Page 25 of Given to the Fae
I kick off my boots and watch her wander the room, opening the shutters and exclaiming over the sight of a sun-bathed field with mountains in the far distance, and then frowning because that doesn’t make sense.
‘It’s a window conjure,’ I supply.
‘Ah.’ She spends a good few minutes staring out at it, her elbows on the sill propping up her head.
I watch her, as oddly fascinated by her as she is with the conjure.
Finally, she looks over her shoulder at me and sees me lounging on the bed.
‘Are you going to do what the healer said?’ she asks.
‘The tea? Yes, I’ll make it for you in a moment.’
‘No. The other thing. I...can’t remember what she called it.’
‘Releasing?’ I spit the word.
She nods hesitantly.
‘Do you want me to?’ I ask, seeing what she says, if she’ll try any seduction techniques to get what she wants like all the others I’ve met, the ones we were warned about before we came to the Dark Realms.
‘Doesn’t matter what I want,’ she says simply, surprising me again. ‘I’ve been a slave since I was a child. I know how things are.’
I lean back against the headboard. ‘Have you really never been released before?’
She shakes her head.
‘Perhaps you’ll like it.’
She frowns and says nothing.
I shift onto my side to look at her more closely. The tip of the scar on her shoulder pokes out from the collar of the dress. ‘Why do you have so many scars?’
‘I was punished.’ She looks at me as if I’ve asked a stupid question.
‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Are you so disobedient?’
She shrugs. ‘I suppose.’
She doesn’t elaborate and I get the strangest idea that she’s hiding things. Important things. What secrets a slave like her could have, I don’t know, but I don’t ignore these feelings that I sometimes get. My orc side smells more, hears more,knowsmore. Focusing on her, I realize what it is. Her heartbeat is steadily increasing while she’s talking about The Barrack. Perhaps it's just the bad memories, but perhaps it’s more than that.
But what do I care? In a few days she’ll be a distant memory.
I give myself yet another mental shake. I haven’t had any difficulty keeping my distance from these unfortunate creatures before. Why do I seem to be having trouble now?
I sit up, deciding to make her tea while she looks around the room a bit more. At least it’s better than watching her. At the small bath, she stops and inspects it. She leans over it and jumps with a small cry as it begins to magickally fill with hot water.
‘It’s meant to do that,’ I chuckle in spite of myself from the table where I’m topping up the small iron kettle with water from a tall, brown earthenware jug.
‘For...bathing?’
‘Yes.’ It boggles my mind that they’re only allowed to wash themselves in cold river water, or from horse troughs and well buckets. ‘You’ve never seen one?’
She shakes her head. ‘Ogdan washed in a hot spring sometimes. He didn’t have one of these.’
I nod at the wooden room divider that’s propped up by the wall. ‘Put that up if you want to use it.’
Her eyes widen and she glances at it.
