Page 161 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Ready to curl up and pass out, I moaned and swatted at Pete. He ignored my complaints, though, gauging my injuries. “You’ve broken your nose.” He sighed. “I’ll have to mend it.”
I leaned as far back as I could with him holding me in place. “Do you have a potion for that?”
His mouth quirked. “No.”
“Then how the fuck are you mending it?”
“Sorry, Shorty.”
What followed was a lot of blistering pain and vehement cursing. From both of us. In the end, I sat in a defensive squat in the far corner of the wagon, pressing a rag from Pete’s belt to my throbbing, readjusted nose. And Pete hissed at a row of fresh scratches I’d left on his neck.
But instead of lingering on the scuffle, we silently—and mutually—decided to move on. Let the unpleasantness between us fizzle into the sunshine.
Eventually, Pete relaxed back against the juddering wagon ledge—once he thought us safe from pursuit, I assumed. He draped a long arm over Sionna, who sniffed his wounds until he flicked her nose away.
Tears still pooling in my eyes, I croaked, “You really think the crown is behind the mass culling?”
Stupid question, Pete’s answering look retorted. Because if royal slavers were doing the culling, then who else was behind it if not the king—or his proxy? But I didn’t want my family embroiled in this. In any fucking way!
“It just doesn’t make sense, though, Pete. I mean—they’re enslaving half a fucking city! As prized as female fertility is in this world, doing shit like that is just begging for rebellion. The crown would have to know that. I mean, come on!”
Pete just stared at me, unspeaking.
“What?” I glanced down at the rag I’d been using on my nose. The bleeding had thankfully slowed. “Cat got your tongue?”
He chewed his lip for a beat before saying, “No, Shorty, I’m just hesitant to answer.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to lie to you, but the truth might very well influence your decision to help me kill Gentian. And as much as I need your help, I want your choice to—”
“You think Gentian’s involved in this?” This immediately enraged me. Forsomany reasons. “Why would you say that?”
“Because his unholy name is written all over this.” Pete spat over the wagon ledge, that unholy name a toxin on his tongue. “I can’t tell you what’s happening at the royal level—arguably some lucrative bargain. But I ken how Gentian works, and he has his oar stuck firmly in this one.”
I stopped breathing as he continued.
“And it’s highly suspicious, ken, that Gentian’s lover—Dewina—his favorite, mind you—is a Witch who was born in Humwater Dell. A Witch none too happy that her family was expelled during the Dell’s Cleansing—as history named it.”
I thought I’d be rather peeved about that too if I were Dewina. “So, Gentian made a bargain with the crown to enslave nearly all of Humwater Dell’s beyns as agiftto his girlfriend?”
“I’d wager it has more to do with seeds than Dewina, though pleasing her certainly helps Gentian keep her to heel.”
“But why just the beyns if the whole Dell was complicit in the cleansing? It—”
Something dawned on me then. Something heinous.
“Gentian’s renowned for brotheling, Shorty—especially in the art of womb servility—where a beyn under an entrapment curse is bought for the sole purpose of breeding faelets for her owner—as heirs, or for vanity, or to be slaves themselves. I told you entrapment curses were terrible fates.”
“Fuck my life!” I clenched my eyes shut, shook myself, but the nightmare he’d conjured didn’t fade. “What dystopian novel are we living in?”
Pete grunted at that. “There’ve been rumors around the Shadow Court that the crown has been seeking a way into those sordid markets—seeking someone to help them manage such a venture. And Gentian’s really the only feyr for that job.”
“The crown procures the slaves then? And Gentian sells them? Gets a cut of the action?”
“Aye, well, there must be an intermediary to fool the Divine Cadre. A bargain like this is explicitly against the royal charter. But aye—that’s the gist of it.”
My hangover had suddenly returned. It took me several minutes before I quavered, “Did Rye ever find Maggie?”
