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“There’s no handle.”
“No handle?” Nicole asked, surprised.
I took a small step back, not wanting to bump into Nicole and startle her. “Let’s keep going.”
After a little longer, there was another doorway. Then another. They all seemed evenly spaced.
I shivered. “Doors with no handles far beneath a castle reminds me of a crypt.”
“What?” Nicole shouted and I felt her jump next to me. She was closer than I thought. “We’re in the crypts?”
“Do they have crypts?” I squeaked. I’d been half joking, but I had read about a few older castles in Europe and how they had crypts deep in the catacombs of their palaces.
“You just said there were,” Nicole asked.
I took a deep breath. The shivers running up my spine now were not going to go away after this conversation. “Let’s just keep moving.” I put my fingertips back on the wall, not wanting to reach another doorway but also wanting to move as quickly as possible to get out of this nightmare.
“How long have you been here at the castle?” I asked, desperate to distract myself from the spookiness that settled in my gut.
“I was taken to Faerie when I was five,” Nicole commented. “Brought to the castle a few years after that.” The fear turned to sickness as I realized what a dumb question that had been. Though Nicole hadn’t told me, Noah had. He’d said she was a feeder when she was a child. I wondered how bad the memories were.
I didn’t have to ask anything further because Nicole opened up. Perhaps she was trying to chase the ghosts of the Unseelie crypts away like I was.
“The fae I was placed with in the village became family, since they were all I had. My mother’s farm is in a neighboring village,” she said. “After two years with them, we got word that there was a boy my age living at the castle who needed a feeder. He was thirteen when I met him, I think. I had just turned twelve when I was actually placed.”
I couldn’t help the shiver that came over me then. “So young,” I said, though I regretted it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. It’s not as though she was much younger than we were now, though twelve seemed so long ago somehow.
“Hmmm, I suppose.”
A million questions ran through my mind. How do I comfort her? Does she need comfort? Want to be coddled because of this experience? “Were you okay? Taken care of?”
“Cora, that’s what Faerie is.” She didn’t continue for a few more paces, but then her voice was softer. “The first time was terrifying. When the boy’s fangs sank into my neck I thought I was going to die. But then it felt funny, and sort of made my head lighter. But the fact that I didn’t hate it made me feel dirty. And I had no one to talk to about it. My mother was on her farm still, and I was here.”
I paused, reflecting on what she’d said and not quite knowing how to provide any sort of comfort. “Were you in New York before you were taken then?”
Nicole sighed, but I wasn’t sure if it was from remembering the time or frustration at how talkative I was being. I just wanted to change her thoughts from the awful experience she had as a child.
“Yeah, I remember the city being loud. I was bounced around to a few cousins, until I lived in a big house with a few family. I don’t even know if they were actually family any more. I don’t really know how I got here. My would-be mother here says I showed up at her farm and she just put me to work. Knowing how this goes though, I’m pretty sure I was picked up ’cause no one back home would miss me and I was put to work here, in Faerie.”
“Do you still see your Faerie mother ever?”
“Sometimes. She struggles to keep the farm going. Since my father passed it’s her and only her.” Nicole tensed next to me.
I stopped walking, bringing my hand to her as I felt around for her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
She shrugged me off and I heard her feet scuffle slightly before I couldn’t feel her anymore. Her voice came a few paces ahead. “Don’t be, it’s no big deal.”
Her tone let me know that she absolutely didn’t want to continue the conversation, and I wouldn’t push. I knew what it was like to feel as though you were being interrogated about your past. She didn’t need that.
“I’ve got a scar on my lower back from when my foster dad from my first house shoved a coffee table on top of me.”
When Nicole didn’t say anything, I continued.
“I was lying in front of the television, I was maybe ten. Just finished my homework. He’d broken the table first; it was glass and he slammed his fist on it. Then upended it when I didn’t answer him. That ER visit pulled me from that house.”
“Stitches?” Nicole asked.
It was a strange question but an easy one, and I almost appreciated it. “Just six. Not too big a problem. Just left a mark.”
