Wayward Moon: Dark Fae Hollow 6: (Dark Fae Hollows)

by Aileen Harkwood

  To add to the torture, the hot food never got cold or lost its delicious smells, and the cold foods never melted. Everything waited for me to taste and enjoy.

  Don’t eat. This isn’t right. Why would they give you this much food? Any food?

  I bent my legs and hugged my knees to my chest, pressing my thighs hard against the pains in my stomach. Minutes later I couldn’t stand looking at it, let go of my legs, twisted away from the food, and buried my face in my hands. Though I covered my nose, the heavenly scents of a meal like no other snuck their way through my fingers and teased my nose.

  Ruin it. Kick it. Dump it into the trench.

  Yes. That was it. If I could make it inedible, I wouldn’t be tempted.

  I left the bench, bent down, and reached for the first tray’s handles, intending to upend the feast. Stomp it into the slimy mud. My face came too close to the game bird, however, and I didn’t think to hold my breath or even close my mouth. Steam rose from the fowl, with it the fig-like taste of the strawberry tree fruit sauce in which it had been basted.

  I lost the battle.

  The second the steam touched my tongue I couldn’t help myself. My hand shot out and grabbed at a drumstick, tearing it off the carcass. My mouth opened, and I sank my teeth into it. I swallowed almost before I could chew and took another big bite and then another. The meat was tender, the sauce savory. I sat down cross-legged in front of the tray, no longer caring about soiling my clothes and yanked off the other leg and ate that. I paused momentarily to search for a fork, knife, a spoon. No cutlery. I couldn’t find any napkins, or a glass to use to poor water.

  Doesn’t matter. It’s not important.

  I tore prawn after prawn from their shells and threw them past my lips. Only slightly embarrassed, I thrust my hand into the risotto bowl and scooped up a massive amount of the creamy rice with pancetta and stuffed in my mouth. I was already full but still thirsty and picked up one of the pitchers. I’d been right. It was water. Cool and sweet. I drank it from the rim and when that was gone, a second pitcher. Liter after liter of the most sublime water I’d ever had in my life went down my throat

  My stomach was so tight I couldn’t stand it, but I couldn’t stop. The more I ate and drank the more I had to eat and drink.

  This was a last meal. That was the magic. I was meant to eat and drink and eat until my gut exploded inside me.

  My hand reached out for more of the fenix, fingers clawing into the breast and ripping off huge hunks I crammed into my mouth. The next swallow gripped my stomach in pain so intense I thought I would vomit.

  Yes! Throw up.

  I opened my mouth to stick my finger at the back of my throat, but instead something strange happened inside me.

  My stomach expanded. It pushed out and grew to make room for more food and water. I ate more, downed another pitcher of water and my stomach grew more. Out it pushed farther and farther. My ribs spread to make room for my growing belly and I continued to stuff in more.

  I began to cry.

  “Stop,” I said.

  Stretching and expanding, my flesh pushed at my clothing until it was so tight I could hardly breathe, but every mouthful was delectable.

  “Stop. Please stop eating.”

  Flavors seduced me and never got old. My hunger could not be sated.

  The cell door opened. Gorsydd stood at the threshold.

  “Enough,” he said.

  The compulsion left me.

  I was free.

  I threw down the food clutched in my fists, a revolting mash of boiled squid and mint gelato I’d prepared to jam in my mouth.

  Scraps of fenix skin and fish bones clung to my shirt. My face was smeared with pureed salt cod, risi e bisi sauce, and pieces of tiramisu, which I began scraping off until I noticed my hands wore gloves of half-chewed and smashed food. When I saw the platters, my bloated stomach churned. Plenty of food remained uneaten, but in my frenzy, I’d apparently thrown everything into a single pile in the middle of each tray and been compressing it down to fit as much of it as I could inside me.

  Gorsydd stepped into the cell, immaculately dressed in a gray silk tunic suit and black business boots. His male beauty intimidated me. He’d let his hair loose so that white blonde locks rode his shoulders. His beardless jaw was sharp and too smooth to have ever been shaved. Lips the pale pink of a cherubim’s pout escaped being childish due to their wide, masculine shape. His eyes, a rich plum, shone bright and pure.

  Wordlessly, the fae who’d delivered the food, entered and removed the trays, and then backed out again.

  My throat was on fire, my tongue abraded. My lips bled and teeth ached. Every one of my fingernails was either broken or torn. Being hauled naked to the scaffold couldn’t begin to compare to the humiliation I felt when Gorsydd looked down at me sprawled in the slime with a stomach that might belong to a woman who was six months pregnant because I’d been helpless to stop eating.

  His shiny boots squished ooze out of their way as he approached. I lunged forward at the waist and did what the spell had prevented me doing earlier, stuck my finger down my throat. I’d puke all over those flawless black—

  “No.”

  One dispassionate flick of his hand and I was thrown back against the stone bench. I turned and tried to force the food up again anyway. My finger reached back in my mouth, but no gag reflex responded.

  “I need you well fed. That was the purpose of the spell,” he said. “You won’t be eating or drinking from now on.”

  Meticulously, he yanked his jacket’s cuffs down over heavy gold torques encircling his wrists, the only article of fae attire he wore. Both torques were inscribed with the same type of intricate micro-writing I’d seen in my jeweled book.

  “Why am I here?” I said. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Not yet. I’m hopeful soon.”

  “Whatever you think I’m good for, you’re wrong.”

  “I agree we wanted you to be further along in the development of your power. You’re here earlier than planned. I had no choice but to send Cai after you once the human council tried to take you from us.”

  “Cai?”

  “Your protector,” Gorsydd said. “The dark fae who got you back for us.”

  “You mean Aril.”

  “Aril? Is that what he calls himself with you?” Gorsydd laughed softly. “How apropos.”

  I didn’t know what apropos was, but I hated that he was laughing at Aril.

  “Do you know what the word Aril means?”

  “He told me his name was English.”

  “Are you familiar with the word arillo in your language?”

  Another word I didn’t know, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He assumed my ignorance anyway

  “An arillo is something that covers a seed and is discarded or eaten by birds that carry the vital seed elsewhere,” he said. “Cai is essentially calling himself a husk or empty shell.”

  Gorsydd’s plum-colored eyes shone with satisfied glee. I’d just told him something he didn’t know and probably shouldn’t have divulged about Aril.

  “I suppose I should applaud his honesty with himself,” Gorsydd said, “but it really is an amusing choice, considering what’s left of his life and its limitations. A very clever pun, Cai. Very clever.”

  What’s left of his life? Is Aril like me? Doomed?

  “He wasn’t always dark,” Gorsydd said.

  “You don’t say.”

  At my sarcasm, Gorsydd returned to his former tepid indifference.

  “So you know then, what makes a fae go dark.”

  “Kill someone and you lose all that merry and bright,” I said. “How do you manage to fight wars without turning the entire population into indigos?”

  “It’s not taking another life, it’s the reason the life is taken,” Gorsydd said. “As you should understand. You killed five human men in your apartment.”

  “They would have killed me.”

  “Not if you hadn’t returned
there.”

  “They were killing someone I loved.”

  “Thus, you took their lives in revenge.”

  “Self-defense,” I said.

  “Unlike Cai, you aren’t being honest with yourself. You relished making them pay.”

  I went still. He’d called me out. He understood that I’d wanted the fireheads to pay.

  “So Aril…killed out of—”

  “Bloodlust,” Gorsydd said.

  “Isn’t that what war is about?” I said. “You said wars don’t count.”

  “Battles are agreements,” Gorsydd said. “The combatants agree to battle each other, thus there is no blame for doing well and killing your opponent regardless of how heated your blood becomes. Rather, a fae turns dark when he or she takes a life for personal gain. Revenge is always personal.”

  I was already tired of the conversation, and wasn’t about to apologize for what I may or may not have made the fireheads do to each other. Whatever he was leading up to, I wished he would just get on with it.

  “Did he tell you about Eolande?”

  Abruptly, he had my attention again.

  “His wife?”

  “We don’t use that term.”

  “Okay. His mate. Yes. She was killed.”

  “Killed…? No.”

  “What then?”

  “She committed the greatest sin any fae can. She stole the gift the goddess gave her.”

  “What gift?”

  “You, and since you were raised human I’m going to presume that’s how you view things, would call it suicide.”

  Eolande? That stunning bright fae I’d glimpsed when I’d picked up the rock had committed suicide?

  “Why would a bright fae—?”

  “Weakness. The same weakness in Cai that caused him to blame my brother for her death and led him to steal his life.”

  “Aril killed your brother.”

  “Murdered him.”

  “Aril wouldn’t kill someone without a reason.”

  Gorsydd pulled back, expressing mild shock.

  “You care for him.”

  He waited for me to confirm what he’d said, but I wasn’t giving this asshole anything. Aril would not have killed for personal gain. That wasn’t him. He might not have been truthful with me about some things, but I knew he had rules. Strict ideals he never violated.

  “And you’re ready to defend him, I can see,” Gorsydd said when he saw me open my mouth to do exactly that. “My, my. A grubby slum-raised nothing sitting there in the muck like a corpse that’s already started to bloat thinks she’s a match for a royal who once owned the heart of one of the most beautiful females in the realm.”

  His glee returned with a vengeance. “It makes no difference that he’s now a lowly…finding the right equivalents in your culture can be such a challenge…garbage collector? Is that the right term? Someone who cleans up human filth? You’ve seen the Scar of Judgment on his chest?”

  He read my face and knew I had.

  “That was placed there by Queen Rasha herself as punishment for his crime. When fae turn dark, they don’t lose their power. They keep it. It’s polluted just as they are, but they still own their magic. Thanks to Rasha, Cai can no longer use his. It remains inside him, as strong as ever, but he cannot use it or else the wound—”

  “Begins to bleed,” I whispered, the truth dawning on me.

  It explained so much. He’d bled when he saved me from my own dream-born temper tantrum with the cork oak. He’d bled, almost to death, when he’d transformed himself into the draigemor to rescue me from the scaffold. In both instances, he’d used powerful magic.

  “Yes,” Gorsydd said. “I’m surprised the skirmish in La Piazzetta San Marco wasn’t the end of him. The only magic he’s allowed to use is the spell to take a human life when that energy would be better served going to the barrier and keeping us all alive. The Scar of Judgment tells him when and who to recycle, as I think you’d put it.”

  “But I’ve seen him do magic. He’s made glamours and—”

  “Simple tricks. One needn’t even compose a spell to perform them.”

  Two female fae entered the cell, so alike they might be twins. They stood almost two meters tall, with hair swaying down below their asses, thin faces and lilac eyes. They wore sheer dresses in patterns and shades that made me think of leaves floating and whirling on water cool, clear, and tranquil. Their rosy complexions clashed with the depressing surroundings. They walked barefoot through the sludge.

  “These two are here to attend to you. Clean you and get you ready.”

  “Why? Where am I going?”

  “Nowhere, though with the changes you’re about to experience, you may wish to let them go about their tasks. You’ll be much more comfortable with their assistance.”

  “What changes?”

  “That food and drink you just consumed doesn’t just sit in your belly. Your clothing is about to become tight to the point of dangerous constriction. I would estimate you will be gaining about twenty-five or more kilos in the next few minutes, quite a lot for your small frame. I told you. I need you well-nourished. Because you have a human body, you can’t store the energy you’re going to need for what’s ahead, the way a naturally born fae would.”

  Each fae used a single hand to haul me up effortlessly and sit me on the bench. Their other hands juggled water basins at their hips. Together they pulled off my jacket. The fae to the left of me slid her fingers around one of my hands and laid it up to my forearm in her basin of water. Food, dirt, and grime vanished without scrubbing, leaving pink skin and nails no longer torn or broken, but at the same time I watched my wrist and forearm slowly grow in size, my hands become chubby, my fingers thick. My other arm was already heavy when it had its turn in the basin. Arms and hands cleaned, the other fae then twisted me around and forced my head back so that my hair and much of my head were submerged in her basin. She ladled water over my face everywhere there was food stuck to it. When I was allowed to raise my head upright again, my hair wasn’t wet. I put a hand up and discovered it dry, clean, satiny. But my fingers also brushed a cheek grown full and round.

  I began to choke. My own shirt collar dug into the flesh at my throat as it gained weight and my abdomen, already feeling the pressure of jeans that were too tight, expanded in girth to the point the waistband sawed into my skin.

  The fae who’d washed my hands reached for my clothing. I slapped her hand away as I frantically pulled at my shirt collar. She reached out again, and this time, pushed my hand aside, placing hers at my throat.

  “Get your hand off me,” I said.

  She paid no attention and slid her fingers from my neck, down my chest, and toward my breasts.

  “DON’T touch me.”

  As her hand swept down the front of my body, my clothing changed, from shirt and jeans to a flowing top and pants, and my flesh sprang free, filling the new clothes.

  Finished, the twin fae picked up their basins and stepped back to review their work. Gorsydd’s gaze took in my pudgy face, the rolls of fat around my middle. One cherub pink lip lifted in distaste.

  “That’s better now, isn’t it?” he said. “I wouldn’t let vanity concern you, my dear. You won’t be aware of it, of course, but you will lose the weight and much more before it’s over.”

  I had to acknowledge his magic inside me. The spelled food he’d force fed me waited as energy to be called upon. I’d never felt as strange as I did now, not even in the midst of the most chaotic of my dreams, horrified yet excited by the power filling my larger body.

  “You’re feeling it. Good. I hoped you would.” He glanced at the two fae. “You may go.”

  “What is it you think I’m going to do for you?” I asked.

  “What you were created to do. What none of us natural-born fae have been able to accomplish. Raise Ashia from her slumber.”

  “Ashia is real then, not a story.”

  “Very real. I’ve seen her myself.”

 
“You dug her up?”

  “Why do humans think so literally? Her body isn’t buried. She lies in repose in the forest beneath the city.”

  “There’s no forest beneath the city. Trees can’t grow underground.”

  “Perhaps in the old human world, but much more of the fae joined this one during the merge than you and most of Venice realize.”

  “So I’m supposed to go wake her up.”

  “You will be feeding her, just as I’ve fed you.”

  My heart jerked. Panic dumped adrenalin into system that burned its way along every nerve.

  Ashia is going to eat me.

  “If you could see your face,” Gorsydd said with a smug smile. “We aren’t feeding you to her highness. If one pathetic fae soul was all that was required, we would have fed her a hundred dark fae by now. Ashia requires thousands of lives to rise. Your task will be to bring them to her, specifically to call humans living outside the hollow to the barrier. We’ve spent decades weakening the barrier over and around Venice and tried to tempt survivors of the apocalypse to cross it, but they are fearful of it, despite their desperation. Rightly so. That is where the remnants of Lord Acura’s energy and power reside. In fields of—”

  “Nightshade vine,” I said.

  “Very good. I suspected you might know, considering your swigans are decorated with the plant.”

  “I don’t know how you expect me to—”

  “You may have a human body, but you are still fae with power of your own. You are a dreamer, quite rare, but also very useful. We only have to access that power and set it loose.”

  “I’m not calling thousands of people to their deaths, cannibals or not.”

  “You will, and you will succeed where we have failed because you have lived your entire life as a human,” Gorsydd said. “Thus you understand what motivates them and what is needed to overcome their fear of the barrier. You will call them into the fields. Each life force when it succumbs will be soaked up by the dark magic lying in the earth which, after thousands have perished, will in turn feed Ashia the power she needs to rise up. We’re tired of sharing this pathetic excuse for a realm. Queen Rasha’s daughter will take the hollow for the fae.”