and I know I’m in trouble. Wilson’s presence may have stopped them from killing me, but it doesn’t mean they can’t still hurt me. Pushing my discomfort away, I face the door and try to block them out. What they are saying is nothing new to me, but knowing it’s going to happen is its own special type of torture—anticipation. I’m always wondering when it’s going to happen.
The door is mostly open now and I can see Vaeril’s silhouette against the bright flames in the forge, and the banging of metal against the anvil is loud. A shove on the small of my back has me stumbling forward and falling to the ground as the door slowly closes behind me. Vaeril doesn’t stop working, but I swear I heard a brief pause when the guard shoved me, yet as I get to my feet, he’s fully focusing on his work.
Walking farther into the room, I suddenly feel unsure. Do I go up to him and start speaking? It’s not like we are friends, we barely put up with each other’s presence, but we have an understanding of what the other has been through. Standing there, with doubt running through my mind, I do the only thing I know how to do—I clean. Ducking my head, I scuttle to the cubby by the door and collect a brush and bucket, filling it with water from the tap. I carry my load to the centre of the room, drop to my knees, and start scrubbing.
“You returned.” His words reach me over the clang of the banging and the roar of the fire, and I shudder at his rich voice. I’m not sure why my body is reacting this way, and all of a sudden I’m glad I didn’t decide to walk straight up to him. The implication of his words hits me a moment later and I frown, sitting back on my heels as I stop scrubbing.
“Of course I did,” I call out, my pride wounded that he thought I wouldn’t come back. “I promised.”
There’s a pause as he stops hammering and turns to face me. He’s braided back his long, silver hair, and a leather tie gathers it together at the nape of his neck. His eyes practically glow from the light of the fire, his pointed ears on full display. He looks truly fae, and I realise with shock I’m not afraid of him anymore. I’m still very aware he could kill me in an instant, but I trust him not to. The guards are more likely to hurt me than he is.
Dropping the brush to the floor, I push up into standing and slowly make my way over to the elf’s work desk. I don’t touch anything, but I look at his tools and semi-finished weapons, and I can feel him tracking my movements with his eyes.
“I’ve learned that a human’s promise is a lie,” he finally replies, returning to his weapon in progress. There’s bitterness in his voice, and I realise I don’t know how he ended up a prisoner here. I want to ask, to know what happened, but I don’t think he’ll answer.
“Then why did you trust me? Why did you agree to wait?” I ask instead, equally as interested in his answer. He’s been tortured, forced to work, and kept away from his people by the humans, so why would he trust a lone human woman?
“I don’t know. You seem different than the others. You know what it’s like to be seen as nothing.”
He’s right, I do. Is that why I feel connected to him? Is it as simple as that? We share a bond over our past experiences? That piece of me that is always angry, that I’ve been finding more and more difficult to keep quiet, tells me it’s more than that. I feel connections to Tor and Grayson also, but I have almost nothing in common with them, yet I have that same pull. Closing my eyes, I focus on those feelings that seem to anchor deep inside me. They all feel different, and right now two of them seem distant, while one of them is bright. When I reach out for it, I get the impression of raindrops on leaves, the freshness of being caught out in a rainstorm, but all of a sudden it seems too far away.
My eyes shoot open and I see Vaeril watching me with wide eyes, which he quickly narrows at me.