Page 1 of Owned By the Fae
Chapter One
Lia
It’s not fucking working.
In.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Out.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
In.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Out.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
I count my breaths. I’ve been at it for hours, I think. I try not to let any other thoughts intrude. I haven’t forgotten where I am or how I got here. But I can’t think about what’s happened.
Not yet. It’s too … inconceivable.
And yet, I should have seen it coming. I know better than to trust fae. At least, I thought I did.
In.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Out.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
In.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Out.One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
My eyes are closed because one glance up at the familiar white ceiling of my room in Varrik’s keep, with all the cracks I memorized long ago, was enough to make me vomit over the side of the bed earlier. It must still be there on the floor.
The servants have come in pairs twice. Once to bring water and once to set a plate of stale bread on the table in front of theempty hearth. I’ve noticed that all of them have been fae so far rather than the pixies that Varrik used to employ. No one else has come.
Not Varrik. Not Grith. Not The CuntyBetrayers.
Those three fucking fae! I can see them in my mind’s eye outside the cave the morning after Grey and I ... Kal’s angry eyes on me, Grey’s blank face watching me and Varrik, Dane’s smirk and his hand wave as he immediately took off the conjure that he’d worked on me so I couldn’t run from them while they were bringing me to my unwitting ruin. He ripped it out of me so abruptly that it stole the air form my lungs.
My breathing begins to quicken when I think of them, what they did,what I let them do. My stomach rolls, and I think I’m going to wretch again. I realize I’ve stopped counting.
I start again immediately, keeping my fear reined in as much as I can, maintaining my tight control over the Harbinger. It’s harder now than it has been since those first few months after the darkness was given to me by Varrik, when I couldn’t sway its desire to destroy even a little.
Perhaps it’s being back in Varrik’s fold, so near to the camp where all this began, that makes it impossible to forget thatit’sinside me. Or, perhaps it’s just closer to the surface than it has been for a while. I did use it for the first time in almost a decade to destroy those orcs before they could kill Grey.
What a mistake that was.
Unbidden, a sob bubbles up from deep in my chest, and I abandon my counting. It’s useless anyway. There’s no respite from this. An involuntary tear tracks its way from the corner of my eye and into my hair even as I steel myself to thoughts of them and their casual treachery.
I’d known they would use me, that they’d brought me from Alcana for some reason, but I never dreamed that it would be tobring me back here. As far as I knew, Varrik was dead, and his Skilled were scattered through the circles of the Dark Realms.
I begin to feel sick again and shy away from the fact that I failed so spectacularly seven years ago when I tried to kill him. Instead, I consider the other ...thing, the flutter of something inside me that I’ve never felt before. It started when I killed those orcs.
There’s an awareness of the darkness inside me that I never had before until the moment they all fell down dead. The power felt the same, and the release of it. The sheer relief and the joy of letting it out of me was something that I hate that I missed, but I can’t pretend I didn’t. However, there was something else that I only recalled afterward. For a split second, I’d felt motivations that were not mine. Concerns.
For me.
It felt as if the Harbinger itself was seeking to protect me, which is troubling enough, but what’s worse is how much I wanted to let it.
Was it some kind of trick by the Harbinger? The darkness as athingwith the ability to reason, withwantspast the destruction and death it so easily leaves in its wake, isn’t something I ever experienced in the years that it’s been a part of me. It felt as if it wanted to kill, but it didn’tjustwant that. It had other purposes for its actions as well.
Its presence was like whispers on the wind, and even now, I can’t keep the odd thoughts from breaking through, ideas that I know aren’t mine. I’d learned to subdue it so well during my time in Alcana, but it feels different than before.
