Page 45 of Given to the Fae
I expect him to scoff, to tell me I should be thinking more about our mission and less about this one human girl who’s not important in the least to us, so the nod he gives me in response surprises me.
‘She’ll ride with you tomorrow. We’ll spend two nights at the next stop. It’s a decent town. Take him out to a brothel with you and leave him there. Quietly drug him if you must, to keep him away for a few hours. We’ll talk properly then.’
‘What of the girl?’ I ask.
‘Leave her to me.’
I nod and go back to camp. By the time I’ve returned, the girl has already skinned one of the rabbits and is plucking the grouse. Warrior’s eyes don’t leave her and there’s a bright fervor in them that puts me on edge. He looks at her as if he’s a child who’s been given a new toy.
I unroll my blankets close to her, and very muchbetweenher’s and Warrior’s. If he notices, he pretends he doesn’t, and soon Locke comes back and we all bed down.
The night passes quickly. I wake a few times, which is typical for me, and each time all is quiet. There are no odd noises or movements, but I didn’t expect there to be. This world seems to be one of the quieter ones when it comes to Dark Realm creatures, outside the bogs anyway, and we’ll be sticking to the road, so those won’t be a problem.
The sun rises early, and I’m the first one awake. The girl sleeps peacefully by the fire with her head resting on her arm to keep it out of the dirt. She doesn’t even have a bedroll, I realize with a pang of conscience. She’s wrapped herself in the one blanket she has, her dirty bare feet sticking out of the bottom close to the fire.
The animal carcasses she prepared last evening are close by and wrapped in the conjured cloth that keeps them fresh. It also somehow deters any predators that might be lured in by the smell, so Locke says. I gut the grouse on a flat stone with my knife and then skewer the rabbits, putting everything over the hot fire to roast before everyone wakes.
I hear Locke getting up and wandering off to piss. Warrior rises next, and mutters something I don’t catch. He leaves the camp as well with a myriad of weapons, so I can only assume he wants to torture and kill something.
Disturbed cunt.
Locke returns to the fire a moment later and glances around. ‘Warrior?’
‘I think he went to hunt,’ I say with a shrug.
Locke’s assessing eyes fall on the human. She’s waking slowly. I hear her yawn quietly, as if not wanting to draw attention to herself, and she shuffles into a sitting position, looking bleary eyed.
‘Meat ready?’ Morgan asks, forever hungry.
‘Grouse is,’ I answer.
He shakes his head. ‘Give it to Bryn. She didn’t eat much last evening.’
She glances up at the mention of her name and looks very surprised that Morgan noticed her lack of appetite yesterday.
I put the bird on a flat stone and give it to her. She takes it from me gingerly with a murmured, ‘Thank you, my lord.’
I turn the rabbits and begin to gather up the bedrolls from around the fire, stowing them on the horses. I notice Morgan watching the female pick apart the bird, as if making sure she’s eating properly, and I frown. I catch Locke’s eyes on Morgan as well and raise my brows at him. His answering expression is long-suffering.
We eat the rabbits when they’re cooked, saving half for Warrior who still hasn’t returned. When we’re finished, Locke cants his head and turns away from the fire.
‘What is it?’
His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly for a moment before he adopts a relaxed posture. He snaps his fingers at Bryn. ‘Slave. Come here.’
He sounds bored.
I frown, wondering what’s going on. The girl looks scared but resigned. She stands up and her blanket falls to the ground, pooling at her feet. She walks slowly around the fire and stands in front of Locke uncertainly.
‘Sit down in front of me, facing away.’
Her lip quivers as she turns and lowers herself to the ground in front of Locke. He takes hold of her waist and lifts her onto his thighs, hooking her ankles with his and pushing them wide.
She looks at me pleadingly as if she thinks I can or will stop this, but I do nothing but watch. This is a show that can only be for Warrior, and I must play my part as well, so I adopt a similarly jaded expression, and I see Morgan to the side of me do the same, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning nonchalantly against one of the smaller trees close by so that he can watch.
Locke’s hand pulls her skirts up, and she closes her eyes. I use the tantalizing moment to scan the grasses nearby but don’t see or hear anything that would alert me to where that sadistic cunt is spying from. When I look back at the scene in front of me, Locke has his head close to hers, and her body is relaxed. Her breathing is slow and steady.
Will she thank him for the conjure he’s working on her to calm her, or will she be angry? Would we know the truth even if we asked her? I’m not sure.
