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He looks at me, his green eyes searching my face. “I will keep you safe.”
I give him a nod. “I know, but we’ve done everything the hard way. Maybe this will be easier, and then we can get to Clotty faster.”
“Nothing is free, not even help from old friends.” He chews the last word and spits it.
“I know.” I have no delusions on that score. There’s a reason Silmaran kidnapped me, a reason she wanted to get to Gareth. “But we might as well hear her out.”
“Please,” she adds through the door.
“Only because you desire it.” He leans over and kisses the crown of my head.
Silmaran’s sigh of relief is followed by the door swinging open.
She has a bandage around her head and another on her right arm. “You fight like a cornered tiger.”
“I went easy on you.” Gareth strides past her with me at his side.
The sun is going down, the room with the fountain highlighted in salmon-pink hues from the dusky sky. Lesser fae and changelings sit on floor pillows and couches to the right of the pool, food and drink scattered around them on trays. A high fae with golden hair sits on a deep emerald divan, his feet up and a poultice resting on one eye.
“Welcome to my home,” the high fae croaks then coughs.
When he spits a wad of blood into an ornate golden vase, I wrinkle my nose and look up at Gareth. “You did that, didn’t you.” It’s not a question.
“I would have done worse if I hadn’t caught your scent and followed it.” He shrugs.
“Do you have any healing magic?” Silmaran perches at the bottom of the high fae’s divan while Gareth seats us on a nearby couch.
Gareth doesn’t respond.
She wisely takes that as a no and offers us two stoneware cups of water.
The chatter of the others in the room has stopped. Eldra, Nemar, and the ever-frowning Parnon all sit on the floor pillows, their gazes locked on Gareth.
I want to hug Silmaran, to tell her how I grieved for her when Granthos sold her, to find out what’s happened to land her here, but I stay put. After all, she did have me kidnapped. Gareth is right to be wary.
“I’ve missed you.” She smiles at me, her amber eyes warm. Her fae heritage is mostly hidden except for her pointed ears and her small fangs. “When I saw you on the market street, I thought I’d fallen into a memory, but it was you.” She pulls a tufted stool closer and sits, taking my hand as Gareth goes tense. “I couldn’t believe it. What are you doing here?” Turning my hand over, she peers at it as if she isn’t sure I’m real.
“Gareth and I are going south.”
Her expression darkens. “Why?”
“Granthos sold Clotty to the mines.”
“What? Why?”
“As a punishment and a warning because I escaped.”
“You escaped?” Her eyes widen. “I can’t believe it.”
“I did. When I refused to let the hounds feed from me, then tried to run, Granthos caught me and had me imprisoned in the palace. But while I was there…” I turn to Gareth. “He found me and freed me.”
“Thank you.” Silmaran dips her head in a sign of respect. “Anyone who frees a slave is welcome here.”
“Why did you take my mate?” Gareth doesn’t engage in niceties, apparently.
She turns her gaze to him, her eyes sobering. “To get to you.”
“Why?”
“We need your help.” The golden high fae coughs again, his chest rattling.
“And you are?” Gareth puts his arm around my shoulders, and I snuggle into him.
“Lord Chastain. I own this house. And ostensibly the slaves assembled before you.” He presses the poultice to his other black eye. “To everyone else in Cranthum, I’m one of the top slave traders in the city. I purchase slaves at the market, lead them from the city, and return with golden riches.”
“You want me to help you with the slave trade?” Gareth throws out the question with a harsh laugh. “No, thanks.”
“I want your help with the slave trade, yes. To end it. When I take the slaves from the city, I free them. This madness must end. I refuse to profit from such misery.”
“Then where does your money come from?”
“I inherited great wealth.” He takes a glass and raises it. “To my Ancestors who built this slaver’s city with their greed and their will to dominate all those weaker than them.” After drinking a large gulp of wine, he sets the glass down. “But now the charade is coming to an end. I’ve burned through all my coin. But it doesn’t matter. The time has finally come where we can strike Lord Zatran and the rest of the slave owners. I’ve waited so long for this, and here it is. And here you are.” He peers at us, the last rays of the sun reflecting from the fountain and dancing across his mottled face. “I believe in fate.” He settles back onto the divan and groans. “Fate has brought you here, and fate will set them all free.”
Gareth grunts, a dismissal without a word.
“You intend to free the entire city? How?” I look around at the handful of lesser fae and changelings, none of them striking me as impressive commanders of a slave uprising. “And who is Lord Zatran? That’s a ridiculous name. Did he draw it from a hat or did a witch curse him?”
Silmaran leans forward, her elbows on her knees. “We’ve been planning an assault on Lord Zatran’s Bazaar. He runs a special sale each year and invites the wealthiest slave traders in all of Arin as well as certain dignitaries. This year is supposed to be his biggest event yet, and there’s word that he’s found a new buyer, one with enough gold to keep the slave supply moving for centuries.”
“Who?” I can’t imagine any fae—other than Queen Aurentia or King Gladion—having access to that sort of wealth.
Silmaran shrugs. “We don’t know. It’s all kept quiet by order of Lord Zatran.”
“I have contacts working to find out, but it’s difficult to pass information.” Eldra leans back on a deep crimson pillow. “Zatran’s spies are everywhere.”
“If you’d let me have one of his servants, I could crush the information out with ease.” The stony Parnon sits hunched forward, his huge bulk like another piece of furniture. “I don’t see why that’s not an option.”
“Because they’re slaves, and you know it.” Silmaran’s sigh says this is an old argument. “They’re the same as us, and I won’t let you hurt them.”
“Even when they’d be happy to shove a knife in my back to please their master?” He yanks off an entire hunk of grapes and eats them, stems and all.
“Even then.” Silmaran taps her face below her eye. “Silmaran sees all. So, don’t try it.”
That phrase—has Silmaran become a symbol?
“This is all fine and good.” Gareth keeps his tone even, if a bit heavy-handed. “But what makes you think I can or will help?”
“Because you’re from the winter realm where all are free.” Silmaran stands and paces.
It provokes a memory of her doing the same thing at Granthos’s house.
“There has to be some way to keep those hounds off you.” She chews her thumbnail as she walks back and forth in the small space of my room. “Have you tried eating something different? Maybe if you ate more of the hot peppers Clotty buys from the farmlands merchant? Dogs don’t like spicy things. Or maybe you could?”
“There’s nothing.” I wrap the wound on my arm. “I’ve tried everything. Kizriel never stops, and the others follow his lead.”
“Spires.” She paces faster. “Maybe, maybe you could eat something that’s poison to them?”
“That would be po
ison to me, too.” I sink onto my bed and lean against the wall. “I mean, I’ve thought about that, of course.”
She stops. “About what?”
“Ending it.” I shrug.
“No. There has to be a way.”
“I wish you were right, Sil. I really do. But I haven’t found a way out. And those hounds? They’ll live forever. Me? I’m just a morsel to them, something to enjoy and then discard. That’s what we all are, really. Lesser fae and changelings—we’re disposable. The high fae will never see us as anything more.”
She slams her fist into the door, the vehemence of it making me jump.
“It shouldn’t be this way.” She hits it again.
“It shouldn’t, but it is.”
“Maybe we can change it.” She turns and leans against the door, her right hand already swollen, the knuckles scraped. “I heard the winter realm is free. No one is a slave there.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” I lie down and refuse to let her spark of temper ignite anything inside me. False hope is worse than no hope at all.
“We’ll be free one day.” She steps over to me and tightens my bandage, resolve settling into her eyes. “Just you wait. There are more of us than there are of them. We can’t be treated like this forever.”
She was sold to the mines the next week. Perhaps Granthos had gotten wind of her rebellion talk. Or perhaps she just looked at him wrong one day. He never liked her. I always suspected it was because of her features—she was a lesser fae who looked like a high fae. He didn’t like the thought of his own kind being in chains, so he sold her.
“Beth?” Gareth takes my hand.
“What?” I shake my head. “Sorry. I’m just tired. You were saying?” I glance at Silmaran.
“She was saying that she thinks I can pose as a wealthy fae seeking to begin a slave trade enterprise in the winter realm. That way, I can gain entry to the Bazaar and facilitate the—” He clears his throat.
“Assassinations,” Parnon grunts.
“The uprising,” Silmaran amends.
“You want Gareth to start a slave rebellion?” I blink a few times. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
