“All the way to Dreamsong, through the Bleeding Woods, with a human.” Shaye glances back at me before locking eyes with Hol. “I give her three days.”
“Generous,” Hol says. “I’d be shocked for two.”
“Great, now I have to pick between one—which seems too short—and four, which we can all agree is far too generous,” Giles mumbles. “I’ll take four, if I must. Hear that, human? I’m being optimistic for you.”
They’re talking about how long I’ll manage to stay alive, I realize. I shake my head slowly; it becomes a ripple down my spine that quickly evolves into shudders. I can’t move with my bones rattling so violently. My back hits the tree and I slide down it once more, curling up into a ball and clutching my head.
“We have to get moving.” Oren tries to pull me up by my elbows. “It’s not safe for us out here.”
“Of course it’s not! I’m not safe with any of you.”
“None of us are going to hurt you.”
“At least not while you have Davien’s magic,” Giles says with a singsong voice. His skirt swishes slightly around his thighs as he walks.
A whimper works its way up my throat and escapes as a muted, garbled noise. “I want to go home.”
“You can’t,” Oren says.
“Take me back,” I demand. “Take me back now,” I repeat, louder. It’s enough that I gain Davien’s attention. He stops and slowly turns to face me as I push myself off the ground of my own accord. “You—You made a deal when you married me. You took an oath that I would never be left wanting. And I want to go home.”
Davien slowly stalks over, his muscles rippling with a power that calmly promises that he could tear me apart if he desired. His fae magic is like an aura. I’m shocked that it doesn’t ripple the air around him like heat off of stones on a summer day.
“About that,” he almost purrs. “First, home, where would that even be? Back to that ‘decrepit manor’ you told me your family lives in? Is that where you consider your ‘home’? Or did you make my estate your home?”
“You left it to me, in your letter.” I try not to let myself be intimidated, but it’s harder and harder the closer he gets. “I want you to take me back there.”
“I hear how you keep using that word—want. But it’s not going to have the effect that you think it will.”
“But—”
“Yes, I made you a very generous vow that, I’ll point out here and now, I did not have to make. And you’re right in that I had to uphold it. However, you’re forgetting a rather key part of it.” He comes to a stop before me, staring down the bridge of his nose. “My vow only lasted until you, or I, departed that mortal plane. And seeing as we have now crossed the Fade into the land of Midscape…we are no longer on that mortal plane. So my vow was fulfilled and is nullified.”
He takes a half step closer. My back hits the tree again, preventing further escape. He’s so close that I can feel his breath, just on the edge of the brisk air of winter.
“You have no claim over me here.”
“I just want to go home,” I whisper.
“I will take you back to your pathetic world as soon as I have the magic within you.” He grabs my chin, tugging my face upward to make me look him in the eye. “Until then, you are under my command. You listen to me and I might just get you out of this alive.”
I try and think of everything I’ve ever learned about the fae. Monsters? Confirmed. Can’t tell lies? I’m pretty sure that’s true, since I’ve never smelled a lie on any of them. Have to uphold their vows? It seems so, since he’s so eager to weasel out of the vow he made on marrying me. How can I use any of that to survive? Think, Katria, think!
“So if I go with you to this Vena, and give you whatever magic is in me, you’ll take me back to the manor?”
“I swear it.”
I swallow thickly. That sounded like a vow. And I didn’t smell smoke. “Fine. Then lead on.”
He releases me and turns away briskly. As he crosses by his companions I see the woman, Shaye, murmur to him. I can barely hear what she says: “Next thing you know, she’ll be trying to say that she’s still your wife. As if human laws can be upheld here.” She looks back at me with a snide grin. She knows I can hear her. I get the sense she wanted me to.
Even though with her red hair and butterfly wings she looks nothing like Helen or Joyce, she reminds me more and more of them by the minute.
I gather my muddy, soiled robe around me, try to walk with dignity that I know I don’t possess right now, and trudge forward barefoot into the woods. It’s a miracle that my feet didn’t get cut up last night—at least the forest floor here is covered in a plush, comfortable moss. The thought gives me pause. I stare down at my feet, wiggling both of my toes.
“What is it?” Oren asks.
“Tell her to hurry up,” Hol shouts back at us. “We’re giving her four days max before she dies here. No time to dally.”
“It’s nothing.” I shake my head and press onward, breezing past Oren and the ugly sense of betrayal his mere presence fills me with.
Last night, I twisted my ankle on a root badly. I heard the bones crunch and the tendons snap. I shouldn’t be able to walk right now. But the joint feels fine. In fact, now that the initial haze has cleared, I feel like I could dance, run, jump, and sing.
If only I had a reason to do any of those things. All that lies before me is a long march through enemy territory.
But at least my ankle is a quiet assurance of one thing—maybe I do really have magic. Otherwise, how would I be walking right now?
