The changelings tumble out onto the table and floor as they morph into carbon copies of me, and I cringe at how I almost fucked up. There would have been no room for them to change without busting the glass, potentially hurting them and destroying our makeshift playpen.
“Fuck. Sorry.”
Atlas and I haul Loki to her feet, sopping wet and glaring at me. Her lips curl back with a low growl and the room quiets as everyone reminds themselves to breathe. It’s easy to forget how brutal and lethal the changelings are with as much as they act like toddlers sometimes, the state they were in when we found them.
“Loki,” I warn, keeping my voice firm instead of letting any fear creep in.
Maintaining eye contact, I bring my hand up to my lips since I don’t have a knife, biting hard enough that I break skin. I hold that stare until she stops being aggressive, and only then do I stretch out my hand.
Eyes narrowed, she steps forward, and I’m half-convinced that she’s going to try to bite off a finger simply out of spite. But as soon as her tongue hits the blood pooling on my palm, she settles back down, wrapping her lips around the base of my thumb without taking the digit into her mouth.
Lucien and Dorian follow suit, though they whip out pocket knives to accomplish it, feeding the other changelings. Azazel and Raziel adopt their forms, all of them protesting a bit when we cut them off.
“You guys must’ve been going stir crazy the last couple of days,” I concede, using a bit of my power to rush the healing along in my hand. “If you promise to stay inside of the prison until one of us tells you otherwise, and don’t get into any trouble, you can run around loose without us. Deal?”
Three sets of demonic eyes meet mine as they parrot back, “Deal,” binding themselves to the agreement as their eyes flash, whether they understand it or not. Shooing them out of the kitchen, they look at each other confused for a second before sprinting away with preternatural speed. I grab the mop leaning against the wall to start tackling the mess, grimacing at how the water got absolutely everywhere.
“Was that a good idea? To give them that much free rein?” Atlas worries and I shrug.
“It just doesn’t feel right keeping them locked in a cage, no matter how massive it may be. At least this way they have the illusion of freedom, even if they can’t leave the island. We might have to reconsider depending on how things go when we get more of them up here, though. They might not all be as reasonable as those three are, after all, and might have to be contained until we can win them over. But ultimately, we’re all in this together. I don’t want to lord over them; it already feels wrong that I’m deciding their fates like I have some sort of right to, just because it’s what my ancestors have always done. It may be a necessary evil, but still makes me feel slimy.”
Glancing out the doorway, not-Lucien races past in a blur. Atlas just shakes his head, grabbing a rag to help dry off the table. “We get another dozen changelings up here, and we’ll have the world’s most high-stakes game of ‘where’s Waldo’ going on.”
“Why high-stakes?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You think it’ll end well if I’m walking by and smack your ass, just to get my head torn off by Raziel?”
Chuckling, we finish getting the water cleaned up. “Nothing better to do than explore some more, I guess.”
“I’m actually going to head up to the greenhouses with Lucien,” Dorian declares. “See if we can get them in better shape, make a list of what we’ll need to buy on our next trip back, etcetera.”
Atlas chucks his rag in the sink to drip dry. “I’m going to go take a look at the bedrooms, see if Luce is right and there’s any way to knock out a couple of walls or expand the rooms somehow. If nothing else, we might find another wing of rooms in this place that are bigger we could convert.”
“Need any help?”
“Nah-“ he leans in to kiss my cheek as he passes by “-take a load off for a while. Once we’re hunting the changelings, it’s pretty much just you doing all the heavy lifting, so let us feel useful for a little bit.”
Setting the mop back in the bucket, I dust my palms off on my thighs. “I’ll come get you if I find anything cool.”
“Shout if you’re being murdered,” Lucien calls over his shoulder on the way out and I grin. Easygoing Lucien is definitely something that I could get used to eventually; Fates know the man needed to learn how to turn off work mode.
Heading out into the tunnels, we part ways, and I wish I’d grabbed the box of crackers so I could leave a trail of crumbs to find my way back. This place is just so massive and creepily abandoned. I’m actually starting to look forward to getting more changelings here, and the irony isn’t lost on me. I’m creeped out of something jumping out at me from the shadows and want to literally invite the fae version of the monster under the bed to keep me company. But I suppose, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
Now that Atlas pointed it out, I’m able to get a better mental layout. The entire place is set up like a massive oval, and inside of the earthen walls of it, a central path rising and falling in waves, but staying constant to that pattern and wrapping around the entire place. It’s only when I get to the off shooting, smaller tunnels that branch off of the main one that things get nerve wracking. Those seem to follow no real rhyme or reason, some leading to dead ends, and others circling back to reconnect with the small tunnel or central path farther down the way.
Hide and seek would take months to declare a winner in this place.
It could be minutes or hours that I simply wander, opening door after door. Time has no meaning in here, where the sun all but doesn’t exist. We’re contained in our own little world, able to define it however we please.
It’s everything that I’ve ever wanted, honestly; the space to roam, to control my own life. But it’s far quieter than I imagined it would be, and somehow lonelier than it was when I was by myself. I have three mates I’d sell my left tit to protect and as hard of a time as I give Dorian about it, I’m just as enamored with the little heathens as he is.
I open another door, not really expecting anything, but my hand tightens on the doorknob as I get a good look at the largest room I’ve seen thus far. It’s yet another storage room, but this one is far better than dusty linens or cleaning supplies. Case after case leans against the wall, some instruments hanging on hooks above them. It’s easily as big as three of the bedrooms combined, and honestly, the only thing that it’s missing is a piano. Not that I can blame anyone for that. Flying something as heavy as that up here would be a bitch, let alone navigating it’s awkward shape through the narrow bends in the tunnels.
Walking into the room, I gently trail my fingertips over the outside of cases, finally stopping at a shelf and withdrawing a small, rectangular one made of stiff fabric as if it called to me. Unzipping it, the tarnished pieces of a flute sit disassembled in the velvet casing. Opening the zippered pocket on the front, I withdraw the silver rag, moving to sit in one of the chairs and setting it on my lap.
Carefully, I begin working each piece, every button, until the original silver shines through again. I could happily sit here all day restoring each instrument in the room, replacing strings and reeds, bringing everything back to its former glory.
So I do.
