hunt? “I wouldn’t mind some venison,” he says.
August nods, and the table lapses into a silence that doesn’t feel totally comfortable. It could be they always sit here, awkwardly quiet, while they eat, but it seems more likely that my presence has thrown a wrench into their typical flow of conversation. What is there they’d want to talk about that it’d be a problem for me to know?
Not the kind of thing you can ask even in the best of circumstances.
Gradually, I swallow morsels of a melon-like fruit that tastes close to honeydew. The third is enough to transform the ache in my stomach into a sensation of fullness. I’ve already eaten twice as much as my former captors ever offered me in one meal. I sip from my goblet, which turns out to be full of a lightly bubbly liquid with a raspberry-esque flavor, and clasp my hands together in my lap beneath the table.
As deftly as Sylas dodged my question, I still need to know what’s going on here. It doesn’t matter how scared I am of the answer. Am I a guest, or am I a prisoner?
For a few minutes, I watch the food disappear from the fae men’s plates, working up my courage. “Thank you for the meal and getting me away from the place with the cage and… everything,” I say finally, willing my thready voice a little louder. “It’s been years since they took me away. If I wanted to go home—”
Kellan interrupts me with a bark of a laugh. His voice is chilling. “Go home? You can wipe that idea out of your mind forever, pipsqueak.”
“Kellan,” Sylas says, his growl turning those two syllables ominous. He turns his mismatched gaze on me. “We’ll treat you as a guest, but you will stay here for now. It’ll take some time to decide how to best handle the situation. I stand by my word that Aerik and his pack won’t lay one more claw on you.”
All right. It’s not really a surprise, but his words still echo through me with an icy quiver. However generous any of these men might be with me, I’ve traded one set of captors for another.
I am better off, though, aren’t I? I’m not locked in one corner of a room behind immoveable bars. This keep must have a door to the outer world somewhere, and the outer world, even if it’s some sort of faerie realm, must have gateways to the world I came from. I just need to find out how to get there so I’m not wandering aimlessly at the mercy of whatever monsters come across me next, and then I can escape after all, better fed and rested than I’d have been fleeing from my previous captivity.
If I ask for any of the information I need now, I’ll tip them off to what I’m thinking. Instead, I incline my head as if in acceptance and take another sip of my drink.
Kellan’s silvery gaze lingers on me. Is that suspicion in his eyes? I have the urge to shrink inside my skin.
He wrinkles his nose. “If the sight of her wasn’t bad enough, the stink alone should consign her to the upper reaches.”
“Thankfully, that’s solved easily enough.” Sylas points his knife at Whitt. “You’ve demolished at least twice your share of breakfast already. Go run our guest a bath.”
6
Whitt
Run our guest a bath. As I turn on the faucet, I repeat the command in my head in exactly the mocking tone I was tempted to toss it back in our glorious leader’s face. Not a request but an order, as if I’m a servant and not cadre. Presumably this is August’s fault. His frolicking around in the kitchen has convinced Sylas we should all play staff.
Water hisses from the tap. I drop a towel on the tiled floor next to the gleaming tub, since Heart help us if the mite could manage to find even that on her own. Where are the clothes Sylas dredged up for her from who in the lands knows where?
I’d rather not know. I prefer to think as little as possible of what relations our lord might or might not be having with beings of the female persuasion, human or otherwise.
That turn takes my mind in a darker direction than my initial silent heckling. I find the bundle of human-made fabric, rougher even at its best than what the fae can spin but I suppose more familiar to our “guest,” and leave