Page 62 of Faerie Hunted

The blasting hot water scalded my cramped and aching fingers. Blisters burst open and the soap stung to the point where I bit my lip to stay quiet.

I’d be damned if I let Dorian hear me cry out or complain.

I never saw Onyx through the rest of the day.

Once we completed dinner, cooking and cleaning, I followed the other women across the camp toward a massive tent stretching out between the trees. A sort of female dormitory, one of them explained. I caught a glimpse of Elaen across the clearing along with the other two women who had set up my bath this morning.

It felt like a million years ago.

“Here is your bed, girl.” Awoman with short pudgy wings that appeared almost clipped pointed to the upper bunk of the nearest bed. “There is a fresh change of clothes on the sheets. Dorian insists on cleanliness at all times. He says it boosts morale for his people to see us so.”

Her voice was a murmur in the wind but I heard it clear as a bell, including the emotion behind it she no doubt wanted to hide.

Exhaustion, hopelessness.

I was right back where I’d started.

I said nothing, nodding at her until she returned the gesture and walked off to find her own bed for the evening. Every part of my body hurt, and my hands had gotten so chapped from working in the kitchen that the cracks around my broken fingernails bled.

Several of my nails had broken off below the skin line and I still felt the stinging pulse of the hot water.

The dorms were quieter than any I’d ever been inside. Maybe the raucous laughter of my bunkmates back at the Halfling Academy had given me a false idea, or perhaps things changed when you were locked up by magic and treated as a slave.

The women here had been pushed to the brink. They went about their duties with a quiet and tense hush, taking turns at the copper basin in the corner with magicked water running in a constant warm stream.

I took my place in line, mechanically washing my face and underneath my arms before I found a dark corner to change. There was no modesty here.

The lights went out automatically and I was already situated in the bed, the bunk rock-hard. I rested my arms underneath my head and stared at the gently wavering top of the tent, the coolness of the night omnipresent.

What the hell was I going to do? There had to be some way out of this even if I couldn’t get the collar to release me.

Was there a way to get back to Dorian and somehow use my mental manipulation on him? I had to be stronger than the collar especially with theTotalis?—

Except I didn’t have theTotalis.

I’d left it in my change of clothes and those had been taken when they sent me from the tent. I wanted to slap myself.

Stupid. I was sostupid.

Tomorrow, I thought with a wide yawn, my jaw cracking. Tomorrow I’d worry about the artifact, and escape, and every other detail pressing on me. Sleep took me whether I wanted it to or not, mid-thought, and thankfully the dreams were not as horrible as they could have been given the circumstances.

I was running, chased by a creature in the dark, a creature with startling eyes and dark hair?—

A tongue ran across my face and slurped at the corners of my eyes.

Decidedly not a dream.

A massive paw nudged against my face, pushing with only a fraction of his strength, and I blinked awake into the familiar wolfy smile of Noren.

“Oh, my god.”

He whined low in his throat, my stomach dropping out from under me. Shrugging off the last of my sleep, I crawled toward the ladder and clambered down.

The second my feet touched the cold ground Noren leaped on me and I wrapped him in a big hug. “You came for me.” Tears burned, streaking down my cheeks, lost in the sea of his fur.

He chose me. Dorian hadn’t broken him. Hadn’t erased the kind protective streak of the direwolf I knew. I squeezed him to the point of suffocation.

He didn’t move, either.

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