a low hill, and below us buildings spread out in the distance. He pulls me behind a low, crumbling stone wall.
“There is a town ahead.” His voice is soft. “You will do what I tell you, or I will leave your body here for the crows.”
It takes a moment for the words to sink in. He’s barely spoken since this nightmare began beyond issuing commands or threats. Hearing full sentences from him is almost as unsettling as what he’s saying.
“You will get us somewhere to stay.”
