Len briefly considered seeking further clarification of that statement, since several aspects of their current situation were, to put it mildly, worrying. In the end, he decided he was probably happier not knowing.
Instead, he brushed himself off and gave the uninspiring space a thorough onceover. On the side of the cell opposite where Albigard was bound, an open pit about a foot in diameter formed a darker shadow in the ground. The smell made it fairly obvious what it was for.
“Oh, good. A pit latrine,” Len observed with distaste. “Classy.”
“Had you refrained from needless sentimentality, you might have stayed in a pleasant little cottage overnight,” Albigard pointed out, still sounding strained.
“Yeah, well,” Len shot back. “In case you hadn’t noticed, healthy decision-making skills have never really been my forte.” His eyes fell on a small pile of items lying on the ground a couple of feet away from the trapped Fae. “Looks like they at least left us some basic supplies.”
“Bread, water, and a blanket would be the standard accoutrements for a cell such as this one,” Albigard said without much evidence of interest.
Len massaged his bruised shoulder and went to check. Indeed, a folded woolen blanket lay on the damp earth, along with a paper-wrapped loaf of bread and a hollow gourd that sloshed when Len shook it.
“Bread and water is kind of a cliché, don’t you think?” He sighed and set the gourd down. “Still, I guess it’s better than nothing. So, next question—I’m assuming it’s not an issue for you, but if I use any of this stuff, am I going to end up selling my soul to yet another Fae?”
Albigard’s green eyes narrowed. “You are my vassal. You have already been claimed.”
“Okay, then,” Len said, absolutely refusing to dwell on the slight swoop in his stomach at his companion’s possessive tone. “That’s... good?”
“Eat if you are hungry. Drink if you are thirsty,” Albigard clarified. “But save some of the bread. It may come in useful to distract the night-scuttles, once darkness falls.”
“Right. I’m not going to ask,” Len told him. “This is me, not asking—because I do not, in fact, want to know what you mean by that.”
He rose from his examination of their sad collection of supplies. Crossing the short distance separating them, he crouched in front of Albigard and looked him over carefully. The Fae was bound in a kneeling posture—sitting on his heels with his back and arms plastered to the inside of the hollow tree trunk. Once again, he’d been forced into a stress position, with his hands held at head height, the chains attaching his wrist shackles to the welded ring on the collar stretched tight. Even his pale hair was stuck to the wood of the tree trunk as though it had been glued there, preventing him from so much as turning his head. He watched Len’s approach warily.
“I’m guessing there’s nothing I can do about this?” Len hazarded, gesturing at Albigard’s awkward position.
“Clearly not,” said the Fae.
Len ignored his testy tone, which seemed understandable under the circumstances. “Is this place likely to be bugged? Or can we speak freely?”
“Bugged?” Albigard echoed. A small snort escaped him. “No. Or, rather, not in the sense you mean. You greatly overestimate how much interest anyone in Dhuinne has in listening to what I have to say.”
Len nodded. “Fair enough. How’s your jaw doing?” There was an impressive red mark on Albigard’s face where the leader of the guards had decked him, but it was fading away even as Len watched.
“You tell me,” Albigard sniped. “Since you’ve some experience in such matters.”
Somehow, Len didn’t think the Fae was referring to his medical training.
“Yeah, still not sorry about that,” he said. “Though I’d like to think we’re past any danger of a repeat performance, at least. Seriously, though, how are you doing? And I don’t just mean physically—though I can’t help pointing out that this position would become completely debilitating for a human within hours.”
Albigard looked away, not meeting Len’s eyes. “I will not be debilitated. Merely inconvenienced.”
Len noticed that the Fae didn’t address his state of wellbeing beyond the physical. For someone who couldn’t lie, that was telling in and of itself.
“Is there anything I can do for you right now?” he asked, rather than push the issue further. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“No.”
“Will you tell me if you are later?”
“If you like.”
Albigard was still holding himself with that careful stillness, and Len didn’t think it was entirely down to the bonds pinning him in place. There was a fragility to his posture—one that simultaneously screamed don’t touch me and oh god please don’t leave me alone in this nightmare.
Or maybe Len was just projecting. Without a doubt, he should have been expending a lot more mental energy fretting on his own behalf than he currently was. But just as he had in the pocket realm, he found that his near-complete helplessness in their current situation was somehow more liberating than terrifying.
He couldn’t do anything to free them... if getting free had even been their goal, which it wasn’t. Until tomorrow morning, Len’s only job was to try and give Albigard some measure of comfort—physical or emotional—in a grossly uncomfortable situation.
Unsure what shape that comfort would end up taking, he settled against the wall next to the Fae, leaving a few inches of space between them. Letting his head roll back, he gazed at the tiny patch of sky overhead. “Do you want me to shut up for a bit, or do you want me talking to fill the silence?” he asked.
Albigard hesitated for a long moment. “Perhaps silence, at least for now,” he said. After another pause, he added, “Thank you.”
Len nodded, reasonably certain the Fae would be able to catch the movement in his peripheral vision. “Silence it is, then,” he said, and let his mind drift where it would.
They sat like that for some time—long enough for the shadows inside the hollow trunk to shift around them as the sun crossed the midday sky, far above. Len thought about Yussef when he’d been alive, vibrant and carefree, and what Len’s spectral vision of him said about the state of his own psyche. He thought about Zorah and Rans... about the kind of certainty a person would need to feel before they’d even consider tying their life—quite literally—to someone else’s.
Rans had barged into Dhuinne and rescued Zorah with a spell that ensured her death would also mean his death. She’d still been human when he’d done that, with a lifespan only a fraction of his centuries-long one. Neither of them had known at the time about the deal Nigellus had made for Rans’ soul.
Not that the demon-bond had ended up saving them when push finally came to shove.
No—as far as Rans had known when he rescued Zorah, he was giving up his immortal life for a human woman he’d known only a few weeks. But in the end, that same decision had ensured that neither of them would ever have to live without the other. And Len... wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that. It was all very Romeo and Juliet. It also hinged on a belief in the concept of soulmates that he wasn’t at all certain he bought into. But... it was equally hard to picture either one of the pair without the other, after seeing them together.
Of course, none of that romantic ’til-death-do-us-part nonsense did anything to help the people who’d been left behind when they died. Len remembered badgering Albigard about being friends with a vampire, and Albigard’s prompt reply that he and Ransley Thorpe had not been friends. It had been such an obvious lie that Len found himself wondering if the entire thing about Fae having to tell the truth all the time was complete bullshit. And yet, he’d seen other Fae demand promises for things that no sane human would trust to a simple pledge.
Still, it made him wonder.
Beside him, Albigard blew out an unsteady breath, jerking Len free of his woolgathering.
“I find myself not quite as prepared for this situation as I hoped to
be,” said the Fae, in the tone of someone who regretted the words even as they slipped past his lips.
Len turned to look at him, noting the paleness of his features and the darkness lurking behind his eyes. “Which aspect?” he asked.
“Death, I suppose,” Albigard replied slowly. He hesitated, and continued, “And... seeing my father again, perhaps. The last time I was in his presence, he sentenced me to be pierced through with thorns and displayed as a criminal in the public square.”
Len suppressed a shiver, having seen the carnage caused by that sadistically creative form of punishment after the fact.
“Your father,” he said solemnly, “is an utter flaming asshole. You do understand that, right?”
Silence stretched.
With a frown, Len shuffled onto his knees so he was facing the Fae. Some of Albigard’s brittle tension had drained away as the hours passed, and now he just looked lost. Telegraphing the move, Len reached out a hand and cupped the Fae’s jaw, noting in the low light that the bruise from the guard’s fist was now completely healed.
Albigard didn’t tense up or try to jerk away... but he didn’t meet Len’s eyes, either.
“Hey,” Len said softly. “Listen to me. The assholes always have an excuse ready for why they’re treating you like dirt. ‘It’s for the good of the family.’ ‘It’s for the good of society.’ ‘You needed to be taught a lesson.’” He ducked his head, trying to catch the Fae’s eye. “It’s all bullshit, Albigard. All of it.”
A piercing green gaze lifted, pinning him. “And you’ve stumbled upon this wisdom over the course of your handful of decades, have you?” Albigard asked pointedly—though the abrasiveness sounded decidedly forced.
Len shrugged, not backing down. “Yes. Sorry if I wasn’t alive during the fall of the Roman Empire, like some people I could mention. But the way I see it, the alternative is that the assholes are right, and it’s actually okay to use your children as a weapon to commit genocide, or to publicly torture your own son. Or to throw a teenage kid out on the street with no money, because you disagree with who he loves. Personally, I’m not interested in living in that world. So, as far as I’m concerned, the assholes are wrong, and I’m right.”
“An interesting—if reductive—worldview,” Albigard said.
Len found himself suddenly very aware of his hand on Albigard’s jaw. He let it drop. The Fae didn’t comment.
“Maybe I’m just a reductive kind of guy,” he said wryly, sitting back on his heels to put a bit more space between them. “You ready for some food yet? I could eat, assuming you’re one hundred percent sure I’m not going to end up enslaved or poisoned or something.”
“You will not end up enslaved or poisoned.” Albigard hesitated before adding, “I’m not hungry. But... perhaps a drink.”
Len nodded, relieved that he at least seemed willing to ask for basic things like water. He retrieved the gourd and popped the cork free, lifting the neck carefully to the Fae’s lips. Albigard drank, a few rivulets spilling down his chin. When he was done, Len swiped them away with his thumb.
After giving the contents a suspicious sniff, Len drank as well. The first swallow was sweet—bringing to mind glacier-fed mountain streams burbling through alpine meadows. He jerked the gourd away and looked at it suspiciously.
“Problem?” Albigard asked.
“Erm... not sure,” Len replied. “I’m a little wary of a gulp of water bringing on a semi-orgasmic state of enjoyment, is all.”
“Oh,” Albigard said dismissively. “That’s just Dhuinne. Humans aren’t really equipped to deal with it... though you’re coping better than most.”
“Right...” Len muttered uncertainly, and took another cautious sip. The desire to swill the whole thing without breaking for a breath freaked him out enough that he recorked it and set it aside.
“If it’s any consolation, the bread will probably be stale,” Albigard offered.
Len broke off a chunk and ate it. It was stale. And it was also the best bread he’d ever tasted, by several orders of magnitude.
“The vast majority of Fae are still assholes,” he said, mostly to remind himself.
Chained in iron and awaiting execution by his fellow countrymen, Albigard wisely didn’t comment on the matter.
TWENTY
WHEN HE WAS done eating, Len went back to his resting spot at Albigard’s side, and they fell into silence again. Len managed to doze for a bit, despite the situation and the strangeness of his surroundings. He awoke to find Albigard shifting uncomfortably beside him... or trying to shift, at least. The light from above was beginning to dim as evening approached.
Len gave the Fae a critical onceover. “Maybe this isn’t going to do permanent damage to your joints like it would to a human’s, but you’re still in pain,” he observed, fresh anger bubbling up in his gut over the casual cruelty.
Albigard sighed and went still, giving up his fruitless attempts to find a more comfortable position. “Let us just say that your method of restraint in the pocket realm was somewhat more enjoyable.”
Len blinked, replaying the words in his head a couple of times, in case he’d heard them wrong. He must have been silent for too long, because the Fae asked, “Was that jest in poor taste?” in a noticeably tentative tone.
“Uh... it’s more that I wasn’t expecting any jesting at all on the subject,” he said. “I’d sort of assumed we were taking the ‘pretend it never happened and never speak of it again’ approach to things.”
Albigard jerked his chin to indicate their surroundings, a tiny, abbreviated movement that somehow managed to encompass their entire situation.
“Look around you. What use is pretense now?” he asked, sounding unutterably tired. “Surely you cannot harbor any illusions that I will survive the coming days.”
Len bit down on the desire to snap at him... to tell him not to say defeatist things like that. He swallowed the words, because in truth, he didn’t expect either of them to survive the Hunt... or the Fae, for that matter. At this point, his goal was to do his best to help get the creature contained, and hope like sin that it ended up being enough to save the Earth. Possibly Rans and Zorah as well.
“That’s not something I’d prefer to dwell on right now,” he said instead. “If it’s all the same to you.”
Albigard tried to shrug, and winced as his body protested. With a sigh, Len turned to get a better angle and closed his fingers over the Fae’s trapezius muscle. “I’m going to try to get some blood moving through your soft tissues. Tell me to stop if I end up making things worse.”
He dug his fingertips into firm flesh, cushioned somewhat by the stiff brocade of the silk tunic. Not surprisingly, the Fae was one big knot of tension—and there was no question in Len’s mind that he’d been this tense long before spending a few hours stuck to a wall.
Albigard let out a breathy noise as Len probed at the cramped muscles of his shoulders. Calling upon his long-ago anatomy studies, he kneaded his way up the side of the Fae’s neck, then reversed course and worked down the length of his bicep, tricep, and forearm. When that seemed to go over all right, he switched sides and repeated the process on the other shoulder and arm.
At some point during his ministrations, Albigard’s eyes had slipped shut—not in sleep, but focused inward. When Len hesitated, wavering over the prospect of moving lower to work on his hips and knees, the Fae opened them again. His attention seemed focused on the middle distance, rather than on Len, and a faint furrow formed between his gracefully swept brows.
“This time, you truly do have me helpless, it seems,” he said, as if they were discussing the weather or something equally prosaic.
Len sat back on his heels, his hands falling away and coming to rest on his own thighs. Albigard’s green eyes snapped back into focus, settling on Len heavily. They contemplated each other for a long moment in the fading light filtering down from above.
“As long as you have a voice to say stop, you’re never helpless aroun
d me,” Len told him, trying to feel out the shape of what Albigard was implying. “I hope you already know that. But... if you’re hinting at something else, you’re going to have to spell it out for me this time.”
Albigard lifted an eyebrow. “That did not seem to be one of your requirements in the pocket realm.”
The barb hit home, but Len shook his head and pressed onward anyway. “No. What I did in the pocket realm was bad enough. But this is a whole different level of screwed up... because, just as you say—you really are trapped right now. And frankly, I don’t trust you to speak up if you need to.”
He searched for words, trying to frame the concept in a way that would translate to an unimaginably ancient Fae who’d only opened up this deeply personal aspect of his own psyche a few days ago.
“Look. I enjoy tying people up,” Len said. “You already know that. I like being in charge, probably because it’s not a feeling I get much in the course of my everyday life. But I’m only willing to play at kidnapping and sexual slavery as a game. Specifically, a game that both people definitely want to play, and that either person can stop at any time. The problem is, I’m not confident that you see things the same way... and this cell is pretty much the opposite of a safe space, when it comes to exploring shit like this.”
Albigard was looking at him as though he, too, were struggling to get a concept across that should have been simple to understand.
“That I am a prisoner tonight—helpless to free myself—is unavoidable fact,” he said. “As you might imagine, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to focus on anything else at present. Is it so impossible to comprehend that I might prefer to be your prisoner for the next few hours, rather than the Court’s?”
Len swallowed hard, nearly choking on it. Because they were back in the same old place again—facing near-certain death, with Len’s battered moral compass trying to convince him that maybe the rules he’d always lived by didn’t have to apply right now.
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 33