Page 13 of Given to the Fae (The Dark Realms #3)

I stride over to the entrance and rip it open, revealing a long corridor that is definitely not in keeping with the size of the building from the outside. It’s been extended with magick.

‘Come,’ I bark and frown as she immediately gets up and follows me meekly.

We get to the second door and, as promised, the key is waiting there. I turn it and let us into a clean and well-furnished chamber that’s at odds with the main taproom. There’s a bed, and a warm hearth, plus a small, round tub in one corner.

I look at her. She’s staring at the room in awe. She starts forward and then winces, glancing to me for orders.

‘You may as well look around,’ I mutter, unlocking the heinous collar I buckled around her neck and trying to ignore the redness I see on her flesh from it.

She immediately takes off the sandals I tied around her feet earlier for the trip to the healer and I see her feet are red from them as well.

Turning away with a muttered curse, I go to the bed and sit down gingerly so that it doesn’t splinter and crack under my weight. I hate it when that happens.

I kick off my boots and watch her wander the room, opening the shutters and exclaiming over the sight of a sun-bathed field with mountains in the far distance, and then frowning because that doesn’t make sense.

‘It’s a window conjure,’ I supply.

‘Ah.’ She spends a good few minutes staring out at it, her elbows on the sill propping up her head.

I watch her, as oddly fascinated by her as she is with the conjure.

Finally, she looks over her shoulder at me and sees me lounging on the bed.

‘Are you going to do what the healer said?’ she asks.

‘The tea? Yes, I’ll make it for you in a moment.’

‘No. The other thing. I...can’t remember what she called it.’

‘Releasing?’ I spit the word.

She nods hesitantly.

‘Do you want me to?’ I ask, seeing what she says, if she’ll try any seduction techniques to get what she wants like all the others I’ve met, the ones we were warned about before we came to the Dark Realms.

‘Doesn’t matter what I want,’ she says simply, surprising me again. ‘I’ve been a slave since I was a child. I know how things are.’

I lean back against the headboard. ‘Have you really never been released before?’

She shakes her head.

‘Perhaps you’ll like it.’

She frowns and says nothing.

I shift onto my side to look at her more closely. The tip of the scar on her shoulder pokes out from the collar of the dress. ‘Why do you have so many scars?’

‘I was punished.’ She looks at me as if I’ve asked a stupid question.

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Are you so disobedient?’

She shrugs. ‘I suppose.’

She doesn’t elaborate and I get the strangest idea that she’s hiding things.

Important things. What secrets a slave like her could have, I don’t know, but I don’t ignore these feelings that I sometimes get.

My orc side smells more, hears more, knows more.

Focusing on her, I realize what it is. Her heartbeat is steadily increasing while she’s talking about The Barrack.

Perhaps it's just the bad memories, but perhaps it’s more than that.

But what do I care? In a few days she’ll be a distant memory.

I give myself yet another mental shake. I haven’t had any difficulty keeping my distance from these unfortunate creatures before. Why do I seem to be having trouble now?

I sit up, deciding to make her tea while she looks around the room a bit more. At least it’s better than watching her. At the small bath, she stops and inspects it. She leans over it and jumps with a small cry as it begins to magickally fill with hot water.

‘It’s meant to do that,’ I chuckle in spite of myself from the table where I’m topping up the small iron kettle with water from a tall, brown earthenware jug.

‘For...bathing?’

‘Yes.’ It boggles my mind that they’re only allowed to wash themselves in cold river water, or from horse troughs and well buckets. ‘You’ve never seen one?’

She shakes her head. ‘Ogdan washed in a hot spring sometimes. He didn’t have one of these.’

I nod at the wooden room divider that’s propped up by the wall. ‘Put that up if you want to use it.’

Her eyes widen and she glances at it.

‘You’d let me be...by myself?’

‘The window isn’t real. There’s nowhere you can go,’ I reason. ‘And Bere chose me as your keeper because I don’t... partake . You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘Don’t partake?’

‘I don’t fuck slaves,’ I elaborate.

‘Oh.’

She turns back to the bath, now full of steaming water.

She dips a finger into it and gives a small sigh at the heat that I try to ignore.

Seeming to make her mind up, she drags the divider out and opens it, making herself a small area I can’t see past. I hear her splash in the water and giggle a little to herself and I find myself smiling faintly before I get a hold of myself and frown, steeping the tea well so that it's strong.

Her loud gasp has me looking up, my eyes boring into the dark carved wood of the partition.

‘All right?’ I ask.

‘It’s just...warm,’ comes her small, awed voice from the other side of the room.

I suppose I take it for granted, but she’ll never have experienced something as simple as being enveloped by perfectly heated water despite how many dwellings have a bath that’s conjured to provide such a thing on demand. They aren’t for her ilk in the Dark Realms.

‘There’ll be soap on the side.’

She lets out a surprised sound.

‘Scented soap,’ she murmurs, her excitement so easy to hear from her tone.

There’s more splashing and I leave the tea to cool. I empty my bag onto the bed and re-pack it, mostly so I have something to do instead of merely listening to the feminine sighs and groans that emanate from behind the screen as she enjoys her bath.

My cock hasn’t been at anything less than half-mast since she drew that screen across the room, imagining what she’s doing, what she looks like.

Her long legs... tapered waist... She’s thin but her body is more than pleasing to the eye though I’ve tried desperately not to look when she’s bared to my eyes.

I stifle my own groan. I’ve never been so unable to control myself before. What the fuck is wrong with me? It’s not as if I haven’t had a female lately.

I hear her get out of the small tub and she rustles around with the folded linens stocked on the shelf as she dries herself.

When she emerges a moment later, dressed in her coarse, sleeveless, blue slave dress again, her long dark hair dripping as she dabs it with the drying linen. The scars on her body that I can see are reddened from the water.

‘Thank you,’ she says in a small voice.

My eyes lock onto lines of welts on her right arm. There was a bandage there at The Barrack, I remember. I grimace but I can’t help myself from asking. I want to know more about her.

‘What caused those?’ I ask, wishing I can take back the words as soon as I utter them because her expression shutters quickly.

‘A knife.’

‘What for?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

I want her to talk to me, tell me things. My eyes narrow slightly at myself. I haven’t wanted such things from the other females I’ve spent time with. Why this one?

‘The tea the healer gave us is there. Be sure to drink it all,’ I say gruffly.

Then, I gesture to the comb from my bag that’s now on the table waiting for her along with a leather tie for her hair. She stares at both for several moments before she glances up at me, her confusion evident.

‘For you to tame your locks,’ I say.

Nodding, she picks it up and tries to draw it through her gnarled wet strands from her scalp to the ends. It gets tangled, of course, and she pulls at the comb hard, making a face of pain when it gets stuck and stings her scalp.

‘Not like that,’ I say. ‘From the bottom up.’

And for some inexplicable reason, I find myself approaching her and taking the comb from her hair gingerly.

She gives me one of those quick glances of hers before she lowers her eyes, her shoulders tensing as if she believes I’m going to harm her in some way.

I look down at the scars I can see and let out a breath.

‘Sit in the chair by the hearth,’ I say.

She complies immediately, of course, and I find I don’t like that she just does what I tell her without question. If I told her to throw herself down a flight of stairs, would she?

I hope I don’t regret this, but if we’re going to be spending the next few days together while I care for her, I don’t want it to be like this.

‘When we’re alone, you can tell me no. You don’t have to do as I say,’ I murmur.

This time her eyes are sharp when she looks up at me. Sharp and very puzzled.

‘Is this a trick?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve never met a master like you before,’ she says.

I snort and don’t reply. If only she knew how true that statement was.

‘I’m going to get the tangles out of your hair and then plait it for you. Is that all right?’

She hesitates for a long moment, as if weighing her options. I doubt she’s ever had any.

‘Yes,’ she says, a worried look on her face as she turns her back to me.

I dry her hair carefully, and she shivers a little though I don’t think it’s because she’s cold.

Taking hold of her gently, I begin to comb it slowly and methodically, working my way up from the ends. The knots are many and some quite large, so it takes me a while, and by the time I’m finished, it’s mostly dry and I realize her head is lolling to the side.

A quick glance around to see her face confirms my suspicions.

She’s sound asleep. I plait her hair loosely and secure it with the piece of leather twine, all the while remembering when I’d last done this with my old gran.

She’d fallen asleep more than once as well, though she was as old as the hills even then.

I see the girl has still not drunk the tea I made for her, and I leave her where she is for a moment, topping the mug up with some hot water from the iron kettle.

I jostle her awake, forcing myself not to do it gently. I’ve already let lines blur and I can’t let them anymore.

‘Drink,’ I say roughly, and she tenses, hearing the change in my tone, though she doesn’t look surprised.

How many times has one of these creatures, who’s decided she’s so far below them, pretended kindness only to– NO!

I have to stop empathizing with her plight.

In a few days she’ll be sold and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Nothing. I know better than to get attached to anyone or anything out here.

She drinks the tea quickly, gulping it down and making a face when it’s done. ‘How often must I drink that?’

‘Three times a day as well as just before and just after traveling the Breach.’

She makes another face.

‘Unless you want to be Breach Blet.’

‘The healer didn’t think I am Breach Blet,’ she points out. ‘She was just trying to earn her fee.’

‘Be that as it may, I’m under orders from Bere and I intend to see them through.’

She seems to understand that I won’t budge on this and gives a small nod. ‘Fine,’ she mutters, and I almost smile at her petulance before I remember myself and scowl.

‘Get in the bed.’

She looks at it warily and then at me.

I roll my eyes. ‘I told you, female, I don’t fuck slaves.’

She stands slowly and goes to the bed, standing beside it.

‘Well?’ I ask impatiently. ‘Get in.’

‘What about the...releasing.’

I snort. ‘I don’t believe in it. Tell Bere I’m not following orders if you want it done. He’ll just tell someone else to do it.’

She shakes her head, looking much calmer as she draws back the coverlet and sits down. She bounces on the bed a bit and then carefully lies back, drawing the blanket over herself and closing her eyes.

I sit in the chair by the fire and stare into the flames, keeping her in my periphery in case she tries something stupid. But she doesn’t. She does actually appear to be asleep. I wonder who will be sent to relieve me tonight, if they can be trusted with her.

If it’s anyone other than Locke or Jak, I’ll tell them I’ll stay with her, I decide.

It’s not as if I have anywhere pressing to be.

Taverns hold little diversion. They’re full of cunts trying to pick a fight because I’m large for a fae, and I’m not interested in a brothel this evening no matter how much I’m meant to be keeping up appearances for the sake of the mission.

I glance at the female in the bed and let out a small sigh, lamenting my choices, her fate, the Dark Realms. In a few days she’ll be sold to the arenas as a reward for the winners.

Poor girl.