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He’s got dark eyes and longish brown hair that typically looks as if he runs his fingers through it a lot. I don’t know his skill, but it must be a powerful one because he’s always with Fiana and the other elites. I’ve seen him kissing her inside empty classrooms. I try not to notice him when I can help it. Irrespective of his relationship with Fiana, everything about him screams danger to me.
His eyes bore into mine, and I look down at the ground, seeing that the blood and glass are gone. The crimson trail and the shards buried in my flesh are still there, but no one can see them now.
Rikoth’s skill is versatile, I’ll say that.
He can make people do what he wants them to, but he can make them see anything he likes as well from what I can tell. Last week, he made me walk into a pond that was invisible until it was too late and then stood at the edge rolling with laughter when it brought back my memories of the river, and I began to sob about my father. Vern caught me out of my room the other night and beat me unconscious with his fists, telling me not to bother trying to fight him because no little human slave would stand a chance against a shifter fae with his strength.
After I woke up in the hall alone and dragged myself back to my room, I looked into the mirror expecting to see the evidence of his beating, only for no bruises to show up. I looked normal. Both eyes were unswollen and open even though one was definitely closed, and I could feel the swelling with my fingers. It was then that I understood. No one sees anything Fiana and the other elites don’t want them to.
‘Afternoon lessons start soon,’ Kal says, and I realize I’ve just been standing and gaping at him and his friends.
Grey, the quietest one, keeps watching me, his eyes predatory, like he hopes I flee into the bushes by the path so he can run me down. He reminds me of an animal, and the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m called ‘pig’ when he and some of the others are much more beastlike than me.
‘Thanks,’ I murmur to Kal, who gives me a small smile. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’
He nods and turns, walking off down the path with his friends. I stare after them, breathing a sigh of relief at their quick departure while also feeling suddenly much more in danger now that they’ve left. Kal looks back at me with an odd expression on his face as they go, and I pretend not to notice.
As soon as they’re out of sight over the small hill, I sink to the ground. I can’t see the glass bits embedded in my feet, so I have to feel for them.
Getting all the shards is a slow and agonizing process that leaves me panting and my stomach rolling. By the time I’m finished, it’s getting dark, and I know I’ll have missed lessons by now. I frown, wondering why I feel a bit disappointed that I won’t see Kal again today.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ a deep voice growls, and I startle as I see a dark figure materialize out of the trees beside me.
‘The bathhouse,’ I whisper at the older fae male as he towers over me.
Grith.
He’s dressed in a dark tunic and breeches. He wears the peasant clothes as if he’s trying to look less threatening, but all they do is highlight the fact that he was clearly born into wealth and power. Grith is the right hand man here and Varrik’s friend. He looks out for me. He’s kind to me. It’s all pretend.
I hate it.
I glance up at him and see his ice-blue eyes dart to the glass I’ve pulled out of the soles of my feet.
‘I smell human blood.’
He stares down at them, though he can’t see anything amiss, and sighs, picking me up and carrying me in his thick arms. I don’t struggle. I know better. I also try not to notice how his claw-like fingers splay over my arse, kneading it a little as he arranges me at his waist with my legs open and wrapped around him. He pulls my core as close to him as he can. His breath quickens a little, and I look away, but I don’t fight. The last time I did, he dropped me to the ground and refused to help me. Then, I didn’t get food for three days afterward.
Grith makes me very wary. He has complete power over me. It’s second only to Varrik’s, and he’s not a fae I want to be on the wrong side of. But it’s also how he touches me, the things he says to me that he pretends he’s joking about. I don’t know the right words to explain it, but there’s a deep wrongness to how he is with me. There’s also a casual cruelty to him that makes me trust his kindness about as much as I’d trust Fiana’s.
He carries me the thankfully short distance to the healer. A small, magickal creature that looks a bit like a pixie but has no wings. He just rolls his eyes, and the pain in my feet disappears.
‘You’re going with him tonight,’ Grith tells me as the healer leaves, drawing me close to him. His thumb moves back and forth over my cheek.
‘He’s waiting for me, then. I should …’ I pull away, and his grip tightens, becoming just shy of painful for a moment. His warning is clear, and I relax in his hold immediately, shaking as I try not to show fear.
He draws in a deep breath and lets me go slowly as if making his hands open is a struggle.
‘You need to get ready. There are some clothes in your room,’ he says.
I nod, wondering where I’m going. This must be the test of my skill that I was told would come, and I can’t help the excitement that wells up in me. Finally, I’ll find out what I can do.
Grith accompanies me to my room, a large, high-ceilinged chamber in Varrik’s keep just along the corridor from his own. On my four-poster bed is a soft green gown and matching slippers. There’s also a woman there, a pixie I’ve seen in the house before. She’s waiting for me. She strides forward.
‘There’s not much time,’ she states, tugging the laces of my dress loose and pulling it off me quickly.
The yellow flower I found on my chair this morning when I’d arrived in lessons and tucked into a small hole in the bodice between the layers of cotton falls to the floor, and I covertly kick it under the bed before it’s noticed. Grith seemed angry when I left one on the table last week, and he spotted it. He asked me more than once that day who it came from and didn’t seem to believe that I didn’t know. But I keep finding them, and somehow, I know they’re for me.
I feel Grith’s eyes on me now, taking in my narrow hips and my teats that have lately begun to grow. The woman doesn’t seem to notice that he hasn’t left the room and that his being here, his gaze roving over me, is more than a little indecent. Instead, she tells me to kneel, and she puts the new gown over my head and through my arms. She draws me to my feet and laces the back up tightly.
