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“Why don’t you take the bed?” Grey said. “I at least got a mattress last night at Cavan’s, so I don’t need?—”
“No, you shouldn’t?—”
“And you’ve been driving?—”
“But you’ve been healing—” Noel shifted, cutting himself off and half tucking his hands in his pockets. He pulled them back out before he bit his lip and started for it. Grey relaxed, relieved he’d convinced him until Noel spun around, bent down, and threw him over his shoulder. A yelp escaped him, and he flailed as Noel dropped him onto the mattress. “You get the bed,” Noel said sternly. “I’ll make myself comfortable on the floor.”
Grey’s hand shot up to the collar, regret settling in his gut about telling Noel the darkest part of his past. But Noel strode over to the closet. If he’d seen him react, he hadn’t noticed it, and began to pull down the extra linens stored on the shelf.
“If this is out of pity, then?—”
Noel’s head whipped around, the spare comforter and pillow nearly falling from his grasp. “What? No—Just—” He scrambled to drop it all next to the bed. “You’ve sacrificed a lot so far to go along with all of this, so try to rest. I’ve barely traded anything, except for when we escaped the wardens, so I think you deserve an unobstructed, good night’s rest. That’s it.” The way the last words strung together sounded stiff and fake, but Grey gave him the satisfaction of a slow nod while he reached to tug off his boots.
Watching Noel drop to his knees and spread out his makeshift bed, Grey dumped his shoes over the end of the mattress and curled up for sleep. Every adjustment against the thin pillow made him squirm with the collar digging into his neck. The strange blend of nickel and patches of smoothed crystal lining it pressed rectangles into his skin. After a few attempts to have the collar hang off the pillow, Grey finally found a tolerable position before Noel turned off the light.
Black consumed the room, save the trickle of light from under the door and the diffused town lights glowing in the window at Grey’s back. So, he closed his eyes and focused on Noel’s breathing—a gentle lullaby guiding him into sleep.
* * *
Where are you, my little finch?
Grey stumbled backward, hitting a wall with a wince. He peered into the dark, unable to find any signs of movement while he tried to pry his hands apart. Every twist of his wrists resulted in sharp pain that reverberated in his chest, just in the form of panic. He tried to stand, his legs shaking uncontrollably as he swallowed down his biting words for the fair folk prowling around beyond his vision to leave him alone. If he kept quiet, maybe they’d give up and head somewhere else.
Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. Just follow my voice.
Grey’s knees buckled at how close it sounded. His pulse thumped in his ears, pushing every other soft movement of his hunter to the background. He bit into his hoodie sleeve and his mouth filled with the tang of sweat and salt from dried tears. The panic-inducing squelch of Grey’s boots creeping along the perimeter of the room made his head spin until a single, horrible thought pierced his mind: the room wasn’t dark; he just couldn’t see.
Grey’s teeth sank into his arm as he collapsed into the corner and tried to stifle a sob. All that pent-up hate from his series of jailers had finally taken the piece of him he cherished the most—the one sense he relied on to create and pour his soul onto paper with hands people feared touching. Now he’d forever be a creature of pure destruction. Another living thing that might as well be fair folk.
He flinched as the floor creaked in front of him, hair standing up on his arms as a feather-light touch grazed his cheek. “There you are, my finch,” they cooed, their voice crisp in clear in comparison to the ghostly echo he’d been trying to run from.
Warm tears spilled down his face. They clicked their tongue before gently wiping them away. The sharp edge of what felt like a fingernail made Grey jolt. His core tightened as his mind raced, trying to piece together what he’d actually felt from their inhuman hand: a claw.
“Shh, don’t cry.”
The mere mention of it caused Grey to hiccup out a quiet, distressed sob as he tried to bury his face in his arms. Plastic dug into his skin, choking the backs of his hands. “Please let me go.”
A shiver worked through him as the claws ran through his hair. Grey bit down on his tongue, trying to hold back his revolution.
“Humans are such selfish, hateful things,” they said, venom bubbling to the top before spilling into curiosity, “and yet you’d rather continue dwelling among them than accept me?”
Grey paused, his own breath suffocating him in his little curled cocoon.
“Look at what they’ve done to you, Grey.” They forced their clawed-tipped hand under his chin, prying it up to stare into the void. “What would stop them from taking more?”
A stray tear met the dip where claw dented cheek, reminding Grey that this fair folk could easily squeeze and break his jaw if it wanted to. His throat bobbed as he remembered the sound of the macharomancer woman’s heavy boots coming down the stairs and the pattering of her children’s slippers. Bile threatened to coat the back of his tongue as he recalled retching at the base of a tree after fighting off his attackers trying to collect him for the Hunt.
To people: he was a potential threat. To the fair folk: he was pure entertainment.
He could fight back in the world he knew, even if he wasn’t strong enough to survive in the end. In the Otherworld, he’d be a mouse in a maze, waiting for the trap to snap whenever he thought he’d found reprieve.
“At least—” Grey breathed, every word quivering in the face of certain retaliation. “At least I have a fighting chance among my own kind, rather than at the mercy of faerie whims.”
The silence that followed left him to imagine what sort of reaction they might be making until that curious tone returned. “And what makes you say that?”
“Y-you want me for the Wild Hunt, don’t you?” Grey forced out, hating how small and pained he sounded, like a tolling bell on his life.
A dark chuckle sent him jerking back, trying to escape the disturbed bemusement. The vice-like grip on his jaw clamped a little tighter, forcing him to his feet, where his whole body trembled.
