The purpose of the stall was to organize offerings of food and supplies from the humans and redistribute them as needed to the fae refugee camp. Gwen hoped that once the elementals were settled and could turn their attention to tasks such as hunting and gathering, the trade of supplies would begin to flow both ways.
But that was naïve.
The command was deserted.
The ground was compacted and frozen over with frost, tracks difficult to make out. But that wasn’t the only sense at her disposal. Even in her fae form, she maintained the dark lioness’ sense of smell. Blood stained the air, coppery but not thick. Human blood. And those were drag marks.
Gwen drew her sword as she turned, following them around the command stall and to the other side of the square. Shallow, close together… something—or someone—small.
The scent of blood intensified. She was close, the trail ended—in a closed door.
Blood was not the only scent that hung in the air. The tang of terror was so thick Gwen could nearly taste it. She was a terrestrial, more animal than fae, from the pointed tips of her elongated canines to the rising roar she could feel building inher chest. The elementals were cunning, indeed. But terrestrials were beasts in fae skins.
Gwen knocked on the door.
Silence.
She knocked again.
Furniture shifted inside, followed by a sharp cry. Someone running into something. Even with her sharp hearing, she could not discern precisely who and what. But she caught whispers—frantic ones.
She knocked a third time. “I want to help.”
More whispers. An argument. Two females.
Gwen did not want to break down the door. It would only worsen the fear that poisoned the air. She did not need the humans to like her. But if they would not trust her, they would not follow her commands. And if they hesitated at the wrong moment they might die.
She lifted her hand to knock a fourth time, flattening the planes of her face into the calm mask of composure she’d perfected when she’d believed she would one day rule all of Annwyn.
But before her knuckles hit wood, the door creaked open, no more than the width of a finger. A single brown eye seated in a pale face appeared.
“What happened—
“My son didn’t do anything wrong,” the voice belonging to the eye rushed out. “Please, just leave us alone.”
The woman tried to close the door but Gwen was faster. She slid her fingers into the gap, just enough to keep it from closing. The woman inside flinched, the door slipping from her grasp, gaping wider, and then slamming shut again as she realized.
The wood tried to latch around Gwen’s fingers but was denied.
The woman inside whimpered, eyes growing at least two sizes as they filled with terrified tears, waiting for Gwen’s vengeance.
Gwen did not move an inch, not her fingers nor her face.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
Another door opened to her left, this one swinging wide on its hinges.
“You heard her. The boy didn’t do anything!” a gravelly voice aged by hardship admonished. Gwen jerked her head to the side, to the hunched woman glaring at her from the doorway of the next dwelling.
A matching old man appeared over her shoulder. “Agnes, stop.”
Then a younger man, middle-aged, his beard wild to match his eyes. He grabbed the older female by the shoulders, starting to lift her into compliance. “Mother, you’ll get yourself beaten like the boy, or kill—”
“Who.” The word reverberated through the square. Gwen turned back to the woman before her. Even open just a crack, she could smell the blood—the trail she’d followed ended here.
Tears spilled out of the woman’s eyes. Gwen forced the door open a few more inches. Just enough to see inside, to where another woman cradled a small boy in her lap. He was crying, but conscious. One arm was bent at an unnatural angle. His lip was split and blood leaked from his ear.
Gwen felt the ropes of control that held her composure in place begin to fray.
