by Jada Fisher
It didn’t seem possible, but my stomach dropped further when he sat down on the edge of the cot next to me, setting a heavy bag on my thighs. “Don’t worry. I can patch you up a little.”
I expected him to hurt me, maybe dig his fingers into the searing point of agony at my collarbone. Instead, he was pulling me up into a slight sitting position, his arm behind my back to hold me steady as he pressed a couple of pills to my mouth.
I pressed my lips together for a second time and tried to move my head away. I wasn’t about to take whatever he wanted to give me.
“Come on now, you’re already a prisoner and you’ve met with the prince. What would I benefit from drugging you? It’s just some pain medicine.”
He had a point, and as much as I hated being addled, I needed some sort of escape from the pain. I felt like I was drowning in it, the edges of my brain turned to mush under the constant assault.
I opened my mouth and he placed the pills on my tongue before quickly following up with what felt like the opening of a water bottle. Carefully, he let just enough of the liquid into my mouth to swallow the medicine before letting me have a little more.
“There you go. See? It doesn’t have to be all bad here.”
He let me down gently, my body limp and barely held together. I was vaguely aware of him reaching into his bag and pulling out some gel and a long swab. “This will probably sting a little, but it’s a very old burn salve. It’ll help with the pain and for it not to scar. You have enough of those already, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer, just watched him as he worked quietly, his touches featherlight and careful. I wasn’t stupid, I knew that something was up, but his kindness was different from the prince’s. It seemed less honeyed, less like he was angling for something, and yet I knew that he had to be.
When he was finished, he let out a sharp tsk. “Alright, that will have to do for now. I’ll see about rolling in and bandaging it in the morning, after it’s had a chance to breathe. But for now, roll over for me, will you? I want to get your hands free.”
As if I had the ability to do that. I tilted my head, but that was about all I could muster.
“Huh, he really gave you the full welcome, didn’t he? Alright, I’m going to rock you. Stay real still for me, alright? I don’t want to nick you.”
True to his words, he gently rolled me onto my side, and I heard the tell-tale sound of a blade against rope. A few moments later, my hands were indeed free, and Baelfyre was gently pulling them away from each other.
God, that hurt. It was an aching, searing sort of pain, which made me whimper slightly. That was embarrassing, but I couldn’t really bring myself to care.
He rolled me onto my back, moving my arms to rest over my middle. Carefully, he rubbed the circulation back into them, making another disapproving sound at the welts around my wrists.
“Let me put a little something on that and I’ll let you rest. Just a little longer, okay?”
I didn’t know why he was asking. It wasn’t like I could say no. I was as powerless as I had ever been and right in the center of their territory. I couldn’t even call up a shield if my life depended on it.
More came out of the bag, and he ended up swabbing my wrists with something else, then bandaging them firmly. He was right, whatever that salve was, it did take the edge off the stinging, burning pain. It was enough to let me settle ever-so-slightly, but I was still anxious for the pain meds to kick in.
It was time for him to go, according to his own words, but one of his hands slid back under my head, pulling me up to press the water bottle against my sore mouth again.
He fed it to me slowly until all the water was gone, and then that went in the bag too. He set me down, but he still sat there, looking over me.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, you know,” he said, picking strands of damp hair off my sweat-covered brow. “You don’t have to make everything a fight. No one would blame you for giving into the prince when you’re in a situation like this.”
I looked at him once more, swallowing several times. It took some effort, but eventually, the words started to rasp past my lips. “I think that boat has already sailed.”
“Has it?” He stopped plucking the hairs off my face and instead, his fingers trailed over my features. It was a parody of tender as it traced around my eye, over my nose, then finally my lips. “I could be a friend to you. Put in a good word with the prince. Convince him that maybe a gentler touch would be better for you. Not everything has to be a fight.”
My brows furrowed, and he traced that too. The look on his face was so affectionate, so tender, that I was reminded of how charming he had been when I first met him.
But I wasn’t a fool. I knew that Baelfyre held no more affection for me than he had for a splinter. No, he was angling for something. He always was. There was one language he spoke, and it was power. Gain.
“Bronn wouldn’t want you to be hurt like this, you know. If he was here, he would beg you to take care of yourself.”
“That would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it?”
“I know the circumstances aren’t the best, but is it so hard to believe that I’ve always had a soft spot for you? Would it be so bad to have someone like me as your ally? To protect you where my cousin couldn’t?”
And there it was, clicking into my head like a puzzle piece. Baelfyre didn’t want to force my hand. He wanted me to willingly choose him, to take what he considered a toy away from Bronn only to rub it in his face later.
How stupid. I knew that the anti-humanist dragons could be petty, but the rest of us were playing at stakes for the world while Baelfyre was trying to make some sort of romance novel.
Boring.
It took considerable strength to raise my hand enough to smack his away, affixing him with a look that I hoped told him exactly what I thought about his attempt.
“Next are you gonna ask me to ditch him to go to homecoming with you?”
Suddenly, his grip was on my neck and his face was over mine, teeth bared in a snarl. “You think you’re so clever, but soon, you’ll wish that you had been smart enough to accept my graciousness.”
“Oh, is that what this is?” I managed to rasp.
But he just removed his hand and laughed, standing up and taking his bag with him. “You’re always so fun, little seer. I hope you don’t lose that.”
I didn’t have an answer to that, which was well enough because he quickly strode out. Someone slammed the door behind him, so I assumed that the guards had been waiting out in the hall the entire time. So much for privacy.
I knew that I should get up—that I needed to survey my surroundings, to find any weaknesses as soon as possible to prepare myself for the next day—but when it came down to it, I just didn’t have it in me to move.
So instead, I just laid there until the pain meds kicked in and I drifted away into a solid respite.
9
Ain’t Never Had a Friend
I slept deeply despite how battered I was, not even dreams piercing the veil I had sunk into. But eventually, I was aware of a hand shaking me. Lightly at first, but with growing urgency as I refused to come back to the surface.
Eventually, I couldn’t fight it anymore, so I slowly opened my eyes. That was more of a fight than it should have been, given how my lids were crusted together like cement had been poured over me.
The shaking continued, however, until my mouth opened in a groan. But even though the motion stopped, the hand stayed on my shoulder until my eyes finally opened.
There was a face above me, but it wasn’t the arrogant visage of any of the dragons. Instead, it was one that was drawn, pinched, and deathly pale, black eyes staring at me curiously.
“Sokhanya?” I rasped, jerking much more awake very clearly.
She nodded, her gaze resting solidly on my mouth. Now that she knew I was awake, her hand left me, and she sat back on her haunches.
“How are you even here?” I asked, trying t
o sit up only to have my whole body protest. There was an especially sharp stab of pain right at my collarbone and suddenly, everything came back to me.
Huh.
I had known that being captured by the anti-humanists was going to be bad news, but if that was what I had to deal with on the first day, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like once they really began to sink their teeth in.
But Sokhanya just shook her head at me, pointing to her ear as if I had forgotten that she couldn’t hear me. I had just assumed that she would be able to read my lips considering she had known I’d said her name, but it made sense that she would be able to identify that mouth-shape and maybe only that mouth-shape, considering it was her name.
“Right, sorry,” I said out of habit before rolling my eyes at myself. She certainly couldn’t hear my apology.
The girl’s hands flapped, and she gestured to the salve-sticky patch on my front. Glancing down, I saw the raw, almost triangle-shaped burn right at the center of my collarbone, angry in what little light made it under the door.
“Yeah, you could say that I wasn’t exactly cooperative last night,” I answered. But the girl just looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “Right. You can’t understand me. I’ll get that through my head. Eventually. But you’ve got to know at least a little bit of written words, right? I’ve seen you write notes.”
She continued to stare, huffing like I was being irritating, and I couldn’t entirely blame her. I was prattling on like an idiot.
“Don’t worry,” I said, reaching into my ridiculously filthy shirt. “I came prepared.”
She watched my actions intensely as I reached into one of the three sports bras I had worn to bed. There I was able to pull the small pad of sticky notes out and a pen that folded in half.
She blinked at me in utter shock before grabbing them from me and quickly scribbling something down. After a couple of moments, she held it up for me to view.
YOU KNEW TAKEN?
I nodded, taking the notebook and writing back to her.
I told you that I was coming to free you. Had to get on the inside in order to do that.
She took several beats to read what I had written then snatched it back.
HURT.
I nodded, pulling off the used-up piece of paper and turning it over.
Yeah. A calculated risk. But it worked, didn’t it?
The girl just stared at the note for far longer than it should have taken for her to read it, and I wondered if I had said something wrong.
KILL ME?
I looked from the new note she had written, to her face, to the note again, trying to figure out which field that had come out of. But she didn’t look scared, or even angry. Just somewhere between resigned and curious, as if she had already seen the storm and had prepared for her fate.
I snatched the sticky notes back.
KILL YOU? Why would I KILL you? I’m here to rescue you!
She looked at the paper then me, just staring and staring at the words for so long that I thought her brain was shorting out. But after what had to be several long, long minutes, she took the notes back and wrote very carefully.
YOU ARE LEADER SEER. I HELP ENEMY. KILL ME. ESCAPE. DEFEAT THE DARK.
Her message took up the entire note, so I hastily ripped it off and wrote a new one.
I’m not killing you, Sokhanya. No one is killing you.
BUT I HELP ENEMY.
Not of your own choice!
DO NOT UNDERSTAND. ENEMY!
I felt my frustration mounting, but it was coupled with the pain I felt in my chest for her. Sokhanya hadn’t interacted with anyone who didn’t want something from her since she was a child. She’d been kept in the kind of activity that I had only gotten a taste of for practically her entire life.
Of course she didn’t understand someone risking their life for her. Of course she assumed that I was just there to clean up loose ends and then get out of Dodge.
I knew that words weren’t the best way to communicate what I was trying to say. It was clear she was literate, but still struggled based on how long it took her to read my notes and how she responded.
So, I did the only thing I could think of to make sure she understood me. Gently, I placed my hands on her shoulders and leaned forward until our foreheads touched.
I felt her stiffen at first, her body going ramrod straight at my foreign touch. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever made contact with her in the interest of kindness since she had been brought into their custody.
Probably not.
But I closed my eyes against all those negative thoughts and feelings and instead reached down into the warm, happy places in my memory.
They bubbled up, soft and effervescent, and I willed them into her. It took considerable concentration, just as it had when we had communicated in my vision, but I felt them flow into her in sleepy, gentle waves.
I didn’t choose them personally, just let my subconscious pick whatever seemed right. They rolled calmly, one right after the other in a parade of stolen contentment and sweet recollections.
Mickey and I holding hands as we watched a particularly scary movie. Krisjian trying to cook something for us and ending up with something that looked like slop but didn’t taste half-bad. Mal, Bronn, Mallory, and I playing a board game together. Mickey braiding my hair. Me rubbing lotion into her scarred skin when it was especially dry and cracked. Bronn and I holding each other in the moonlight.
More slipped out, moving me in a way that I hadn’t expected to be moved, but I let them go until the ache in my head threatened to turn itself into a full migraine. Leaning back, I broke the connection and looked at the tiny seer once more.
I wasn’t surprised to see tears streaming from her eyes and an expression of utter bewilderment on her features. Slowly, I grabbed the sticky pads and wrote something.
That’s family. And you’re part of my family.
I showed her the note and she stared at it again, long and hard, before her eyes flicked back to me as if she couldn’t believe that I was real. I didn’t know quite what to do, but I realized that the girl had been told where, what, and how to live her life for over two decades, so I quickly drew the notes back into my lap and scribbled some more.
That is, if you want to. If you don’t, that’s okay. I can get you out of here and get you someplace safe where you can be alone and do whatever you want to do. We just gotta get you out of here first, okay?
She looked at my note, angrily rubbing away at her tears, then took it from me.
HOW?
It’s complicated, but
Footsteps sounded outside of our door and the next thing I knew, the seer was moving with almost whiplash speed. She took our notes and shoved them into her mouth, hastily chewing, while grabbing the pen and the rest of the pad to shove them into my bra. She pushed away from me, skittering to her cot that I could only barely see on the other side of our windowless room. I barely had time to readjust the small objects in my underthings before the door was swinging open.
I was never so grateful for my often-inconvenient figure than I was when the guards strode in, completely unaware of everything I had hidden on me. I had known when we’d set the plan up that they would search me, so there were only a couple of places I could hide things. It had been a gamble, sure, but it had paid off so far.
“Come with us,” one of them said, none of them looking familiar from the night before. Then again, I had been so out of it, maybe they were exactly the same and it didn’t register with me.
Sokhanya rose from her cot, walking past me with her head down. With the light pouring in from the door, I was finally able to see her in full, and it certainly wasn’t a pretty sight.
Her black, thick hair was wild around her head. I could see matted chunks hanging like dreads in some places and tangled bundles in others. Little white flakes from either an irritated scalp or dandruff were visible, while her hairline was an angry red.
She was dressed in no
thing but an oversized sweater that was so worn and gray, it might as well have been a dishrag, and I could see a rash going up the inside of one of her legs. An infection? Allergic reaction? None of the guards seemed to care, so I assumed it was familiar.
Were there fleas in our room? Mites? Ticks? It didn’t make sense that they didn’t want to look after the health of the one thing that was keeping them ahead of the game, but maybe making an oracle sick and weak made her more compliant and her visions come more easily.
I felt rage lick up my spine, incandescent and burning. I really was going to make these people pay for what they had done to me and my kind. What they had done to everyone that they considered beneath us.
I just had to…bide my time and trust that everything else was going according to plan.
We traveled down one hall and then another. I got the sense that we were not going to the same study I had been in before, but somewhere different. I didn’t know how I knew that considering I had been so out of it after my first meeting with the prince, but my intuition was proven true when we walked into what I could only describe as an entertainment room.
The prince was seated in a thick, opulent chair, Baelfyre right beside him. They were both watching a giant television that took up the far wall, a table between them that was loaded with all sorts of sweets. It was so human, so un-dragon-like, that I had to blink several times to make sure that what I was seeing was real.
But it really was. The two young men were laughing as something humorous happened on the screen, Baelfyre idly tossing popcorn into his mouth while the prince worked on a pretzel. They really did just look like a couple of wealthy college students having fun, and for some reason, it jarred me to my core.
Maybe because, in my head, they were more caricatures of evil than anything else. They didn’t have wants or dreams beyond more power and more harm to others. In reality, I supposed they had likes. Dislikes. Favorite colors. Favorite foods. But at the same time, it seemed so impossible that my mind dismissed it. Monsters didn’t like pink or blue or enjoy the taste of cotton candy. They were just monsters.