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Late spring, and not one hint of blossoms. If anything, this is proof Fort Perenis is as terrible a place outside the cells as it is inside.
As the guard moves, I step after him into the yard, my gaze darting to the center, to the dais where, nine months ago, I watched the life leave everyone I loved.
“If you think about running, you’ll follow them faster than you care to.” I hadn’t realized he’s fallen into step beside me and is now glaring down at me, his cold blue eyes a pale shade of gray in the glow of the magical light.
He jerks his chin the same moment I swallow a retort. Nothing I say will get me out of here. I tried—Guardians, did I try those first weeks after they shoved me in the cell and the door closed behind me. All that got me were mocking hollers. Nobody would tell me what my supposed fate would be either, so, at some point, I stopped shouting into the darkness.
After months of fearing, I stopped guessing. Until, eventually, I gave up hope.
A gust of wind swishes around my shoulders, stirring my dirty braid, and for a moment, I can taste a memory of freedom, but it’s gone in a heartbeat, and devastation fills the tiny spot within me that once hoped for a future. I will never see the coasts of the fertile lands of Tavras or the rocky archipelago in the south of Cezux again. Those two human realms are as far from me now as the Wild Ray. And Askarea really isn’t a place I dream of entering. Not that I ever will. I’ll rot here in this prison, and the beautiful fairy guards will laugh as they watch me slip away.
Shooting a last glance at the dais, I try to remember Ludelle’s smile. All I see is the shock on his face when the guard’s blade cut into his throat. It is all I ever see—waking or sleeping. I haven’t thought his name in twenty-seven days. How I know that? There is a thin groove in the brick stone beneath the window of my cell for each day I manage to keep the pain of thinking his name at bay. I run the fingers of my damaged hand over the fingertips of my good hand where the reminder of those twenty-seven days is also stuck under my nails.
The fairy dips his head at another guard I barely spot in the shadows along the wall, and I could swear I see a flash of white teeth in the darkness where his face should be. His chuckle follows me up the two steps to the double doors, which I assume lead to the general’s office.
Warm light eats up the night as I step inside, ushered forward by the guard and greeted by two more inside like I’m a real threat. I might have been once, with a blade in my hands and something to fight for. But where defiance and hope once lived inside my chest, a wasteland spreads as vast as the ocean that once carried my ship on its loving waves.
The fairy pushes me a step forward as I stop behind the threshold, taking in the plain interior of the fortress’s hallways. Left and right, simple stone walls frame corridors wide enough for three armed men. Doors are spaced along them in regular intervals the way the cells are underground. Perhaps this is a place for lesser criminals. Then, Fort Perenis doesn’t waste its cells on lesser criminals. Nothing but the worst crimes in both the human and the fairy world guarantee a spot in this prison. If humans and fairies agree on nothing else, they agree that some people can’t be left with the rest of a functioning society. Apparently, pirates sacking the crown’s ships belong among them.
Turning to the narrow set of stairs leading to a torch-lit landing, I force my breath to steady.
“He’s getting impatient.” One of the guards from inside beckons me forward.
For a moment, I debate the merits of not following, but the fairy guard steps up behind me, and his looming presence terrifies the shit out of me, so I gather what is left of myself and carry it toward the opening door in front of me.
Murmuring voices float from inside like the rustling of leaves in the spring wind. I remember the sound even when I haven’t heard it in years. There are no trees in the yard of Fort Perenis, and before, my life as a pirate didn’t give me much opportunity to admire wood in any other form than as planks of a ship or a decent bed or table.
The threshold approaches before I am ready, and I brace myself to meet the general who gave the order to kill the rest of my crew—and the man I loved. To kill Ludelle.
I don’t know what I expected to find inside, but it isn’t the tall, feathered outline against a simmering fireplace by the wall.
Two
“Ah, there she is.”The man in Tavrasian blue and black chimes as if his long-lost daughter just stepped through the door. The sound of his voice drives shivers of purest ice across my back, but it’s not him I’m wary of. It’s the creature slowly turning at the clear announcement of my arrival.
I stiffen, steps slowing and coming to a halt as I debate making a run for it, but the fairy guard is right beside me, his power shoving me on when my own legs decide they no longer want to cooperate.
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
I pray that bywethe general means someone other than the winged shadow I try so hard to ignore, but the black leather couch in the corner is unoccupied, as is the chair in front of the desk behind which the general stands with a smirk that brings back memories of the light leaving Ludelle’s eyes—so who else could he mean?
The fairy guard walks beside me up to the desk, nodding at the general as he fulfills his duty and delivers me, and I can’t help giving him a pleading glance.
He sets his features in stone and faces the general. “The pirate girl as requested,” he reports as if the general didn’t remember me.
The glimmer of malice in his pale eyes tells me he does. He remembers every scream and every thrashing thrust as I tried to break free when they’d held me down in the courtyard, forced me to watch as my family for the better part of my life bled out in front of me. I want to scream at him now, but the feathered shadow moves by the hearth, and I don’t dare speak a word. Instead, I silently seethe at the man in front of me.
“It’s been a while since you were brought to this facility.” He looks me over like I’m a piece of furniture then looks again with the hungry gaze of a wolf before he wrinkles his nose. “You may leave.” He dismisses the fairy, who promptly turns and abandons me. Not that I’d expected any help, but I’d take the male’s taunting and his control of my limbs any day over one moment in the presence of the general.
I don’t see the Tavrasian man with the mustache when I glare at him over the desk, but the Wild Ray covered in fairy smoke as the soldiers captured us. I see my crew fighting for their lives. I see Ludelle’s warm brown eyes as they widen with horror when I’m pushed to my knees beside the other pirates lined up for slaughter, sword at my throat. I see death and destruction and… And my breath catches as a hissed voice sucks all the air from the room.
“Is this the woman?”
My head snaps toward the hearth to find the shadow has unfolded into a male form. I can’t make out his face since he has chosen to keep his long brown hair hanging in his features.
Stay-calm-stay-calm-stay-calm.
I’m not calm when the male spreads his arms into long feathered wings as if stretching after a day of having to keep them tucked to his sides.
