Page 2 of Given to the Fae (The Dark Realms #3)

I nod, leaving again quickly. I could tell him that nothing will happen to him for simply speaking unkindly to me, but the truth is that I benefit from the healer’s fear of me.

He splinted my broken arm for me last winter when one of the more feral bulls got hold of me and broke it when I wouldn’t submit, and he gave me an ointment for a rash I caught off one of the new girls a few weeks ago.

I go to the stone house where Ogdan lives, and the guard at the door puts up a hand.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Bryn?’

‘Sio told me to come here and wait for him,’ I explain, not looking up at them mostly out of habit.

I might be Kismet, but I still follow the rules.

Though some of the guards don’t care whether I do or don’t, it’s simpler that way.

Enough slavers, including Ogdan’s own men, have taken the risk of fate’s anger in order to ‘put me in my place’ over the years and I have the scars to prove it.

To Ogdan’s eternal fury, one of them even put me in the main yard with the bulls a few months ago, but they realized their mistake when half wanted to rut me, and the other fifty percent tried to protect me from their fellow males hoping to gain fate’s favor.

I didn’t bother to tell them that it doesn’t work like that. Most of them have barely been taught words outside commands anyway. Human males only have three uses to the masters as far as I’ve seen. Scaring the females, breeding the females, and manual labor.

By the time they got me out of the yard that day, fifteen bulls were injured and the fool who put me in there with malice in his heart had been accidentally skewered by a spear that glanced off a target nearby while the guards were performing drills.

It would have seemed like a freak accident if they didn’t always happen when someone tried to harm me.

So, I try to keep my head down despite being ‘Fate Touched’, as they call it. I don’t get in anyone’s way, and the guards who know don’t bother with me. Ogdan has other means of punishing me, anyway. He made it his business to find them once he realized he was stuck with me.

I overheard him telling Sio once, when his second couldn’t understand why I was still at The Barrack, that his superiors, masters I’ve never seen, advised him against killing me. They said it would anger the gods and destroy their business.

They can’t kill me and they stopped trying to palm me off on unsuspecting buyers long ago as well. Each and every one was punished as soon as they accepted me.

And, thus, The Barrack is my home. I’ve lived and worked here for longer than I can remember and will for many more years to come, I expect.

‘The new overseer take a liberty, Bryn?’

I glance at the two goblin guards and shrug. ‘He got trampled by Black Night.’

The older one, Fridin, has been here almost as long as I have. He laughs gleefully and holds out his hand. His friend curses and throws him a jingling pouch.

‘Betting on fate?’ I ask quietly, not wanting anyone else to hear me speaking so unlike a slave to my betters.

Ogdan and Sio don’t like it. The girls don’t either because they’re punished in my place when I step out of line.

The other females will already have heard about the troll.

They’ll keep their distance later when we go to bed, chance the tiny punishment from fate for excluding me.

The rest will curl up together and make me stay on the outside of the pile.

It’s summer, but I’ll still be cold and alone.

‘We knew by his swagger that the fat cunt would do something stupid. Curt thought he’d die. But I know you well enough to say what you’d do, so I wagered he’d live.’

I glance at Curt. ‘Might still die. The hooves got him in the squidgy bits.’

Curt chuckles. ‘They all looked like squidgy bits to me.’

I give him a rare, wry smile, but then they both stand to attention and the look melts off my face immediately.

Sio is behind me.

‘Get inside,’ he says in a low voice and the two goblins let me pass.

I open the door and am met with one of the girls.

She’s new and I don’t know her name. Ogdan has her on her front over his desk, taking what he wills from her.

She glances up at our entrance as he ruts her from behind.

She looks bored. I have heard from the other girls that Ogdan’s cock is small.

In their words, ‘he’s a much easier fuck than the bulls because he barely touches the sides’.

I’ve never been bent over by Ogdan, thankfully, so I don’t know the truth of their words. His narrow hips snap a few more times and then he groans before fastening the laces up the front of his trousers and straightening.

‘Get out,’ he mutters with a sigh to the girl when he catches Sio’s eye.

She doesn’t listen to the master, instead turning to him with hopeful eyes. ‘But I thought we could?—’

She lets out a cry as he hits her hard across the cheek as casually as he would bat away a fly and she flees the room sobbing, hopefully with a new understanding that Ogdan’s notice won’t lead to anything good. Though from the furious look she casts at me as she leaves, I doubt it.

‘What happened?’ Ogdan asks, sitting heavily in his chair.

His coal-like skin glistens with a sheen of sweat from his activities and the scales that sporadically litter his flesh are tinged with green. He scratches his head next to one of his small, twisted horns.

‘Why do you hasten me in my fuck, Sio?’

‘The new one tried to lash her,’ Sio mutters, urging me forward much more gently than he would any of the other girls, I’m sure.

Ogdan lets out a longsuffering snarl. ‘Was it bad?’

‘Trampled by one of the horses.’

‘Fuck,’ Ogdan hisses. ‘We’re short-handed as it is.’

His black eyes find me and narrow as I look down.

‘You fucking loathsome little snake,’ he snarls.

‘Good for nothing. Ugly. Pathetic. Stupid little human bitch! Gods,’ he throws his hands up in the air dramatically, ‘grant me a moment without fate’s punishment, just one where I could beat this millstone bloody for all the problems she has caused me since I had the misfortune of buying her! ’

I wince at his foul words. He knows there won’t be a punishment for those, so he tells them, and others nasty things like them, to me almost every day.

‘Get one of the girls,’ he snarls at Sio. ‘An older one.’

‘No!’

I’m on my knees before he’s finished speaking.

‘Please!’ I beg. ‘I tried to stop him. I promise you I did, my lord. I tried to delay him. I did all I could to spare him! I was going about my work when he cornered me in the barn.’

His expression is hard as he stares at me and then his eyes drift a little to his right, over to a knife that sits at the edge of his desk. I grab for it and snatch it up, knowing what he wants. He won’t ask. It has to be my decision, or something bad will happen to him.

I make the first cut high on my arm, slicing at just the right depth for bloodletting as I twist my face in more pain than I really feel.

That’s what he wants to see, my anguish.

I make a second and a third while he and Sio watch, though I see Sio glancing out of the window to gauge the time from the sun’s position in the sky.

These punishments bore him. He likes to do the hurting himself.

At the sixth slash, red is running down my arm in rivulets and soaking into my ragged clothes, and I’m wondering how many he’s going to make me cut. The most it’s ever been is seven before I got too dizzy to continue. Sio whispers something to Ogdan. The demon glances outside and nods.

‘Enough,’ he hisses. ‘I have better things to do than watch you bleed yourself dry.’ He points at me with one thick taloned finger. ‘Next time, one of the others gets your punishment no matter what, so stay out of the fucking way!’

‘Yes, my lord.’

I hand him the knife, handle first, and he takes it, ensuring he doesn’t cut me with the blade.

‘Fuck off, you pathetic little cunt.’

I get to my feet, feeling a little shaky as I put my hand over the cuts, pressing hard to try to staunch the flow.

Staggering outside, I see the two goblins look away from me as if I’m not dripping blood all over the ground, but I’m not surprised. No one likes to be in Ogdan’s crosshairs if they can help it. It’s up to me to sort myself out.

I go to the healer, leaning heavily against the open door and hoping he’s feeling more altruistic than he was earlier.

He rolls his eyes at me and points to a table with some healing herbs and bandages on it before he turns back to the unconscious troll who’s now lying on the wide cot in the corner.

I approach the table and pick out what I’ll need.

I’ve learned enough over the years of tending to myself and watching the healer that I have a bit of skill in this area.

I know what to use in the poultice, and what potion to drink from the bottles on the shelf nearby though I’m not really supposed to touch them.

The vials are expensive and not for slaves, but the one on the right will cut my healing time in half.

I glance over my shoulder at the healer. His attention is completely on the troll, so I grab one of the vials, uncork it, and tip it down my throat quickly. I put it carefully with the other empty ones on the table, hoping he doesn’t keep a tally somewhere.

He doesn’t look back at me.

After that, I grind the herbs I need and press them into a wet mass that I put over the cuts I’ve made, wincing at the sting.

I wrap them in clean linen bandages tightly.

Then, I make sure I clean up after myself when I’m finished, mostly so that the healer forgets I was here, and continues to not look too closely at what I get up to when his back is turned.