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One
I’m notafraid of you.
The thought echoes in my tired mind like a splash of icy water in a cave as I stare into the darkness. The same darkness I’ve been staring at for almost nine months.
Nine months.
I want to cry, but tears have become as rare as the meals they bring to this forgotten part of the prison.
The cells to my left and right are empty. The left one was never populated; the man in the right cell died a few days ago. The stench of decay lacing the dungeons before the guards finally figured out he’d passed away still fills my nose—so I breathe through my mouth and gag on the pleas of the occasional prisoner they take to the gallows I have a view on through the tiny hole in the wall they call a window.
I hate this place. More than I hate the people who put me here, I hate it. Not because it took the only man I’ve ever loved away from me—or the family I’d watched die the day of our arrival—but because it isn’t the open sea. It isn’t a swaying ship and endless blue waters. Despite being on an island, the brine doesn’t reach my cell, and despite my staring into the darkness of the starless nights, the nightmares don’t go away.
I’m not afraid of you.
But I am.
I only keep my eyes open because the occasional flicker of a torch along the walls when a guard makes his rounds reminds me the night hasn’t swallowed me up. I’m still alive.
I should be dead.
Boots crunch along the packed dirt floor, and I whirl around, hitting my shoulder on the descending arch of the low ceiling and uttering a curse as I wish I had the dark vision of the fairy night guards. Then, I’m glad I don’t because, if I did, their beautiful faces would distract me from what cruel, dangerous bastards they are.
The boots thud closer, making me shrink against the wall. Maybe I’m not afraid of the dark as much as of the creatures hiding within it. I raise my left hand as if that would do anything to protect me from whatever is stopping in front of my door, and pray to the Guardians that they are merely checking on me rather than picking me up for execution. I wouldn’t be the first woman to disappear in the middle of the night. They tell the stories of feathered fairies hunting for brides all over Eherea, I have learned in my short twenty years. Even here in prison.
Gritting my teeth, I lean against the wall so I don’t sway on my weak legs.
Not eight feet from where I stand, the key squeaks in the rusty lock, and a draft creeps through the small space as the door swings open, allowing in more of the stuffy air from the dark corridors behind my equally dark cell.
“Move,” a deep voice orders, and I jerk into motion as if I decided to, even when my limbs were locked in place a moment before. The fairy is using his magic to direct me toward the exit, his power wrapping around my limbs, forcing them along, and there is nothing I can do about it. Even screams won’t help because there is no one left in this Guardiansforsaken dungeon but me.
My feet tap over the straw palette I was sitting on in the corner, and I stumble over the edge, catching myself against the wall with my stiff right hand.
The guard’s rough chuckle tells me he’s still standing by the door, not even bothering to collect me with his hands—and why would he with the magic at his disposal?
I don’t care that I stink and frown and my hair hasn’t been combed in months with more than the fingers on my good hand. This fairy doesn’t have wings—none of the guards at Fort Perenis do. And so, they aren’t the ones collecting women at night.
When I am a few steps from the door, a fairy light comes to life, bright enough to take my sight all over again. I grind my teeth and stare through the brightness at the male with the light brown hair in front of whose feet I vomited the day of my arrival. He flicks his fingers at me, a clear summons that I debate ignoring as his magic releases me and his scowl pins me instead.
“You’re expected in the general’s office.” He doesn’t look back as he turns on his heels and stalks ahead of me, clearly expecting me to follow. Before I can even think to ask why, he barks, “Move your human ass.”
So, I do. I stumble along, careful not to hit my toes on the rocks stuck deep in the dirt of the ground or on the uneven stone steps, which are clearly missing a handrail for feeble prisoners such as me.
Bracing my good hand on the moist wall, I climb one step after the other, eyes trained on the fairy guard’s shoulders and shuddering at how little it would take for him to snap my neck. A flick of his fingers, a thought.
Nine months ago, I might have tried to fight him had I run into him on a loot with the Wild Ray. Nine months ago, before Tavrasian soldiers stormed my ship and killed half the crew before taking the rest of us north to this Guardiansforsaken place. Nine months—before they mutilated my hand and threw me in a cell as the only surviving member of the Wild Ray’s crew. I don’t close my eyes to dwell on the memory, or all I’ll see is bloodshed when they slit the throats of the other half of the crew. All but me.
Shame and guilt creep into my bones at the thought that I survived.
And I wonder if it could even be called mercy when the soldier who ordered me locked up had claimed there would be a worse punishment for me than death.
My feet drag like I am wading in water as I make it up the steep stairs, barely keeping up with the strolling pace of the fairy. An orb of light hovers in front of him, illuminating his menacing outline as he fills the narrow door with his broad form.
I don’t dare think what other horrors dwell in the fairy realm of Askarea on the mainland. I’ll probably never make it off this island that belongs to both the human realms and that of the fairies, even if I ever manage to flee.
A different sort of guilt floods me as I remember the only time I attempted to get out of this place. I still have a long, welded scar running diagonally across my back from when they whipped a magical lash across it as a punishment.
Pressing my lips together in a tight line, I halt, inhaling the stream of fresh air stirring the stale one that has become as familiar as the freedom of the brine on the ship I once called my home.
