AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Willing strength into my limbs, I shuffle to my feet and grab the edge of the shelf.
It’s a small mercy of the Guardians that it isn’t hooked into the wall behind, but my damaged hand screams as I use all my strength to pull it away from the stone and in front of the basin.
In prison, I cursed the people who broke my wrist and never bothered to set it and wrap it properly so it could heal, but this was a whole new level of hatred I felt as the uselessness of my left hand hit me in full force. Where I fought with blades in both hands when looting ships with the crew of the Wild Ray, now I can barely bend or move my wrist, let alone shove a massive wooden shelf.
I step around the piece of furniture, bracing my back against the tall board forming the side of the shelf and my feet on the dark stone tiles making up the floor, before I push with all my strength—which isn’t much since I haven’t eaten or drank for as long as I hadn’t gone to a bathing room, not to consider the months in prison where a ‘proper’ meal consisted of barely enough to feed a toddler.
As the shelf doesn’t budge more than half a foot, I take a break and reach for the pitcher beside the basin to take a long drink.
A groan rumbles in my throat at the taste of water. I’m too thirsty to worry if this water is also poisoned. If I get to sleep another few days, at least, I won’t need to have dinner with the Crow King.
The thought of the enormous, feathered male instills more fear than I have reason to pit against it, and within moments, I’m back to shoving the shelf under the window.
The wooden structure creaks as I set my foot on the lowest shelf and pull myself up with my good hand on a higher one. It’s enough to make my pulse kick back into a gallop, but not enough to stop my pursuit of freedom.
There’s a guard right out the bathing room door, and he is expecting me to be clean and presentable the next time I enter the bedroom. Only, I’m not planning on returning there. When I exit this bathing room, it will be through the window, and if I die trying, it will still be a far better fate than marrying the Crow King.
Five
I makeit all of three boards up before the shelf collapses under my tiny weight. Cursing my bad fortune, I gather my limbs, not bothering to rub any of the sore spots the fall leaves on my body. There are too many by now, and I don’t have the time to feel sorry for myself.
The door flies open a heartbeat later, and a hiss fills the room as the Crow guard storms in, claws locking around my upper arms as he sets me back on my feet.
“You haven’t learned a thing on our trip from the prison island, have you?” I don’t see anything but feathers as he tugs me past the basin, sitting me down on a wooden stool in the corner. “You could have killed yourself.”
I manage to find his beaked face above me as he steps back, a clear warning in his all-black eyes. Today, his brown hair falls around his head, feathers covering everything from his neck down to the waistband of his pants. A sword hangs on his belt, the broad blade promising a painful death.
“And you could have the decency not to care.” I’m too numb to feel fear, adrenaline blocking out the pain spreading across my body. If I survive the day, I’ll count my bruises, but right now, I am face to face with a Crow. A Crow who poisoned me to bring me to this place hidden in the fairylands.
The Crow straightens and steps back, looking me over, and his features change from mostly bird to almost human. I notice a scar running from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t care about decency. What I care about is that my king is expecting you for dinner, and I am not going to suffer for your defiance.” The way he looks at me—similar to that calculating gaze on the boat before I’d drank from the waterskin—makes me shudder with fear.
Not that I should care if a monster got punished by an even worse monster, but there is something in the way his posture shifts, shoulders dipping ever so slightly, that makes me ask, “Am I to be his dinner? Is this why he needs a new bride?” The question of why the Crow King gets a new bride every year has been burning on my tongue since the Crow had brought it up on the journey from prison. But now that I’ve spoken it, fear of what may be the response locks up my body.
The Crow’s laugh hisses through the room, and I shrink against the wall, remembering all the places I was aching.
“It’s not Ret Relah yet, little bride.” It’s all he says before he steps out into the bedroom. “Wash up, or I’ll do it for you, and I assure you, you won’t like it.”
I don’t have any doubt he’s right. So, I push myself to my shaking legs and pour water into the basin to wash my hands and face while the Crow from the journey stands a few steps outside of the bathing room, eyeing me as if expecting me to try to scale the wall with my bare hands.
“The rest, too,” he demands, and it takes me a moment to understand he wants me to strip down and wash the sweat and grime off my entire body.
Before I can retort, I am not going to take off my clothes while he’s watching and there is no point cleaning up more if I am only to put on my dirty clothes again, he reaches for a stack of fabric on the foot end of the bed and tosses it at me. It lands at my feet the same moment the door flies shut, and I’m once more alone.
Fear and defiance wage a war in my chest as I debate doing as I was told, but the light filtering in through what should be my escape route tells me night is approaching fast, and there are two Crows right outside the bathing room door. If I want to escape, I need to be smarter about it. Gather some strength. Eat. Rest, if I manage. Learn details about my location and the distance to the next port so I can find a ship and sail east the way Ludelle had always dreamed of doing. I would do many things, but I wouldn’t die here.
My injured hand screams as I use it to open my tunic, but I don’t care. I endured worse during those first days in my cell at Fort Perenis. The water is cool as I drag a piece of fabric I find on the broken shelf over my pale skin. My stomach is so taut with hunger I barely feel it anymore, and the bruises… I guess it can’t wait until tomorrow to count them. Blotches of purple spread along my hip and thigh where I fell on the crate in my cage. On my shoulder, another streak of near black is blooming. I have no idea where I got that one. Maybe the Crow tossed me onto another cart without any regard for which pieces of me would break in the process.
I need to use my right hand to wash up, giving my mangled left one a break. It wouldn’t do much good anyway. I’ve tried grasping forks and spoons with it, and while I can keep ahold of something that fragile, there is no way I can make coordinated use of them.
No one took care of my injury at Fort Perenis, but they tattooed a thin chain around my wrist once the skin had healed, a sign all prisoners at Fort Perenis carry.
I seethe at it as I wipe down my left arm before changing hands to my right, to wash where I otherwise can’t reach.
Before I wash my hair in the basin, I put on the black cotton pants and tunic the Crow provided so the next creature to barge through the door won’t walk in on me naked.
It takes me longer than I hope to rinse the grime out of my tresses, but when I finally do, I’m not ready to face my captors. My fingers get stuck when I comb them through my wet strands, the lengths frizzy and knotted from months without seeing a comb.
