Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,55
in that cage. I thought I had. I thought it’d been only eight. But it’s actually been nine.”
I’m twenty-one, not twenty. Three hundred and sixty-five more days than I counted have passed since I lost my home.
It shouldn’t be a big deal. What’s one more year in the grand scheme of things? But the knowledge hits me like a punch to the gut.
Where did I miss it? How warped had my sense of time become while Aerik held me prisoner that I didn’t catch on that it’d been far too long?
Sylas sits carefully on the sofa a couple of feet away from me. “I’m impressed that you managed to keep track even if not totally accurately,” he says. “How did you determine the passing of the years?”
I twist a strand of my hair around my finger, pulling tight as if the sting in my scalp will offset the horror of those memories. “There was a night pretty early after they took me when I heard all this howling, loud enough that it reached all the way to the room with my cage. The next day the men said something about how they were glad they only had to bother with “it” once a year. And then it was ages, I almost forgot, until it happened again. I figured if it’s something you all do once a year, then it was a way I could keep track.”
“That was important to you.”
I shrug, my head drooping. It seems like such a minor victory now that it’s almost silly. “It was one small way I could hold on to something I understood. Knowing how long it’d been, how old I was… I was afraid I’d forget, so I marked myself as well as I could.”
I hesitate and then ease down the waist of my jeans to where the thin scars mark the skin over my hipbone. Eight of them where there should be nine. “I must have been so exhausted on one of those nights I slept right through the howls. What is that racket all about, anyway?”
“The Wild Hunt,” Sylas says. “You judged right—we take it up once a year. It’s a sort of holiday, a celebration… The arch-lords race through the human world on horseback and the rest of the Seelie follow in our wolf forms. For some, it’s the only time they venture among humans at all—a chance to snatch up new servants or whatever else they might want that they can’t find here.”
Servants they maybe treat only slightly better than Aerik and his cadre did me? Or that they treat worse, because those servants have no special blood to grant them a tiny respite? I shudder.
Sylas looks away. When his gaze returns to me, it’s as solemn as I’ve ever seen it. His voice comes out even lower than usual, deep and grave.
“Our kind doesn’t generally hate humans. Kellan is not the norm, and neither is Aerik. Many mortals live among us for a long time, mingle with our families, find some sort of place in our domains that they’re satisfied with. August’s mother was fully human, you know.”
I’m startled by that revelation only for an instant. Suddenly all the kindnesses the other man has shown me makes a lot more sense.
“But mostly you—the fae—bring us here to be servants and things like that?”
He tips his head in acknowledgment. “I can’t say the norm is to see humans as equals either. In most cases, your people are simply a means to an end.”
“Like animals. Something you can own.”
“Yes. Which isn’t hate or hostility. It’s just…” He sighs as if he’s not sure how to finish that sentence. “But I have seen plenty of suffering too, and I don’t wish to perpetuate that.”
“You’ve given me a lot,” I have to acknowledge. “You got me away from Aerik.”
“But I’m also keeping you here, when no doubt the realms of the fae are the last place you’d prefer to linger.”
He pauses and then turns to face me more fully. “Talia, I don’t expect you to like what I’m doing or to approve of it. If there was a way that I could ensure security for my people without your presence, I’d escort you back to your home this second. But my entire pack depends on me, now more than ever, and this ‘curse’ affects all my Seelie brethren as well. With so much on the line, I can’t let you go without more answers. But I promise I will give you whatever