by L. V Russell
“Teya, go back upstairs and cut the rope,” he repeated, pain straining his voice.
“You’ll fall!”
“I’m aware how gravity works. Unless you have a very long ladder, please cut the rope.”
“But…”
“Please,” he said through gritted teeth, squeezing his eyes shut while he rocked back and forwards, the rope tightening, pulling his arm up further.
I snatched the Huntsman’s sword from where it had fallen, surprised at its weight. I heaved it back upstairs, keeping back from the massive hole in the floor. The wood creaked under my feet as I held the blade aloft over the rope. Giving a tentative swing, the sharp edge sliced through the rope with ease, and uttering a small, pointless prayer, I swung again, severing the rope completely.
The sickening thud echoed cruelly, sending rats and pigeons scurrying under my feet as I bolted back down the stairs. My feet pounded over the steps, my heart in my throat at the sight of the still bodies lying in a heap on the floor.
“Laphaniel?” I rushed to him, dropping to my knees and untangling the rope from his body. “Open your eyes, look at me.”
He groaned when he tried to sit, shifting away from the corpse of the Huntsman. I spared him only a fleeting glance, quickly looking away from the purple bruising around his neck and the way his thick tongue drooped over his lips. A foul dampness had spread over his trousers.
Laphaniel leant against me, one arm hanging limp at his side, the other wrapped tightly around his stomach as if holding himself together. Blood trickled from his nose, his head, and his mouth.
“I’ve dislocated my shoulder,” he said, taking a small breath. “And I think I’ve broken a few ribs.”
I gently placed a hand to his side, and though I barely touched him, he flinched.
“Yeah,” he concluded. “They’re broken.”
“Can you move?” I didn’t touch him again. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I need you to put my shoulder back.”
“I don’t know how,” I answered, terrified of causing him more pain.
“I’ll talk you through it,” he said, words coming out faint and soft. “It’s easy.”
I swallowed. “Tell me what I need to do.”
“I need you to help me lie back. Then hold my arm out and slowly pull it until you hear the bones slide in place. Brace your legs against me if you need to.”
“Your ribs are broken.”
“I know, we’ll deal with them after.”
I took his hand. “What if I get it wrong?”
“You won’t.”
I steeled myself, wiping my damp palms over my jeans before I helped him lie back, slowly easing him to the floor. He hissed in pain, blood gleaming on his teeth. I caught his wrist, feeling the bones in his arm grind together as I pulled.
“Harder.”
I did as instructed, but struggled to get enough force behind my grip without pushing against Laphaniel’s side. The audible clunk of bone echoed with his yelp, leaving him breathless on the dusty floor.
“Did it work?” I asked, pushing the damp hair away from his eyes. He gave me the barest of nods.
“Can you rip up some of those cloths?” He gestured to the dusty material heaped in the corner. “And bind my ribs?”
“How long will they take to heal?” I asked, shaking as much dust as I could from the old sheeting, before tearing it into filthy bandages. “Laphaniel?”
He stared at me, unfocused. His next words sounded drunk. “I’ll…I’ll sleep it off…I’ll be fine.”
I lifted his shirt and winced for him, unable to look away from the mottled red marks forming over his ribcage. Taking a strip of fabric, I wound it tight around his middle. Laphaniel sucked in a breath, his hand clawing at the floor beside me.
“Do you think you can stand?” I asked. “It’s cold and filthy in here, we can find somewhere warmer for you to rest. Away from all the iron upstairs, away from the dead body.”
“Here’s good,” he mumbled, lowering himself down. Small grunts of pains slipped from his mouth as he moved. “Here’s fine.”
I moved, so I was behind him, taking his head into my lap. His eyes closed, his body forcing him into sleep so it could mend itself.
“If anyone else comes,” he began thickly, “I won’t be able to stop them.”
I gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “But I will.”
Laphaniel stretched his legs out, holding his breath until he made himself more comfortable, letting it blow past his lips in a shuddering rush. He coughed and flinched, but I felt him fall asleep while I stroked the edge of his cheek, his breathing laboured before calming as he slept deeper.
He didn’t stir again until the sun began to filter through the broken windows, the light catching on the shards of glass dusting the floor.
Chapter Ten
My sleep was plagued with nightmares, of shadow men chasing me in the darkness, bodiless monsters that had no voice or substance, just a menacing aura…a memory of something terrible.
I dreamt of Laphaniel, of course I did, his arms around me, alive and warm. But every time I turned to kiss him, he would turn away, and my mouth brushed over nothing.
No
I kissed him again, and he shoved me away.
No
A cold, wet hand slid over my shoulder, prising me away from Laphaniel, and I shuddered as Lily curled her sopping naked body onto his lap. The Unseelie faerie grinned, lips bloodless, dull eyes bulging and lifeless. Her lithe, graceful body was bloated and drowned.
Mine
Her rasp ended in a soft purr, her sodden body flickering and changing until it melted away completely, replaced with the soul-breaking form of Luthien. Her fingers raked up through Laphaniel’s hair, forcing his head back as she bit deep into the curve of his neck. The moan she enticed from his lips dripped with ecstasy.
I lay awake on the cold floor, waiting for Laphaniel to stir. The dream left behind a pang of jealousy I shouldn’t have felt, a lingering sense that I was simply not enough, not for him or his court.
“Hey,” I said as he woke up. “How are the broken bones?”
He stretched and rolled his shoulder, moving much more smoothly. “Still a little sore, but no longer broken at least.”
“Let me take a look.” I lifted the bandages, running a hand over the blackening bruises that wrapped around his ribs. Dried blood caked on his skin, a scab crusting over where bone had broken through. “I think you should rest for a bit longer.”
“We can’t afford to linger here, Teya,” he said, standing up. “The hounds would have scattered back to Luthien, and she will find out her Huntsman failed. More will come. We need to keep moving.”
“Where do we go from here?”
Laphaniel eyed the Huntsman’s body with disgust. It had already become a feast for the nearby rats. “We need to find a witch.”
I blinked, pushing myself off the filthy floor, hoping I had misheard him. “What?”
“Witches are neither tethered to the Seelie nor Unseelie,” Laphaniel said. “They are part of both, able to roam through the lands unhindered. They like the mortal lands too, easy picking with gullible people all too eager to offer up their souls.”
He walked beneath the massive hole in the ceiling and stared up, head turning to the splatter of blood on the floor near his feet.
“It shouldn’t be too difficult to track one down around here,” he continued. “Amongst all the charlatans, I’m sure we’ll find one.”
“Then what?” I asked. “We bargain our way into the Unseelie lands? With what? We don’t have anything.”
“There’s always something to bargain with.”
“Like blood and nightmares, teeth, bone, and heartstrings? What are you willing to pay?”
“Whatever it takes to get you where you need to go,” Laphaniel snapped, whirling around to face me. “Stop second-guessing everything I do. What did you expect? That we just wander into the Dark Court? We will ha
ve to walk through miles and miles of woodland if we just enter through the trails I know. We would have to go through Seelie first because I don’t know the trails directly into Unseelie. We would wander labyrinthine paths for days, that’s if we weren’t slaughtered first. I am hoping to bargain for safe passage close to the Unseelie castle, which itself is deadly enough.”
“I’m not second-guessing you…”
“Yes, you are,” Laphaniel said, his words weary, heavy. “I’m getting sick of it.”
I held my hands up and took a step away. “I’m not just going to follow you around like an obedient pup. You should have realised that by now.”
“I’m not asking you to blindly follow me…”
“But you won’t let me question you?”
Laphaniel gave an impatient snort, raking a quick hand through his hair. “We are going to find a witch, Teya. We are going to the back end of Unseelie. We will pay whatever price is demanded unless you have some wonderful new plan you’ve been hiding up your shirt?”
I gritted my teeth against the retort I wanted to throw at him; a night spent in a cold warehouse taking its toll on my temper. “I think rushing off anywhere now isn’t a wise decision. You just fell twenty feet.”
“I don’t need reminding,” he snapped, pacing the floor, not quite hiding the flinch of pain as he moved. “Fine, we’ll find a Solitary house. There must be one around here somewhere, they’re scattered all over your world.”
“What’s a Solitary house?” I asked.
“A place for faeries without the protection of their Court,” Laphaniel explained. “They’re usually abandoned old houses, away from humans, away from too much iron. They stand as havens for banished fey, places for fey that no one else wants. Faeries are not meant for solitude.”
“How will we find one?”
“They are marked, so it shouldn’t be too difficult, but we can’t linger. We’ll just stop for food, maybe a night’s sleep, then we go, okay? There is an honour between Solitary fey, but they are still faeries after all.”
“Why couldn’t we have gone to one before, rather than face Niven?”
Laphaniel was quiet for a moment, and he wouldn’t look at me. “I wanted to take you home.”
What he had always set out to do.
“I didn’t know it would be like that,” he continued. “I thought…I thought perhaps you would get to see your mother.”
An ache pressed against my chest, deep and unwanted. “If we hadn’t gone back, we wouldn’t have seen Niven, and we wouldn’t have this scrap of hope. We’ll go back another day; when this is over. I think my mum would like you.”
I outstretched my hand, and together we walked back down the creaking staircases and vaulted down the huge gap left behind from the shattered stairs. We passed by the broken bodies of the few hounds unlucky enough to get caught in the collapse, the others had fled in the night.
Laphaniel led us down narrow lanes away from the warehouse, keeping his head low against the onslaught of winter rain. I held onto his hand, my fingers entwined with his.
Now and then, he would run a hand over a stone wall, or the side of a house, changing direction as he followed some unseen map.
After what seemed like hours of walking down cobbled lanes, Laphaniel finally stopped in front of a beaten-down building, standing alone and crooked. Three storeys of moss-covered stone stood before us, ivy growing up over the roof and forcing itself between the cracks in the paint, splitting it down to the ground. The windows were surprisingly unbroken, but so covered in grime that it was impossible to see inside. The whole place had a faint acidic smell about it, like urine or old sick.
Laphaniel trailed a finger over a symbol carved deep in the stone, jagged edges loosely resembling a crooked S. It glowed blue beneath his fingertips, subtle and flickering, touch of magic and nothing else.
“Here we are,” Laphaniel said beside me, noting my look of despair. “It’ll be warm and dry at least.”
“It will beat a dilapidated warehouse with a dead body in it,” I answered, catching his smile as he held the door open for me, and I was instantly hit with the heat of a roaring fire.
It was cosier inside than I had expected, looking much more like a quaint inn than the exterior suggested. Nearly every table was occupied, but apart from the few fey sitting by the doorway, nobody glanced up. There was a buzz of conversation in the air, mingling with laughter and the soft, lamenting melody of the piper in the corner.
Laphaniel ushered me to a table in the corner, and I shrugged my soggy hoodie off over the back of a chair before sliding into the worn bench beside him. Little candles wavered on the tables, pooling dribbles of wax onto the stained tops of the wood. Above us, more candles burned on rustic chandeliers, the light catching the cobwebs draped over them.
“Can I get you anything to eat, lovelies?” said a young girl who skipped across the floor to our table, placing two full mugs of mulled cider down in front of us. “We have the house stew, or the pot-luck roast,” she added with a wink.
“What’s in the stew?” I asked, warming my hands on the mug.
“Whatever’s left of the roast.”
“Which is?”
The girl laughed, revealing sharp canines. “I have no idea.”
“We’ll have two bowls of the stew,” Laphaniel said. “Do you have any rooms left?”
The girl thought for a moment, glancing around the full room with her hands on her hips. She stood up on her tiptoes, peering over the crowd, and it was then I noticed the sleek fur coating her legs and the fact she didn’t have feet, but hooves.
“Briar!” she bellowed, and a dark-haired man turned her way. “Are you all staying tonight?”
“Just Grace and me!” he shouted back. “The others are going to wreak merry hell somewhere else!”
“The loft will be free if you want it, nothing fancy, but it’s comfortable.” The waitress turned back to us with a pretty smile, then skipped off towards the bustling kitchens.
I took a sip of my drink, the thick foam coating my nose and mouth. It slid down my throat with a heartening embrace, leaving behind the heat of cinnamon and the crisp sharpness of apples.
I leant closer to Laphaniel, resting my head against his shoulder while I listened to the sound of the pipes a woman was playing, sitting on a stool at the far end of the room. Her long, golden hair was plaited down one shoulder, her tan skin decorated with tattoos. Vines and vivid flowers were inked down her arms, over her bare legs, winding up over her neck. She played beautifully, and by the rapt attention she was getting from the surrounding fey, I wasn’t the only one to think so.
“She’s not a faerie,” I whispered to Laphaniel, noticing how she swung her legs while she played. “She’s human.”
Laphaniel nodded. “That would be Grace, then. She’s with the dark-haired fey.”
“How do you know that? Grace could be any of the other three women over there.”
“Look at how he is watching her.”
I looked and understood what he meant, even though everyone was watching Grace play her pipes, there was something far more primal in the eyes of the dark-haired faerie. He stood back, not touching her, he didn’t need to. The claim was there.
“Possessive bunch, aren’t you?” I joked as our food was placed down in front of us, two steaming bowls of stew that were nearly overflowing. I tore off a chunk of bread and dipped into the thick gravy, not caring in the slightest what the brownish meat was. “I’m surprised you don’t mark your lovers.”
Laphaniel chuckled into his drink. “We do.”
I nearly choked. “What?”
“They can scent me on you. They know you have been claimed, and you are mine.”
“I don’t belong to you,” I said, the words coming out wrong and sounding harsher than I intended.
“Yes, you do.”
Having spent so much time alone with him, I had almost forgotten how intensely possessive he could get. He had revealed th
at side of him when I had danced with Gabriel at Luthien’s ball, and he had nearly killed him.
“Do you feel that way because you bought me?”
The look he gave me was all the answer I needed, and I regretted the words instantly.
“You are not my whore, Teya.”
“I know…”
“Do I make you feel like that?”
“No. Never.”
“You have claimed me, as much as I have claimed you.”
I finished my drink, then used the last of my bread to mop up the remains of my stew, noting how Laphaniel had only eaten half of his. “Humans don’t tend to go around scenting people, that’s all. I never realised I was walking around smelling like you.”
Laphaniel gave me a feral smile. “Why do you think no one else has made a move on you?”
“You could have told me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “So, can you scent Grace on that other fey?”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea how keen your sense of smell was,” I began, picking at my dirty clothes. “I’ve been pretty damn stinky lately.”
Laphaniel pulled me close, laughing softly into my hair. “You smell of the earth and the woods…of you. I like it more than the strange soaps you use.”
I brushed a quick kiss on his lips. “I like being yours, Laphaniel.”
“Good.”
Our bowls were promptly taken away, and two more mugs of cider were brought over, along with a large pitcher of ice water. I drank and watched while Grace played a faster tune, her heels clicking against the wood as she was hoisted onto the tabletop. Everyone sprang to their feet, a rowdy folk song filling the room as they sang along to the notes of Grace’s pipes. I laughed at the lyrics, tapping my foot along to the tune, grinning at the filthy story it was telling. From the tabletop, Grace shouted the verses between notes, and the inebriated fey shouted back, drunk on music and good drink. She didn’t miss a beat, dancing on the top of the tiny space above her audience, her face a beaming beauty.
Someone picked up a fiddle, another, a flute, and before long, the place was alive with music, real faerie music that sang to my soul and finally made me feel I was home. I turned to Laphaniel, and we laughed together, a feeling of absolute freedom within a tiny inn, surrounded by faeries who didn’t care who we were. Laphaniel pulled me closer, his breath close to my cheek was sweet with the tang of apples.