I woke feeling heavy, my arms like lead in my lap. My wrists were bound with strips of hide, so tight and rough that already my skin felt raw where they rubbed. I focussed on my hands, willing them to move. They only jostled slightly with the unsteady movements of the wagon. I cursed silently, letting loose a breath.
I searched my mind, trying to remember the moment I had fallen asleep. Drugged, I realized, we had all been drugged. Likely, by some form of faerie magic. I suspected, to prevent us from realizing where we were or how to return from where we had come. Not that escape was a realistic outlook anyways, I pondered, glairing pointedly at my unmoving hands where they lay limply in my lap.
All of the fear and sadness turned in my gut, swirling and churning into something else, something hot and full of fury. It was anger that filled me. Anger at the guards, at the world. At myself. My face flushed with frustration. Just one finger, I growled to myself, just move! Nothing.
"It'll wear off soon," came a quiet voice from beside me, a voice that may have been honeyed with youth if it hadn't been for the ash that coated her throat, as I could feel mine was as well. In the daylight, I was able to see the child's face that sat beside me more clearly. Her eyes, which had seemed black in the hours of dusk, were in actuality a warm brown like that of sweet burnt butter. Her face, smeared here and there with mud and dust and swollen in places, was pretty fawn. Tight curls fell about her round face, black as a starless night.
A dawning came over me as I realized that I didn't recognize her. "You aren't from my village," I spoke roughly, my voice like gravel.
The child shook her head, "keep your voice down," she warned, "that one looks for any excuse to give a beating." she motioned to one of the guards who rode behind us—a handsome male with alabaster skin and golden hair that fell effortlessly into loose curls just above his shoulders.
"Did he hurt you?" I asked, making a point to keep my tone hushed. The child downcast her eyes; it was answer enough. My eyes rested on the unnatural swells on her face, only now catching the slight discolorations there. They were old bruises.
A silence fell that lasted some time. The other three females who sat across from us still slept, leaning into each other. I recognized one of them, the only other female from my village that had been close in age to myself. I had always been spiteful growing up of her fair looks and the way the males had swooned over her. But now, her porcelain face was covered in the dark maroon streaks of dried blood; her usually delicate hair now full of tangled mats and bits of dead grass.
"You know her?" the child asked quietly, breaking my thoughts.
"She's from my village."
Another silence fell. Memories flooded me, again and again. The quiet was an invitation to them, flooding my mind as vividly as a dream. My brother's eyes staring at the smoke-filled sky, utterly void of life. His face still round with youth. So small, so innocent.
The wagon lurched once, the binds on my wrists stinging with the motion, then stopped. The horse bound to the wagon whinnied uneasily, stomping its strong hooves in the muddy earth. I looked around, trying to find the cause of our abrupt stop. Snow-blanketed hillsides rolled in all directions, broken only by the tree line of a distant forest and the well-traveled path that lay before us.
The guards that had been trailing behind us exchanged glances and quiet words, then the golden-haired male tugged on his horse's reins, turning the gray dappled mares nose sharply to the right. With a kick to her sides, he sent the mare trotting around the wagon.
"Why have we stopped?" He asked sharply.
The guard who drove the wagon gave a silent nod to the tree line. I squinted my eyes, searching, but could see nothing lurking in the dark tangle of trunks and branches.
An irritated grumble came from the golden-haired male as he kicked his mare again and rode towards the tree line.
I had heard stories of the creatures who lived in the fae forests; beasts so horrid that any unfortunate traveler who had crossed their paths were left too frightened to retell what they had seen. I felt a chill run down my spine, my eyes unblinking as I watched the guard trot his horse fearlessly into the trees and disappear completely.
A moment later, the golden-haired male returned from the camouflage of the forest, a figure lying across the rump of his horse. I crooked my head to try to make out the creature. No, not a creature, I realized as they drew closer. Not a creature at all, a human, or at least something that resembled a human.
Tugging on the reins of his mare, the male dismounted in one graceful movement. His hair caught in the breeze, and I could make out the tip of a pointed ear between the light curls.
His boots hit the mud churned snow with a squelching thud, and with no ounce of carefulness, he wrapped an arm around the waist of the creature pulling it off of his mare. The mare, in turn, sidestepped, ears flicking.
"Stand," the golden-haired male demanded, roughly forcing the half-dazed creature onto shaky legs. It was a female, and by her rounded ears and simple face, human, definitely human. So escape was possible; the thought danced through my mind like a flame. I felt my fingers twitch, feeling a bit less heavy than they had before.
"Another runaway Thorne?" the wagon driver lulled his head back to lazily examine the female. Only boredom rested on the features of his face.
Thorne kicked the female's legs out from under her, sending her to her knees in a thud that made the female wince in pain. Long dark hair fell in front of her face as her gaze turned submissively to the ground.
"Where did you come from?" Thorne growled, grabbing the female by her hair and pulling, forcing her to turn her chin up to him. She said nothing - only met his gaze, her eyes watering slightly.
The third guard, who had remained back until now, dismounted his horse and pulled a knife from his belt in one fluid movement. In the next, the blade was at her throat. I blinked, stunned. He had covered the distance of a dozen meters in a mere breath. The female closed her eyes, her chest heaving with the wholesome sort of breath one might take if they believed it to be their last.
"I'll ask you again," Thorne snarled with exaggerated patience, "where did you come from?"
The female remained silent. The tip of the knife pushed slightly just under her jawline, a trickle of blood beading. Her throat bobbed, but still, she did not make any motion to speak. Throne pulled so roughly on her hair that she was forced back to her feet. He growled at her with a feral canine-sounding snarl. "Knife, Malwin," he held his free hand out to the other guard.
Malwin handed Throne the knife, a flicker of something I couldn't read in his eyes dancing there so quickly that it was gone almost before I could register it. He took a step back.
Thorne ignored Malwin, grinning wickedly at the female. He returned the knife to where the blood now trickled, "Where," he growled out, slowly tracing the blade down her neck, not quite hard enough to draw new blood. "Did," the knife made a sudden thoughtful movement and cut free the laces of her bodice, exposing her breasts to the cold winter air. Thorne traced her left breast lazily with the tip of the blade, bringing his mouth to the female's neck as if he were about to kiss her there, then raised his lips to her ear instead "you," he spoke in a growl so low it was almost inaudible from where I sat unmoving in the wagon.
The knife traced just over one of her pointed nipples, but the female remained silent, her eyes full of despair. I couldn't look away, my heart pounding in my chest. I heard the third guard shift in his seat from the front of the wagon and clear his throat.
In another blink, the knife was at the female's belly, point pushing into the cloth that covered her midriff. Thorne growled from deep in his chest, the words so horrid that they caused me to shiver, "come from," he finished his question with a sharpness to his voice. He increased the pressure slightly, drawing a gasp from the female, her body squirming away from the pointed blade.
Thorne pushed the blade harder against the female's torso, and she screamed, "stop, stop, please stop," she begged.
Thorne's knuckles whitened as he rotated the tip of the blade, red dampening the cloth around its point. Tears welled in her eyes, "please, no, please." The pounding in my chest built until I could hear it in my ears like the rumbling of a storm.
"Where did you come from?" The words were spat out one at a time between fang-sharp teeth; his eyes pools of death and darkness.
"Stop."
The faeries froze, then slowly, I felt eyes turn to me. A lump caught in my throat. I had spoken without even realizing it. My pounding heart now seemed to stop completely, and Thorne - he met me with those dark, awful eyes, so full of rage. Without breaking that unwavering stair, he dug the dagger deep into the female's belly, slicing through her. Her cry filled the silence, drowning me, consuming me, and still I could not look away.
Thorne released the woman's hair, and she fell to the snow in a crumpled heap.
"Shit, Thorne," came a voice from behind me somewhere.
Thorne sauntered, purposefully, towards the wagon. The female's blood splattered across his chest and face. He grabbed my chin in his hand and brought his face so close to mine that I could feel his labored breathing hot on my cheeks; fury radiated from him. "Never," his voice a rumbling growl, "tell me to stop" he spit the word, "again."
"You can't kill all of them, Thorne."
Thorne snapped his attention to the guard sitting in the front of the wagon. "It's not your pace, Servin," he said cooly but released me nonetheless. He took a step back, glancing over his shoulder at the dead human, her breast still exposed, drenched in the blood that pooled around her.
Thorne growled dismissively, then traced his steps back to his dappled mare. "Let's pick up the pace," he said in a voice that demanded respect. He placed a foot in his mares stirrup and swung his other leg over her back. She pranced a bit, unnerved. Thorne looked to where the path ahead of us met the horizon, "I want to be drunk off my ass with a whore in my lap before dusk, and that won't happen if we keep stopping for," he shot a pointed look at me and spat "distractions."