He shifts so that one hand hangs over his weapon, a stance he’s supposed to hold the entire time he's watching me and not only when someone comes to check in. His eyes stay narrowed and steady as he focuses on the staircase. I can’t see it from the cell, so instead I watch him, taking note of the tense lines of his limbs and the intensity of his gaze.
The moment the interloper arrives, I know it's not one of the princes, because the guard’s body deflates and tension evaporates from him all at once.
A slow smirk stretches across his lips. “You're not supposed to be down here. We're not open for visitors.”
There's a low laugh, a voice I haven't heard before, and then a new high-fae guard steps into my line of sight. His hair is pulled back from his face and tied with a crude leather strap, messy and provincial looking. His clothing is informal and shapeless, nothing like the tailored perfection of the princes I’ve been subjected to, a clear sign of his lower status. He’s not here at his superior's command, and it makes me wonder exactly how the Savage Prince runs this castle of his.
The Sol King would burn this male alive, publicly and with no remorse.
“I’ve heard rumors about the witch bitch down here and I knew if I wanted to see her, I'd have to wait until you were on duty.”
The guard shrugs and flicks a hand in my direction. “Well, there she is. Nothing much to see unless you like the look of dirt on witch-skin.”
The newcomer chuckles again and steps up to the cell bars to look at me, his gaze flitting over me a little too eagerly for my liking. He has some scarring down his neck, an anomaly amongst the high fae. There are no obvious markings to tell me whether it was an injury from the War of the Witches, and yet my mind gets stuck on the possibility that he got it while murdering my innocent kinfolk, not those who had betrayed us all by following Kharl Balzog. I’m living proof that not all witches want this conflict and many have been caught in the crossfire, the tales of thousands of those deaths still spoken of widely in the Northern Lands by those who had fled there.
I hate the soldier on principle.
His tongue swipes over his bottom lip, and he simpers, “I wouldn't saynothingto look at. With some soap and water, she might even look like something worth bedding! Fates above, I didn't know witches came in any variety other than ‘disgustingly crazed’ and ‘horrifically disfigured’. No wonder half the castle is talking about her.”
A frown settles on the brow of the other soldier, and his eyes turn toward the stairs. “If you get caught down here it'll be both our lives. They're taking herveryseriously. Whatever she knows, it’s big.”
The newcomer slaps him on the shoulder, though he does so without taking his gaze off me. “I’m not going to get caught. It's the middle of the night, no one gives a shit about the prisoner. The princes are allquitebusy.”
The way he stretches out that word is unsettling, and I wait until he glances around, checking that no one followed him down here, before I move the sleeve of my shirt back over the small cut on my wrist to conceal the energy swap.
The guard tries to get him to leave, a futile task. “Seriously Merrick, you can't be down here. I don't want to lose this position and be forced back onto the frontlines. I can’t go back there.”
Gutless.
Merrick grins at him, this time slapping him on the chest before he pulls away and slips a key from his own pocket. He waves it at the guard with a grin. “Haven’t you ever wanted to get back at them for what they've done to us? To destroy the witches as they’ve destroyed so many of us? I’ll admit, the moment I heard from the other guards what she looked like, I wanted nothing more than to see tears running down that filthy face.”
His eyes are icy blue and frenetic as they linger on me as though I'm nothing more than a piece of meat. A manic energy emanates from him. He’s practically salivating, the prospect of violence exciting him into a frenzy, and I’m sickened by it.
I know what it’s like to be stuck in the middle of a war and to loathe your enemy for every last one of the atrocities you’ve been forced to live through, to see, and to bear with no end in sight. I know what it’s like to hate so blindly that you feel as though you will never know any other emotion.
I also know that males who take advantage of an enemy in the way this male is suggesting are using revenge as an excuse to hide their true nature. There's a darkness within their hearts, an evil that can't be explained away because, no matter how violent the battles became, the male soldiers I fought alongside—those I counted as friends—never once voiced such a desire to me. It never even crossed their minds.
“You can't go in there with her! Where in the Fates did you even get the key from?” the guard hisses.
Merrick grins at him, a sickening light in his eyes. “Come on now, Lysen, you don't want word to get around that you're a witch apologist, do you? That’s certainly not something I'd want the Savage Prince calling me.”
It’s the first time I've heard one of the prince’s own men call him that nickname. Lysen flinches, clearly far more loyal to his prince, but fear wins over honor. Enough, at least, that he doesn't physically stop his friend as Merrick opens the cell door.
Lysen says, feebly, “Her hands aren't bound and there's no gag in her mouth.”
Merrick shrugs. “Prince Tauron has spoken with her. She can’t have any talent with magic, so there’s no danger. Do you think some witch bitch is going to be able to overpower me? Maybe we're not truly friends if you think so, Lysen.”
I stay seated on the ground, my back pressed to the wall behind me, and watch Merrick duck into the cell, careful to avoid touching the iron bars. He’s got nothing but cold arrogance in his face, complete assurance that he's stepping into a room with his next victim and not about to be caged with a monster.
I may not be what they all expect, but I'm also not defenseless.
Whatever assumptions he’s made, they’re wrong.
“Merrick,” Lysen calls again, and Merrick barks back at him, “If you’re so scared, then shut the door behind me and keep watch. I told Luren and Oslo that I was coming down. Both of them said they'd try her out as well, just as soon as their shifts end. We’ll have her to ourselves for long enough to get the fun started.”
Lysen doesn't shut the door, he merely stands in the doorway, clutching it with his protective leather gloves. His eyes can’t decide if they want to focus on the horrors about to unfold in front of him or to keep watch on the staircase, his gaze bouncing between the two frantically. He does nothing more to stop his so-called friend.
I shift my attention away from the gutless high fae and back to the one advancing on me as if I’m his next meal. I stare up at Merrick and hope that a single doubt will permeate his skull, the slightest bit of understanding of this situation, to make him realize he shouldn't be doing what he's doing. But as one of his hands slips down to the front of his trousers and pops the top button casually, and his tongue comes out to wet his bottom lip again, it’s clear to me he’s not going to hesitate.
