Page 40 of The Court the Fae Forgot
The silence seemed to thicken as the hours dragged on, until it was so thick in the air between us that it was tangible. Too thick to ignore, and yet too thick to broach—even for Finch, who seemed almost incapable of silence. But after all, there wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been spoken.
I was too tired for questions, my body so close to the brink of collapse that it was all I could do to keep from slipping from the saddle.
Finch had offered to ride with me, but I’d refused him on the grounds that his touch would only exacerbate the wounds still weeping on my back. He’d tried to argue, but his words were quickly snuffed out when Shiel suddenly appeared at his side. He’d followed up Finch’s offer with a whispered conversation that left him walking a good few paces behind the rest of us.
Every so often Zev handed up bits of salted meat and slices of dried apricots as he walked beside me. I savored each bite, the flavors of dry meat and fruit somehow tasting better now than the fresh version of either had ever tasted. That, I supposed, was what freedom tasted like.
Even when that freedom came with three massive fae bodyguards taking me from one strange prison to the next.
I didn’t know if it was some kind of long-lasting adrenaline that allowed me to ride alongside them through the night, however much of a struggle it was. I’d spent the last weeks working myself to the breaking point at the mill, and then been beaten within an inch of my life at my own father—or,notfather’s hand—and yet still, aside from the occasional break, I’d been able to follow these three fae into the night without needing to stop and tend to my wounds.
I began to wonder if my wounds were not as bad as I thought, because as the hours dragged on and the night grew darker, the pain began to lessen instead of intensifying. Hours of fabric rubbing across my raw skin should have kept the sting fresh, but soon, the stabbing pain had faded into a dull ache, and then from that, to nothing more than mild discomfort.
And with the fading paid grew a rapidly increasing appetite.
It wasn’t long before I was leaning forward in the saddle to sneak more apricots and meat rations from the top of Zev’s pack, even as he pretended not to notice.
For the first few miles, I’d kept my eyes on the dirt road ahead, observing the rocks and ruts as we walked, finding it easier to ignore the pain in my body if I focused hard on something else. After a while, once that pain had dulled, my gaze began to drift. I glanced up at the fae men who accompanied me each chance I got, any time I thought I could sneak a good look without getting caught—which wasn’t as often as I’d have liked. They were an astute bunch, these three, their ears cocked for any out of place noise and their eyes always scanning the dark road ahead, looking for signs that might mean we were about to run into someone else on the road.
I’d honestly been a bit surprised that we hadn’t taken to the forest for our travels. I’d thought that the fae preferred nature. I’d encountered them as foxes in it as often as I had their human forms outside of it. Though, still calling their current forms “human” felt like some kind of insult to them.
They were so muchmorethan human.
Shiel walked in the lead, his chin held high as he examined the road ahead. Zev kept close beside while Finch followed up. From the muttered sounds of him in the dark, he wasn’t used to his position at the back, and wasn’t particularly fond of it. I kept catching glimpses of him looking behind, or jumping at something unseen in the forest.
I was just glad I wasn’t the only one unsettled by the dark press of the trees.
As my eyes wandered, I glanced between the fae, sizing them up again now that the shock of being confronted with all three of them together had passed. Aside from the shared golden color of their hair, they were about as different from one another as they could be. Despite that, they seemed to get along quite well, almost like brothers—possessing the kind of bond that ran deeper than friendship.
There was one other thing that they shared, aside from the color of their hair. They were each one beautiful, gorgeous creatures in their own right, far more attractive than any human I’d ever laid eyes on—in portraits or real life. Farmers and lowly villagers lived hard lives and didn’t put much stock in beauty, so my standards to compare these fae to weren’t the best, but I had no doubt if I were to compare even the most handsome of men to one of these fae, he’d fall short.
It was overwhelming at times, so much so that I settled on it being two things at once.
One, that it must have had to do with the glamour. It was such an otherworldly beauty that possessed them, it couldn’t possibly all be real.
Second, I couldnotbe fae. I didn’t care what they told me, I’d seen my own reflection in glass enough times to know I didn’t hold a candle to a single one of them. I didn’t even hold a candle in the same roomadjacentto one of them.
No wonder it took them so long to decide to take a chance on me. Zev said it was the scrap of blanket, and its glamour, that made him pause. I was sure it was just the fact that he took a good look at me and thought there was no way in all the kingdoms or the afterlife itself that I, less than plain, was a fae like him.
I glanced once more from Shiel’s back to Finch and jerked my head away in surprise when I found that Finch was already looking at me. I heard a small chuckle come from Zev at my sudden movement. My ears burned and my cheeks flooded with heat as I realized they’d caught me staring. In an effort to avoid drawing any further attention to that fact, I forced my eyes to wander literally anywhere else. Soon I settled on the Wildness, that deep dark blackness calling out to me from the depth of the forest.
The trees at the edge of the road were painted all in shades of grey beneath the moonlight. The only distinction between the regular forest and what lay deep within was the place where, so far back I could barely see it, the trees grew so tight that no light filtered in. The only light that came out was the occasional flash of a pair of glowing eyes.
And even those I wasn’t sure were real.
I’d already dealt with my fair share of delusions from the Wildness.
Though … now that I knew that the fox was actually Zev, I was starting to wonder what else I’d experienced that might be more real than I thought, too.
The deep darkness drew my gaze in again, singing a song to the deepest part of my soul. For once, it called to me when I wasn’t alone. With the three fae surrounding me, with their ears tuned to the same calls of that magic wild that I heard too, I felt safe to let my guard down again, just a little.
Just enough to listen to the sound of it calling out to me beside the thumping beat of my own heart.
We came to rest, at long last, on the outskirts of a small town just as day began to break. It was even larger than the village where we’d always delivered our grain to, though that wasn’t saying much. We didn’t actually enter the town, but rather skirted along the very edge of the trees at its border until we found a tight cluster around a fallen log that Finch abruptly plopped himself down on in order to stretch out his legs. The groan he let out told me that I wasn’t the only one whose muscles had begun to ache.
Not that mine had ever stopped aching. The pain had just been replaced instead with a dull tiredness that never quite seemed to lift, no matter how many rations I stole from Zev.
It was a painful affair, lifting me from the back of the horse.
