by Kay Maree
Deep down, part of me knew he was right. “It’s late,” I said. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No,” he said, but I could tell he was holding back.
“What is it?”
“Well... Just so I don’t have to wonder... Do you think you could come visit me again?” This time, he blushed.
A smile took uncontrollable hold of my face. “Why, of course I will.”
He looked relieved as he returned my smile. “Thank you.”
“Colton... Thank you. Thank you for talking to me.”
He held up a hand. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you needed someone to talk to even more than I did. And it was my pleasure, believe me.”
~*~
As I undressed for bed, I felt a giddiness that was completely separate from that caused by the lingering effects of the wine. Why should talking to a stranger for a few hours have such an effect? I realized it was because for the first time since my mother left and suffered the ultimate punishment for it, someone had really listened to me. A real life human being too. How fascinating!
From his pauses and his questions, I could tell he was really thinking about everything I said. And he wanted so badly to help... Help me, a stranger myself, whose own horrid people had locked him up. I thought again about his eyes... They, and his voice, held such warmth. I wished desperately I could help. But there really wasn’t much more I could do.
I laid down thinking about that warmness, imagining it flooding over me, wrapping me up like a cocoon. Shame he’ll be moving on soon. At least I’ll see him once more tomorrow. Yes, after breakfast.
~*~
But I couldn’t sleep. It just was not a thing. The stupid pea Zane had insisted on having placed under my mattress had made a lump so big it was impossible to get comfortable. It wasn’t that he really questioned my status as royalty. Our kingdom kept the records on lineage. He knew I was the real thing. I knew exactly why he and his father insisted on testing me. They wanted to damage my wings all because of my mother’s deeds. And that? Well, it wasn’t happening. Maybe tomorrow, I’d even use them. Tomorrow would be a better day. I could feel it. Finally, after four hours of tossing and turning, I fell asleep with a smile on my face and hopes for a brighter day. God, I hated fairy tales and wished I could skip to the happy ending. Maybe Colton could help me… He was, after all, a human being. Human beings, it was said, preferred to live in reality.
~*~
Six hours later
It didn’t work out that way and breakfast was a nightmare. Vincent and Simon were also eating at the royal table to discuss the matter of the prisoner. I was sitting right next to my father but still had to struggle to hear what was said over the whispers and giggles of my half-sisters on my other side.
“Braxon said he was covered in hair,” Bella, the youngest said.
“Not just that bit on his face. But his arms, his chest,” said Piper, the oldest.
Then Lily, the middle half-sister and one of my worst enemies, spoke. “I don’t care about that.” The other two followed her constantly, sucking up to her. She was the prettiest. Perhaps the prettiest girl in the kingdom. Her hair was silken blonde, and of course her wings were perfectly transparent. I couldn’t look at her without becoming enraged with jealousy, especially when I saw how she treated men – fairy or human. They were nothing but toys to her and she made sure they knew and accepted that before they were allowed near her. She would use and humiliate them any way she could and still they flocked to her just because she was the prettiest... “Did he really smell like an animal?” she asked.
“Oh, of course, Braxon didn’t get close to him. Well, Simon said he did. He told me his skin was wet, and that it smelled.”
Simon was the one exception to Lily’s rule on men, probably just because they shared the same mean spirit. They often dallied together when they weren’t busy finding some way to torment someone.
“What else did Simon say?” whispered Bella.
I tried again to ignore them and listen to my father speak with Vincent, though it was Simon doing most of the talking. Simon wanted to find some way, any way, to make Colton suffer. The Chamberlain, my father’s advisor, merely wanted justice for the sake of the court. My father just wanted done with the whole business.
“Sire, if we do cut his hand off, we will be maiming him and possibly killing him,” the Chamberlain said. “That is not our punishment for stealing. I say again, it may be best to simply let him go. We don’t know exactly how the human kind work.”
I closed my eyes, wishing for my father to mumble some agreement so it could all be over.
Instead, he said, “That may have been suitable if not for the fact that these two idiots dragged him across a parade line in front of everybody. I should charge him for interrupting the ceremony as well. Still, he was accused of stealing publicly and he must be suitably punished, publicly. Then, he may go.”
“How about we flog him?” Simon asked with a sadistic smile.
“No, Sire, that creates the same problem. If his wounds do not heal, we may kill him,” the Chamberlain said.
“The stocks?” Vincent suggested.
Father laughed. “Unless human anatomy is far more different than ours than I am aware of, Vincent, may I remind you that he is not a woman?”
“Just cut his hand off and send him on his way,” Simon said. “What will it matter if he wanders off and dies somewhere in the wilderness?”
“Away from the public eye,” my father mused, and I could tell he was seriously considering it.
“No!” I cried, and regretted it immediately. I had clearly annoyed my father, and a gleam in Simon’s eyes told me that he now knew I cared about the stranger. This would put Colton in danger. I hated myself for my inability to keep my emotions secret.
“You object, Princess?” Simon asked, mocking me.
I refused to acknowledge him. Instead, I turned to my king and the only man I realistically had a chance with. “Father, as king, isn’t your first job to be fair to all in your realm? If you hurt him so that you know he’s going to die, isn’t that just a facade of justice? You’re better than that.”
“Someone may discover the corpse,” the Chamberlain added, not to be on my side, but out of practicality.
“I’ll chase him away myself. Just like Regina,” Simon said. “No one will find him.”
“No!” my father said, his annoyance growing. “No, it must be something else.”
The table lapsed into silence, the men staring at their food and thinking. No one even moved except for Simon, who was smiling at me in a way that made my stomach lurch.
I averted my gaze. He knew I didn’t want to see the human hurt. “Sire? How about trial by combat? In the training arena.” He suggested it while still looking right at me.
I interrupted my father as he was about to speak, “He’ll be killed there, too!”
“Cassandra Morgan Exley! Hush!” Father yelled. He raised his hand and I cringed but he didn’t hit me. “You are not part of this conversation anyway,” he hissed. “Know your place, girl!”
Girl. The worst curse in the world. I froze, wondering what mother would do, what Colton would say, and if human beings had these rules. How I wished I could leave the kingdom.
Simon continued to sell his idea. “Sure, he’ll die, Sire. But you will be able to say you gave him a fair chance. Surely, if he is innocent then the gods will see him through it?”
“How is pitting a mortal our size against a bladed fairy, in any sense, justice?” I said, mostly to myself.
Father turned to face me slowly, threateningly. “Cassandra, I am trying to figure this out. If you interrupt me once more, you will end up in the stocks yourself.”
Feed me to Simon like fish to a lion in a cage. Thanks, dad. At this mention of the word ‘stocks,’ Simon and I looked at each other. He grinned as my hand tightened around my fork. He licked his lips. I looked down in s
ilent fury, determined to hold my tongue. I would not give him or my stubborn father the satisfaction.
“Chamberlain? Your opinion?”
“It is a relatively obscure law, Sire. I would have to refresh myself on its finer points at any rate, but as with his hand, I’m also not sure how his mortality would figure into things. Such fragile creatures, humans... Picture the first match alone. Say they each score five or so cuts, and by some miracle the fairy yields. The next match starts, and there’s the human, already with five cuts, still bleeding. Unimaginable, but so.”
Trial by combat. I had seen one once, so long ago I could barely remember. I was still a child and my mother was still alive or at least fluttering about the kingdom. It took weeks to complete. I could not remember what the man’s crime was and I don’t think I knew then either. I just saw him fight for around an hour a day. He and a member of the army would face off in the arena cutting each other until one yelled “yield.” Each day he had to face as many soldiers as would fight him; the soldiers being rewarded with extra food, or a special consort for the night. The arena was always offering entertainment but it was usually those soldiers who were picked as performing poorest during drills that fought for our amusement. It kept the fairy troops training hard, for though we healed instantly, getting cut still hurt all the same. How many years must it have been since a criminal was in the arena?
Chamberlain was right. With even every small cut counting against the stranger, he was at an enormous disadvantage. How could he be expected to stand up to the whole army one after another? I wanted to cry out but Simon’s greedy eyes on my body told me not to.
“I’ll hack him to pieces myself just to have done with all this,” he said, egging me on. “We don’t need an army for him. He is a tiny, criminal, weak, weak man. He’s shown us that, right Cassandra?”
“Enough, Simon,” my father said. “Trial by combat. We’d have to come up with some sort of explanation as to why he’s being treated differently. Can you do that, Chamberlain?”
“I believe so, Sire. I’ve a basic idea already, in fact.”
“One less human in the world,” Father said as he sipped some wine. “I like it. Even being nearly our size they’re filthy animals, they’re just... Filthy. That cut on his arm! Bleeding and bleeding.”
I’d always known my father had never truly gotten over my mother. But his words proved it now.
“He can’t bleed forever. He’ll run out of blood,” Simon said.
“Father,” I begged. “You gave up the idea of taking his hand, agreeing it would only be a facade of justice. Yet, you admit to knowing this idea is also killing him outright. All he did was take food when he was hungry. He’s a pacifist. A builder too. He doesn’t deserve—”
He backhanded me so fast I didn’t have time to blink, sending my half-sisters into another fit of giggling. “I said I wanted to hear nothing more from you! Why you know so much about him is concerning too! Just like your mother! This is a court matter. It doesn’t concern a woman at all. I said to know your place. Clearly, you don’t. I will show it to you. Guards! Put her in the stocks for a full turn of the earth!”
I made sure not to look at Simon or Lily as I was taken away. Their eyes would be filled with a gleeful malice. I did not want them to be the last thing I saw before being locked up. I was sure I would see Simon later, anyway. Yet, even that was not what troubled me the most. I realized that being locked up for a day would prevent me from keeping my promise to visit the stranger that morning. He was the only reason I cried as they led me away.
~*~
Colton
The sun had been up for a while when, to my relief, they brought breakfast to my cell. I sat against the section of wall taking stock of my situation: I had escaped the witch who imprisoned me, costing me a gash on my arm. She had planned to starve me until she got what she wanted or until I died. But I wasn’t a killer. I wandered lost for several days, growing hungry and weak. For now, I was thankful for the cell. It was dry and I had food. I had been apprehended by fairies just about the moment I found food. That was pretty terrible. I didn’t resist them in any way, yet they kept handling me as roughly as possible. One of them, Simon, kept hitting my wounded arm and making it bleed again. I was thrown on the ground in front of the king, stood back up, stripped, gawked at, insulted, and thrown in this cell. It was frustrating and humiliating but I had been through worse.
The worst was probably wondering what was going to happen to me all that first night. For all I knew they were going to execute me or let me starve. At one point, Simon came to show someone else “that neat thing” that happened when he struck my arm. Then, she visited me. And somehow, it changed everything. I looked up wearily, and to my surprise I saw a girl. She wore a light blue dress, her hair tied back with a matching ribbon. By her eyes, I recognized her as the one who was next to the king at that parade; the one that had looked like a circus menagerie more than anything.
Everyone else had looked at me with a certain contempt or disgust. This girl just looked at me. In her eyes I saw empathy and curiosity. To the others, I was nothing more than an odious novelty, worth no further consideration. I remembered her promise from the night before to visit me. She said “in the morning.” Hopefully soon, I thought as I finished eating. Maybe she’ll know what’s going to happen to me too.
Finally, I heard someone coming. I must have been more excited to see her than I’d realized, for I found myself on my feet instantly. But it wasn’t her and a new ‘she’ wasn’t alone. Three girls, none of them Cassandra, arrived at my cell and peered in at me. I was happy to see them until I saw the one in the middle who the others seemed to look to. There was a directness to her gaze that made me uneasy, especially given our positions. I felt like a piece of meat being sized up. I now knew for sure why I preferred to build on my own. I’d seen too many gawking construction workers on sites that cared nothing about sustainability. I’d seem the women’s slumped shoulders and quickened steps too. I was those women now. The trio fell silent as they stood in front of my cell.
“Hi,” I said, unable to hide my nervousness.
They said nothing to me. “He talked to us!” one of them giggled to the one in the middle.
So that was it. They were just gawking. I went and sat back by the wall, to wait until they were gone.
“What should we do?” the tallest whispered.
“You, come here,” the one in the middle said.
“What for?”
“I am the King’s daughter.”
“Okay.”
When she realized I didn’t plan to say any more than that, or to obey, she grew furious. It wasn’t the fury of a spoiled girl, though. There was no tantrum, not even a raised voice. “If you do not do as I say, I will have you tortured for dishonoring me.”
It was a simple statement of fact. She may have even wanted me to defy her so she could make good on her threat. I wasn’t willing to risk it and walked to the bars trying to hide my fear.
“Look at his arms,” one said. “All hairy, just like Braxon said, Lily. I told you.”
So that was the middle one’s name. Lily. She looked at me and unfurled her wings a little, studying me for a reaction. They were clear, only visible because they refracted the light, much like a soap bubbles would. I didn’t respond and she snorted and closed her wings again. “Do you really have that hair all over your body?” she asked in a confidential tone, as if she were trying to get me to admit to some dark, guilty secret.
“I don’t know. Kind of,” I said.
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Strip!”
The other two girls looked at each other in surprise, giggling nervously with bulging eyes. If this was some plan of Lily’s, they clearly weren’t in on it.
Slowly, I removed my coat and shirt. Their laughter grew less stifled at the sight of my chest hair.
“Take that off,” one said, pointing a
t my bandage.
It’s like a game to this one, she’s laughing.
“Well?” Lily said. I looked at her, not comprehending. “I said, strip!”
She wanted me to take off everything. Okay, you’ve been seen naked before. Sure, never in such circumstances though. Never as a... Specimen. Still, my unexplained fear of her outweighed any sudden embarrassment I felt over my body. I took off my shoes, then my pants.
Now they laughed openly. “Oh my... Between his legs! Do you see?”
I moved to cover myself. I felt like a travelling sideshow freak.
“No, put your hands down. By your sides,” Lily ordered.
I grew even more uncomfortable when she again showed me some of her wings, this time not subtle at all about looking for a reaction from me. I wondered what effect clear wings were supposed to have on fairy men. Would a fairy in my position now be sporting an erection, in spite of the situation? I tried to think of what Cassandra had said about wings but I was lost and could only blame it on the gawking fairies.
“Does your skin really pour out foul water?” one of the other girls asked.
“What, sweat?” I asked.
“Sweat,” they said to themselves.
“You smell terrible,” Lily said, looking me in the eyes.
“I haven’t been able to bathe in over a week,” I said.
“What nonsense is that?” she asked.
“Bathing, where I wash away that bad smell.”
“Oh, Piper, let’s get him a ‘bathe.’ I want to watch!”
“No,” Lily said. “Let him die in filth, like the animal he is.”
“What?” I said. “Die?”
Lily smirked. “Yes. You’re going to die tomorrow. You’re going to fight Simon, and you don’t stand a chance. He’s immortal. He won’t stop until he’s laid you open.”
“Fight? I don’t want to fight anyone. Why can’t I just go?”
“Because you’re a criminal.”