Cowen’s smile is fixed firmly in place when I step out of the room, but his eyes remain cold.
“Your Highness, I really must advise against this. The holding pens aren’t … they’re not a place for ladies. I don’t want to cause you any more distress after everything you've already been through.”
“I appreciate your concern.” I’m surprised by how steady my voice sounds. “But I want to see them.”
His smile flickers and fades. He can’t refuse me, not after what happened. Not after his establishment lost the king’s daughter to a fae, and nearly got her killed. The fact my father hasn’t already burned this place to the ground is a mercy that means he’s in no position to refuse me anything, and we both know it.
“Of course, my lady.” His response is stiff. “I’ll escort you myself.”
We walk in silence through the lodge and out into the courtyard. I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead when we pass the trophy wall, refusing to look at the antlers and tusks that line it. But I can feel it, the invisible eyes of the fae they were taken from, all those lives reduced to decoration.
Cowen leads us past the outbuildings I barely glancedat when I arrived, and through a narrow passage. The morning air is cool and damp, carrying the faint smell of the forest and the sharper scent of horses and hay.
Then another smell starts to creep in.
At first, I think I’m imagining it. A hint of something foul mixed with the clean air. But with each step it grows stronger, thicker, until I have to press my hand over my mouth and nose to keep from gagging.
“How can anyone stand this?” The words come out muffled through my fingers.
Cowen glances back at me, his expression blank. “You stop noticing after a while.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think the people who work here just learn to pretend they don’t notice, to wall it off in their minds, and tell themselves that the stench of waste and blood and suffering doesn’t matter, because the things producing it aren’t really people anyway.
We round the corner, and I see the cages.
Rows of them, stretching back into the yard in long uneven lines. Iron bars blackened with age and rust, the ground between them churned mud—mud mixed with other things I don’t want to think about, tracked and smeared and ground in until the earth itself has turned foul.
I try to count. There are thirty in the first section. Another thirty in the second. At least twenty at the far end. Eighty cages, and in each one, a living creature that was once free.
“This is one of five preserves in the kingdom.” Cowen’s voice slides into the practiced cadence of a tour guide. “We keep approximately eighty here at any given time. They’re separated for easier management. Fae are territorial by nature, and keeping them apart prevents fighting.”
If that’s the case, why did Cairn call them his people? Why did hesay he was coming for them?
I make myself walk forward, my boots squelching in the muck, the stench wrapping around me like a living thing.
“Occasionally, we transfer some to other preserves. Especially during the breeding season.”
Breeding season?I can’t bring myself to ask.
The first cage holds a male curled on his side with his back to me. Every knob of his spine shows through skin that’s sallow and sick-looking, stretched too tight over bones that jut out at wrong angles. The collar around his throat has rubbed the flesh raw, the same way Cairn’s had, leaving a ring of red and weeping yellow that glistens in the early morning light. He doesn’t move as I pass. He might be sleeping, or he might be catatonic. For all I know, he might be dying in the mud while the world walks past and doesn’t care.
The second holds a female standing close to the bars, hunched over slightly so her head doesn’t brush the top. She’s tall, taller than any human woman I’ve ever seen, but the cage has bent her, curved her spine and shoulders into a permanent stoop. Her hair hangs in matted ropes around a face that might have been beautiful once, before the filth and the hunger and the years of captivity wore it away.
Her eyes find me as I approach. They’re shaped like Cairn’s, with that distinctive almond tilt that marks them as other. But where his burn gold, hers are pale gray, washed out, and empty.So empty.
I stop in front of her cage and force myself to look into those eyes, trying to imagine what she was before this place. She must have had a life once. A home. People who loved her, even. And now she’sthis. A hollow shell with nothing left inside but the basic functions of breathing and existing.
“That one has been here for a long time.” Cowen’s voicecomes from behind me. “The last time someone rented it for …” I turn to look at him. “Well, it attacked its owner. We’ll probably need to put it down soon.”
Put it down. Like a lame horse or an old dog. Her life ended because she’s no longer useful.
“Shall we continue, my lady?”
I nod and make myself keep moving.
The smell grows worse as we go deeper into the rows. Layers of filth that have been accumulating for years, decades, maybe longer. Some of the fae watch me pass with the same hollow stare as the female. Others don’t acknowledge me at all, curled in corners with their faces turned away, retreated so far into themselves that nothing from the outside world can reach them anymore.
One male rocks back and forth, his arms wrapped around his knees, his mouth moving in words I can’t hear. Another female sits perfectly still, her eyes open and fixed on nothing, so motionless, I think she must be dead until I see the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
