War-Torn

by J. E. Keep

  Her jaw tightened as he pawed at her and her resolve wavered. She’d been bluffing about so many things, hanging on the hope that given just a little more time, she’d come up with a plan. A solution. Something that would make her father endlessly proud of her.

  “I know what I’m doing,” she lied once more.

  “That’s a weak lie,” he responded in that dark, low voice of his, so calm now despite its ominous tone. “You don’t. You don’t have the faintest clue what you’re doing on your own.” He tilted his head slightly, eying her with his cold grey gaze as he took a lock of her dark hair in his fingers behind her head, the other hand tracing along her jawline toward her mouth. “Was it the mother that made you so reliant on the instruction of another? Father?” And his lips curved into such an amused grin at that. “You need a big, strong daddy to tell you what to do?”

  “I told you not to touch me. Who was it who taught you not to heed those protests? Your uncle?” Caprice’s body tightened, for even as she was saying it she knew she’d crossed the line and would pay for it. It felt so good, though, for the briefest of seconds.

  The grim look that crossed his face was terrifying. His hand went from her face to her neck, and he clenched her throat shut in one hand as he glowered so hard at her. “You should have got on your knees and begged me for your chance at getting out of this with something to show. You should have prostrated yourself and fought, not been a snide little bitch who was too full of her own ego to make the slightest effort to hold on to this.” He ground his teeth and glared. “You’re weak. Soft. And worse yet, you aren’t even clever.”

  She couldn’t come up with a retort as his hand tightened around her, but she didn’t struggle against him. She wouldn’t. Feeling his anger was almost cathartic in a way because of how she’d had to hold back her own rage.

  Still, as her face began to redden, her hands lifted to his arms, grabbing onto him.

  “You’ve lived a pampered existence,” he spat out bitterly, unperturbed by her struggling. “You think you suffered because you spent so short a time with that piece of shit. But you don’t know what suffering is, you little bitch. You don’t know what it is to have to work for your successes every day of your life.” As her face turned so blood red and her lack of air became a panic, he let her go abruptly. “If you had the slightest idea, you’d have seen me as a generous opportunity.”

  She coughed away from him, her delicate body trembling under that tight corset and her eyes watered from lack of breath. When she finally managed to get some breath into her lungs, her gaze narrowed at his. Her pale hand went to her throat, rubbing along the silver chain that the emeralds hung from to try to soothe her pain. “I saw how thrilled you were to have me here. I couldn’t imagine doing enough for you to overcome that.” He took hold of her hair with his other hand, pulled her into an upright position by it, tugging those strands against her scalp as he forced their gazes to meet again. “You see? You’re weak. You give up so easy. Like the pampered little porcelain doll you are,” he remarked, and then she heard it: true distaste on his voice. It wasn’t the anger or sternness of before. It was almost disappointment instead. And as his eyes trailed down over her well-presented body, there was no longer the desire of before.

  The pain prickled her scalp and she rose up on tiptoes, her house slippers doing little but making her feel precariously off balance. The fact that he could see through her, down to the things she denied about herself, was like salt in a wound, and her breath quickened as her hands dropped to her side. She pressed the palms against the wall behind her as she stared at him.

  “You’d have me beg only to feel the joy of refusing me,” she lamented, and she was reminded of just how right he was. She hated to try anything if there was a risk of failure. Of being unable to save face.

  The young Viscount leaned in so that he was but a couple inches from her, barely any space between them at all. “I’d take more joy from you than that,” he remarked, but it wasn’t meant to be reassuring. The darkly lecherous look on his face said he had more thoughts than simple refusal. Though his fingers curled her hair tighter in his hand, and she felt herself near his face because of it. “But not from a weak-willed little doll.” He had hovered a hair’s breadth from her lips, but abruptly he pulled away and relinquished her hair. “There’s not enough fire in you to make it interesting,” he said, turning and walking away.

  “I’m not weak. I lived with him, didn’t I?” She had no idea why it bothered her so much, but it did. He’d bruised her pride, her ego, and dug his claws into her cunning. She felt raw and exposed, as if she couldn’t keep anything from him, and it was like bugs crawling on her.

  All she got was a derisively singular laugh from him as he receded down the hall. Her time with the old man must have been so short compared to what he likely endured.

  “You should be grateful!” she shouted past him before collapsing down in a heap, her corset digging into her breasts and ribs. Her ego kept her from running after him, from begging him for his blessing, but her hope had dwindled. What now?

  Chapter 33 – The Soldiers

  “Furthermore, Captain, I want to see this place got into shape. Once your men are done searching the surrounding countryside for my targets, they’ll start to get the walls and fortifications into place.” The Major was in no mood for disagreement with a subordinate, not after the shabby state he’d seen the camp in.

  “But sir, my men are hardly construc—” The portly officer was cut off immediately.

  “But nothing, Captain. Your men need discipline, to keep them ready. We are in a war for our very right to exist, and we face opposition at home as well as from across the trenches.”

  As the Major gave his speech Liena’sa saw a messenger come up the stairs and head towards the office, about to interrupt. She knew better than that, however, and blocked his way, keeping Kelifron from having to break off his speech.

  “What is it, Private?” she insisted sternly.

  It caused the young man to halt and stare at her with some confusion. “I’ve got a message just delivered,” he said breathlessly, having run up the stairs with his own growing size impeding him. “For the Major,” he explained, holding out the sealed official envelope of the state. It must’ve just arrived by official courier to the base.

  Liena’sa took it and waved her dismissal. The fair half-elf woman was used to Kelifron’s moods, good or bad, but she knew better than to break that seal. Instead, she went back to his side and waited for a pause before handing it to him.

  “Issue the orders, Captain.” He ended his stern lecture abruptly, sending the rotund man off down the stairs. Still wearing the expression of the severe, intimidating superior officer, he looked to Liena’sa. “What is it?” he asked, taking the envelope, and plucking a letter opener off the desk.

  He took out the letter and she could see the most minute flicker of change in his expression as he saw what was sent. The Major was not easily surprised or perturbed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Very calmly, Hendrik took the letter over to the Captain’s desk. There he unshielded the lamp and lit the corner of the letter on fire, taking great care to spread the flame and burn the whole thing. “Our prey has gone to ground,” he said. “They don’t know where, but I can find out.”

  How many places could one scared woman hide? Liena’sa’s lips turned upwards as she walked after him. “I don’t doubt that. You’re quite resourceful.”

  His gaze turned to hers, hard and demanding. The complement rolled off him simply because his mind was turning, and it wasn’t the time for such things. Oh, he could use her for his enjoyment, but not when there was work to be done.

  “Go get us some civilian clothes for us both, Lieutenant. Something worn and travel ready. We’re going to go after our prey, down and dirty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There wasn’t even a flicker of disappointment across her elven features as she turned to do just as ordered
. There’d be no point in it.

  Chapter 34 – The Rebels

  Life beneath the surface of the world was strange and busy. The people there were always moving, day and night, as neither had much meaning beyond the sun. It kept the secret city safer, Rosa was told, to have the place active around the clock. It made it less vulnerable to surprise.

  Though the people there were never still, she found her own journey to have come to a begrudging halt. Everybody had a place, a use, but Rosa had yet to find hers, and she knew patience was not endless. In fact, she’d already been granted more than she reckoned others typically got.

  So she began her day again by heading to the tavern once more. The place was always busy, the gruff and world-worn travellers there the type that were always involved in over world missions of trade, raiding, or worse.

  At the bulletin board, her distress at seeing no new postings melted into quiet curiosity. She noticed it again then: the strange fungus that seemed to grow on most everything in the underground city. It coated the cavern walls. It coated the buildings. With a poke she felt how strangely spongy it was.

  Her reverie was broken by a low, strange voice to her side. “It sops up all the noise. Keeps all our ruckus from bouncin’ off the cavern walls until it crushes us all.” And with a look she saw the visage of a large figure by the end of the bar. Clad in ragged leathers, he was no man. At least, no ordinary one. The thick, brown fur that poked out of his collar and sleeves revealed him for one of the wolfkin.

  She couldn’t help but scrunch up her nose a bit, though she’d been trying to reduce her apprehension of the nonhuman among the city.

  Still, years of hatred was not easily undone.

  “Well, that’s good. Not dying. Is there seriously no one in this place that needs anything done?” Each passing day made her more and more aware of her likely place in this society, and she couldn’t stand the thought of it. Yet at the same time, the idea of going back into the forest was unthinkable.

  Death was better.

  Reclined against the bar on one elbow, the bestial man raised a glass of ale and drank before answering her. “Plenty of job notices there,” he said, and true enough, though none suited for her, or that she hadn’t already been rejected for. “More still, if ya know who ta ask,” he added as he dragged his wrist across his maw, wiping it clean. “What’re ya lookin’ for anyhow?”

  “A way to earn my keep that involves more than s—” She bit her tongue. She was supposed to know better than talk ill of that kind of work, but she’d been conditioned to loathe it. That was for people who didn’t have her skills. “I can fight.”

  The tall brute eyed her curiously, as if disbelieving her statement at face value, but he nodded his acquiescence to her claim. “Not many volunteer to go up and fight if they can avoid it. It carries a short life expectancy for most. If yer caught it’s back to the front, which is worse’n death. It’s undeath, waitin’ for the end,” he said, his curious, inhuman gaze staring off as the glass dipped in his hand.

  It wasn’t going to be the front for her. She knew the risks she was taking, and it almost seemed laughable to her that she didn’t want to stay beneath where she was safe. All she had to do was sleep with random people.

  But that wasn’t what she wanted in life.

  She wanted to be useful. To do something that she could be proud of.

  She wanted to make a real difference, to atone for her failure to assassinate the Queen.

  “Well, is that why no one bothers advertising it?”

  The wolfish grin he gave her before downing more of his ale spoke of his amusement.

  “Raiders who last form tight-knit groups. They don’t recruit openly, most of the time,” he said in his alien voice, deeper than a normal man’s, harsher. “But it’s a shit life too, miss. Ya risk a lot, holdin’ on for those brief moments you get ta come back here an’ rest between missions. But all the while ya tryin’ ta relax and live, that tickin’ clock won’t shut up in the back of yer head. S’why so many of ’em blow all their earnings at the ‘Town Hall,’” he said, referring to that large brothel she’d been brought to on the first day. “They get less time here, but... makes it more worthwhile for ’em.”

  He shrugged before draining his glass.

  Her lip twitched and her arms folded beneath her chest.

  “But they do the shit jobs no one else can do, because they need to be done, right? They’re, like, the protectors of this place, in a way.”

  “Raiders?” He screwed up his face then shook his head. “Nah, that’s the guards you mean. The raiders and guards are two completely different groups. Don’t much like each other either. Though there’s a lot of former raiders among the guards... an’ more than a few shamed former guards among the raiders.” He shook his head and said, “The raiders bring some supplies that’re hard to get. Can make ’em popular with the right folks. But everyone kinda fears ’em, because there’s always tales of how far some of ’em go to get their stuff...”

  He let that hang there ominously as he brushed his clawed hand off on his leather jerkin.

  Her dark brows knit as she stared at him. She felt so out of place at times, like she didn’t have a clue about the world at all, and he certainly wasn’t helping. “Well, as far as I can see it, then, this city needs both.”

  “True enough,” he said. “Though I wouldn’t tell either of them that,” he added with a slight grin that exposed a few fangs. Brushing off his two hands, he sat up straight and offered one out to her. “Faze,” he said.

  Her lip curled again as she glanced to his clawed hand, hesitating a moment before accepting it daintily. Her noble customs were hard to break, even in this place. “Rosa.”

  The hesitance did not go unnoticed, and the large beast of a man took a deep breath and sighed just a bit before squeezing and shaking her hand carefully.

  “Not much of a fan of my kind, huh, Rosa?”

  “Don’t take it personally.” It was a bit harder than she intended, but as she took her hand back she stood a bit straighter. She was still in the same leather outfit she’d arrived in, and she’d been keeping her hair pinned back out of her face in order to seem more professional. “You just kind of look like someone that could bite my face off.”

  The toothy smile he gave was hardly reassuring on that front, but he said, “A pretty face like that, now why would I ever wanna bite that off?” He patted the stool beside him in invitation. “What’s yer poison, Rosa?”

  “I doubt my ‘poison’ is available here, so whatever you’re— Whatever most humans have,” she corrected herself as she moved to the seat and slid onto it. Her legs crossed at the ankle, but it strained the leathers and she stopped fighting it, instead hooking her feet behind the wood.

  “Two ales,” he said to the bartender, sliding the coins across for the drinks as they were put down before them.

  “Y’know,” he started up again, speaking to her more personally now that she sat beside him. “Our peoples aren’t so different. They say there was a time we were once like you,” he remarked, lifting his ale. “Well, not exactly like you, I’m sure,” he added with amusement. “They say long ago, before the war even began, we were nobles. Part of the royal bloodline of the humans.”

  She scoffed.

  “Who’s they? One of your kind?”

  He looked amused at her disbelief.

  “Our elders,” he said. “They still wear the insignia upon their armour to this day,” he added with a nod. “We were cursed though. They say we were exiled unjustly, and struck with some dark curse that made us look like I do. And it’s carried with us ever since.”

  “Cursed by who? Who could do that to a race for, like, eternity?” She didn’t believe a word of it, and she felt her pale skin begin to redden with anger. She was desperately trying to quell it, but he was hitting a sore point with her.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “We were just a family back then. Was ages ago, after all. An’ si
nce no human’ll breed with us, we’ve continued on as we are.” He eyed her in her near rage. “Ya don’t buy it, huh?”

  “Of course not,” she hissed. “No one has that type of power.” She grabbed her ale and began to drink it, if only to try to calm herself down, but it didn’t work. “Besides, with how many of you there are, it couldn’t have just been a single family.”

  To her surprise he slapped her on the back and broke out into a fit of laughter. “Yeah, I don’t buy it either,” he remarked with amusement. “Little too far-fetched even for a pup, I think. Though it’s kinda funny seein’ those puffed-up wolven princes stridin’ around in their fancy, old-fashioned armours.”

  Her lip turned up in one corner. “I can only imagine.” The idea of such a beast walking around in court finery was funny, in a sad and pathetic way. She paused before downing the rest of her ale and pushing the empty mug away. It tasted like swill to her refined palate and she clucked her tongue trying to rid herself of its lingering aftertaste. “This is what the humans here drink?”

  “It’s what everyone drinks,” he said, finishing off his own following her, not to be outdone. “Ain’t the best, but it’s better’n what you can get in most places. I should know, I’ve sampled some from all about. So how desperate are ya for work?”

  She paused, her hands going to her knees.

  “I’m desperate to do something worthwhile.”

  “Desperate enough ta work alongside a mangy mutt?” he asked, a toothy smile on his furred face as he watched her.

  “Depends on how mangy.”

  He stared back at her blankly for a while, before breaking into another good-humoured fit of laughter. “Careful, ya might hurt some feelin’s I didn’t know I had.”

  “It’s good to learn new things about yourself,” she retorted, and for some reason he was making her feel more comfortable. Maybe it was just that he wasn’t taking himself so seriously, because his face was quite serious enough for her liking. She was trying not to stare at those long fangs. “What were you planning?”