Page 5 of Owned By the Fae
Jak glances back, looking at me with a suspicious face, trying to figure out why I’d want to know, most likely.
‘At the top of the village in the valley below the keep. They’ve been given one of the stone houses as a reward for returning you.’
‘The village?’ I ask.
‘That’s right. You won’t have seen it. I heard you were brought back in unconscious. He built it for us.’
Of course he did, and I’m sure he had no motive other than his many followers’ combined happiness. I keep the scoff inside, not wanting to offend him so early on lest he stops talking to me completely. He might well be the only one I’ll be conversing with at all for the foreseeable future.
Jak leaves without another word, and I close my eyes. I try the counting and breathing exercises again, but they’re even more useless than they were before now that I’ve been reminded of what life is like here for me.
I try not to think about what Grith said about Varrik’s plans for me. Allowing myself to think about the reason I’m here at all is preferable to that, even though it makes my heart twist uncomfortably... and oddly ... in my chest.
Grey, Dane, and Kallum.
After all that time hiding in plain sight ... right in front of them in Alcana ... To think that I had no idea that they were bringing me back here.
What a fool I am.
I cringe when I remember how they found me out. They’d probably thanked all the gods and their good fortune that I’d been revealed to them just in time for them to take me with them. I’d thought they needed me for something. In my stupidity, I’d even thought that I might be able to help them, that they’d let me stay with them since the poor, pathetic human trapped in the Dark Realms had nowhere else to go.
I can’t believe I’d been softening towards them and entertaining those sorts of thoughts. Of staying with them. Of caring for them. And all the while, they were bringing me back here.
I press my eyes closed, scrunching them up hard.Idiot.
I let out a small sob as I remember the night before Varrik came.
I begged Grey to fuck me, to be my first. I’d liked him. I’d wanted him, and I’d thought he’d felt …
I curl up in the bed with a wince that has nothing to do with the pain I’m in. Tears gather in my eyes. How they must have laughed at me. It was just another game. A way to get me here more easily. A path to get their revenge for what I did to their master.
I bury my head in the mattress that smells of damp.
I’m a fool.
A fool who has caused even more deaths than I’d realized because I’d had no inkling that I hadn’t destroyed this place as I thought. Varrik was meant to be gone. Grith too. But not only have they endured, they seem to have thrived ... while I merely existed and was forced to hide what I was.
Gods. It’s not fair.
Varrik somehow survived the fire. Now he’s made a fuckingvillageand populated it with his Skilled fae. A chorus of ‘hows’ echoes through my thoughts. How many more of them have undergone the transformation? How many has Varrik killed in the Dark Realms since I left? How much further does his reach go now? How much closer is he to his goal ... whatever that is?
It's my fault. I should have made sure that he was dead instead of running like a coward.
How could I have thought any of The Cunty Trio really cared for me in the slightest?
The truth is that their pretenses to get me here, my dashed hopes for a future with a home and a family ... whatever awful things happen to me here in Varrik’s power ...
I deserve them all.
Kallum
‘We’ve been told to report to lessons first thing in the morning.’
I stare down at my hands, willing them to disappear and re-appear. I’ve been practicing since we arrived here and it’s much easier to do it now.
‘Did you hear me, Kallum?’ Grey asks, sounding frustrated.
‘Yes,’ I say, wondering at what point over the past three days Grey decided he was glad to be back in this fucking place.
