The rain was pouring, heavy and merciless, covering up the cruel sounds of the whip against skin. Behind me, three shadows lurked—no, watched. I didn't dare turn to look at them, to see who might be within those shadows, observing, not as I watched the crimson rivers of death snake between my knees.
Another strike and a strangled gasp echoed in the misty air. As if begging, as if pleading for the pain to stop. The rust-covered iron chains connected to the cuffs around my wrists and ankles clanked as I flinched—and stilled again.
No—no, I didn't want to look, not this time, not again, not—
But I had no control over my body, absolutely none, when the footsteps approached me. Cold, smooth fingers gripped my chin and lifted it sharply. There was no kindness, no compassion in that touch—only cold maliciousness.
"Look," Japeth said. I didn't. Didn't move, didn't blink until my eyes started to water.
"Look girl," he barked as a plume of blood splattered before my knees. "Look what you have brought upon him, upon everything you love if you don't tell me the truth."
I started shaking uncontrollably as my head ached from restraining to look for so long.
"Look Eleena," Japeth said as he gripped my elbow and pulled. Pain shot up my hip as I hit the rain-and-blood-soaked cobblestones. "Look!"
And I could do nothing as I lifted my head, the action taking more strength and concentration than I would have thought needed. Sweat coated strands of chestnut brown hair, pale skin as white as freshly pressed snow, a sigh of wind, and the crack of the whip. No.
It was a man, tall and gangly. Theodore.
But no—not a man I realised as I watched my brother's features morph and change. But a Seelie Faerie, with those pointed ears.
I blinked, and then—then my hands were warm and sticky with his blood, then he was the one taking the blows, his ghastly pale, muscled back a frenzy of blood and scars, and it was his eyes—his silvery eyes flecked with violet—that I had looked into, and—
I threw myself awake, sweat slipping down my back, and forced myself to breathe, to open my eyes and note each detail of the night-dark bedroom. Real—this was real.
But I could still see that Seelie Faerie male's back, a whip against his snow-white skin, red and bloody all over from where each lash had come into contact.
Bile stung my throat.
Not real. Just a dream. Even if what the Elders had done to me, even if it was my brother or the fae male, was ... was ...
I scrubbed at my face. Perhaps it was the quiet, the hollowness, of the past few days—perhaps it was only that I no longer had to think hour to hour about how to keep my family alive, but ... It was regret, and maybe shame, that coated my tongue, my bones.
I shuddered as if I could fling it off, and kicked back the sheets to rise from the bed.
.____________________.
I couldn't entirely shake the horror, the gore of my dream as I walked down the dark halls of the manor, the servants, Kallistê and Oberon long asleep. But I had to do something—anything—after that nightmare. If only to avoid sleeping. A bit of paper in one hand and a pen gripped in the other, I carefully traced my steps, noting the windows and doors and exits, occasionally jotting down vague sketches and Xs on the parchment.
It was the best I could do, and to any literate human, my markings would have made no sense. But I couldn't write or read more than my basic letters, and my makeshift map was better than nothing. If I were to remain here for at least until I figured out where to find the Imperial Lords or the black milkweed, it was essential to know the best hiding places, the easiest way out, should things ever go badly for me. I couldn't entirely let go of the instinct.
It was too dim to admire any of the paintings lining the walls, and I didn't dare risk a candle. These past three days, there had been servants in the halls when I'd worked up the nerve to look at the art—and the part of me that spoke with Alistair's voice had laughed at the idea of an ignorant human trying to admire faerie art. Some other time, then, I'd told myself. I would find another day, a quiet hour when no one was around and I had completed my task, to look at them. I had plenty of hours now—a whole lifetime in front of me. Perhaps ... perhaps I'd figure out what I wished to do with it.
I crept down the main staircase, moonlight flooding the marble tiles of the entrance hall. I reached the bottom, my bare feet silent on the cold tiles, and listened. Nothing—no one.
I set my little map on the foyer table and drew a few Xs and circles to signify the doors, the windows, the marble stairs of the front hall. I would become so familiar with the house that I could navigate it even if someone blinded me.
A breeze announced his arrival—and I turned from the table toward the long hall, to the open glass doors to the garden.
I'd forgotten how intimidating he was—forgotten the razor golden talons poking out from his knuckles. His amber eyes glowed in the darkness, fixing on me, and as the doors snicked shut behind him, the scuffing of boots on marble filled the hall. I stood still—not daring to flinch, to move a muscle.
He limped slightly, a hand holding an ... arrow supporting his weight by brushing against the walls, his other hand wrapped across his torso. And in the moonlight, dark, shining stains were left in his wake.
He continued toward me, stealing the air from the entire hall. He was so big that the place felt cramped, like a cage. The scrape of the arrow against the wall, a huff of uneven breathing, the dripping of blood.
Between one step and the next, his talons retracted, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the blinding light caused by moonlight reflecting on his talons. When at last my eyes adjusted to the returning darkness, he was standing in front of me.
Standing, but—not quite there. No sign of the baldric, or his knives. His clothes were in shreds—long, vicious slashes that made me wonder how he wasn't gutted and dead. But the muscled skin peeking out beneath his shirt was smooth, unharmed, save for the faint white lines of scars.
"Did you kill the Baphomet?" My voice was hardly more than a whisper.
"Yes." A dull, empty answer. As if he couldn't be bothered to remember to be pleasant. As if I were at the very, very bottom of a long list of priorities.
"You're hurt," I said even more quietly.
Indeed, his hand was pressing against the right side of his torso, covered in blood, even more splattering on the floor beneath him. He looked at it blankly—as if it took some monumental effort to remember that he even had a hand, and it was covering a punctured wound in his stomach. What effort of will and strength had it taken to kill the Baphomet, to face that wretched menace? How deep had he to dig inside himself –to whatever immortal power and animal that lived there—to kill it?
He glanced down at the map on the table, and his voice was void of anything—any emotion, any anger or amusement—as he said, "What is that?"
I snatched up the map. "I thought I should learn my surroundings.
Drip, drip, drip.
I opened my mouth to point out his stomach again, but he said, "You can't write, can you?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know what to say. Ignorant, insignificant human.
"No wonder you became so adept at other things."
I supposed he was so far lost in the pain that he hadn't realised the compliment that slipped off his tongue. If it had ever meant to be a compliment.
Another splatter of blood on the marble. "Where can we clean up your wound?"
He lifted his head to look at me again. Still and silent and weary. Then he said, "There's a small infirmary."
I wanted to tell myself that it was probably the most useful thing I'd learned all night. But as I followed him there, avoiding the blood he trailed, I thought of what Kallistê and Oberon have both told me about his isolation, that burden, thought of what Phoebus had mentioned about how these estates should not have been his, and felt ... sorry for him.
.____________________.
The infirmary was well stocked, but was more of a supply closet with a worktable than an actual place to host sick faeries. I supposed that was all they needed when they could heal themselves with their immortal powers. But this wound—this wound wasn't healing.
Phoebus slumped against the edge of the table, pressing his already bloodied hand against the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding. He watched me sort through the supplies in the cabinets and drawers. When I'd gathered what I needed, I tried not to balk at the thought of touching him, but ... I didn't let myself give in to my dread as I watched him peel off his shirt. I examined the wound, prodding the edges a little, the heat of his skin like an inferno against my cool fingers. It was deep, and there was some sort of a black powder that had coated the wound.
"There was a poison which coated the arrow," Phoebus whispered as he watched me, "it stops my healing powers to heal my body temporarily."
I nodded my head and swiped some of the remaining powder left on his golden skin. Sniffing it lightly, I froze. With the same sweet fragrance, tinged with the stench of rotting meat, I stopped breathing.
Black milkweed.
"Who attacked you?" My voice was too harsh to be ordinary.
Phoebus winced in pain—the emotion quickly flickering on his face before it was gone—as he shifted against the table. "One of their spies. They caught me unprepared as I was tracking the Baphomet."
I didn't need Phoebus to say who their was to know who they are. "How?"
He sighed. "I don't know. But I am only concerned because they are nearing the border ... testing out the defences. And now with the poison they have, war could very well brew again."
I said nothing—had nothing to say—as I cleaned off his bloody wound, bracing for the first flash of those talons. But his talons remained retracted, and he kept silent as I stitched the wound and bound and wrapped his torso. If the attackers had grabbed hold of the black milkweed, then, there was still a chance at finding it. Perhaps it could be near the war camps, where they had last struck.
I secured the bandages in place and stepped away, bringing the bowl of bloody water to the deep sink in the back of the room. His eyes were a brand upon me as I finished cleaning, and the room became too small, too hot. He'd killed the Baphomet and walked away relatively unscathed other than the injury to his stomach. If Phoebus was that powerful, then the Imperial Lords of Asteria must be near-gods. Every mortal instinct in my body bleated in panic at the thought.
I was almost at the open door, stifling the urge to bolt back to my room, when he said, "You can't write, yet you learned to hunt, to survive. How?"
I paused with my foot on the threshold. "That's what happens when you're responsible for lives other than your own, isn't it? You do what you have to do."
He was still sitting on the table, still straddling that inner line between here and now and wherever he'd had to go in his mind to endure the fight with the Baphomet. I met his feral and glowing stare.
"You aren't what I expected—for a human," he said.
I didn't reply. And he didn't say good-bye as I walked out.
.____________________.
Hey there again!
I know, I know, this is just another filler chapter. But I promise more action would be coming soon. Though this chapter didn't really link to the one before, I hope it was alright. Anyways, I don't really have anything to say so I will just leave you guys to it. Thank you so much for all your support!