Page 4

Two

CIANA

“ I noticed you haven’t had your dinner yet.” Sefri, a Joy Vessel Keeper, materialized in front of me with a plate of food in her hands.

Her sudden appearance snapped me out of my heavy thoughts.

Yes, I could think again. The paralyzing fear and the resulting numbness that had been shrouding my mind, my heart, and my very soul had finally faded away, and I could just sit by the fountain here in the inner garden of the sarai , listen to the soothing trickling of the water, and think about all the things I had been afraid to think about before.

I realized that I no longer had to be afraid. I didn’t need to listen for his steps or jump at the sound of the home office door opening. I didn’t have to make sure to always have my phone on me in case he called when he was away, because he’d get mad if I didn’t answer on the first ring.

I didn’t need to pray for a kind note in his increasingly displeased voice or to desperately wish for a single warm spark in his chilling glare .

I didn’t have to keep giving up pieces of me, desperately trying and inevitably failing to please him.

My husband wasn’t here. He could never find me now.

For once, I was truly safe from him.

“Yes. Thank you. I’m afraid I forgot to eat dinner this morning.” I smiled, taking the plate from Sefri while making sure that our hands didn’t touch.

My ability to think had returned, but I still struggled to believe that not all people were going to hurt me and that not every touch had to be painful.

The shadow fae who abducted me from the human world were nocturnal creatures. They fed us breakfast late in the evening and dinner early in the morning. The humans in this place that they called sarai also slept during the day and stayed up through the night.

Sefri lingered, watching me take the first bite.

Like everyone else in the queen’s palace, she was topless, dressed only in a long beige skirt and a pair of beaded leather sandals.

Instead of the elaborate, bejeweled bib necklaces that the fae of the royal court wore, Sefri had a mesh of wooden rings and leather cords that covered her chest and almost fully concealed her small, perky breasts.

Like all Joy Vessel Keepers, Sefri had her tendrils extended, but their black, long lengths were circled with metal clips at their bases on her arms and back.

Apparently, the clips disabled the tendrils, making it impossible for the Keepers to connect to us or to taste our emotions.

After all, human pleasure was an exquisite delicacy available only to the nobles of the royal court.

“How do you like the food?” she asked, inclining her head, which made the thin silver chains in her long, pointy ears sway.

“It’s good,” I replied mechanically, forcing my attention to what I was eating. “Nice stir-fry.”

Sefri appeared satisfied with my answer. “The royal chef prepared it with the help of two Joy Vessels. They made sure the taste was agreeable for other humans. ”

“It is very agreeable, indeed.” I assured her, hardly tasting the food.

She gave me an assessing look. “Can I interest you in a companion for dinner?”

I stopped eating and lowered my head defensively.

It’d been two nights since I got the harness. Sefri’s last night’s attempt to connect a shadow fae to my emotions resulted in him cursing and stomping out of the sarai in anger. The noble fae had called me useless, but Sefri didn’t seem to give up hope of using me.

“I don’t think it’ll work,” I warned.

Not much had changed since last night. I hadn’t become miraculously cheerful since. I couldn’t even remember the last time I felt joyful about anything.

“It’s not anyone from the royal court this time,” Sefri explained quickly. “He’s not permitted to taste your joy anyway. Please meet Joy Guardian Kurai,” she introduced the shadow fae standing at her side.

When did he get there?

Or had he been standing there all along?

I rubbed my forehead. Reality had been returning to me, but it did so slowly. The awareness of my surroundings remained narrow at times, allowing some things to escape my attention.

“Hello, Kurai,” I said, lifting my head.

Hearing the sound of my own voice, loud and clear, helped me break through the fog that threatened to shroud my mind again, bringing my surroundings into a sharper focus.

It felt good to be able to speak openly again.

After all, not so long ago, people used to call me “chatty.” But that was before Dylan came into my life and stole my voice, along with so many other pieces of me.

“Greetings, Sweet One.” The shadow fae, Kurai, inclined his head in a polite bow.

“Joy Guardian Kurai is here to help us make our Joy Vessels feel more comfortable with their new leilatha harnesses,” Sefri explained. “He won’t taste your emotions but will keep you company this morning.”

I nodded, taking another forkful of my stir-fry.

Sefri left, leaving the male fae standing in front of me.

I expected him to try and chat me up, like the Joy Vessel Keepers had tried to do. But he didn’t say a word and didn’t even take a seat next to me on the stone bench by the fountain.

After a while, his silence started to bother me, and I ventured a glance at him between bites of my food.

He wore the same beige skirt like the Keepers.

Unlike them, however, his shadowy appendages that they called “tendrils” were hidden.

Instead, he had wide, golden strips encircling his neck, arms, and torso over the spots where his tendrils would be coming from.

Two wide matching bangles also circled his wrists.

The golden strips around his arms and torso looked very similar to the black harness that they had put on me, only his strips didn’t have the rosettes.

His wavy black hair was shorter than the hair of the other shadow fae I’d met.

It was pulled into a bun on the back of his head with a few thick strands on the bottom left unbound.

They reached down only to his shoulders, when every other fae I’d seen in the sarai wore their hair long and braided in different styles.

The silence between us grew unbearably uncomfortable, and I broke it first.

“Are you not eating?”

He cleared his throat, shifting his weight to another foot while towering over me.

“I already ate.”

Of course, it was only me who forgot about food, distracted by my newly rediscovered ability to think and analyze my thoughts.

“How are you doing after the harness fitting two nights ago?” he asked in the same polite but detached voice.

It had only been two nights, but it felt like I’d done a lifetime worth of thinking since .

I drew in a deep breath, focusing on my feelings. It’d been a while since I had a chance to assess them in any detail.

“You know what? I’m feeling fine, everything considered,” I blurted out.

“I’m glad to hear—” he started, but I didn’t let him finish.

“I think it jump-started something in my head. I’ve been trying to understand how it happened, and I think I’ve figured it out.”

“What have you figured out?” He looked confused.

I set my empty plate on the ledge of the fountain and patted the bench next to me.

“Sit down, and I’ll tell you.”

I realized that listening to the ramblings of my troubled mind wasn’t such an enticing proposition. But he sat down and turned to me, looking ready to absorb whatever I threw at him.

“You see,” I said, “when you experience everything there is to experience, I mean like the entire range of emotions from the deepest despair to the most wondrous euphoria, there’s nothing left to wish for and nothing left to fear.

I felt it all, and I survived. There’s nothing that life can throw at me now that I hadn’t already felt. Do you know what it means?”

“Maybe,” he said slowly. “But I’d like to hear it from you.”

“It’s comforting. Because now I know for a fact that I can live through anything. It makes me feel strong—strong enough to finally be able to think about the time when I felt very, very weak, small, and insignificant… When I didn’t think I mattered at all…” My voice broke, despite my best efforts.

I inhaled deeply again, then realized that this man might have no idea what I was talking about.

“Do you know what happens when they put this thing on a person?” I pointed at the black ribbons circling my neck, chest, and arms.

His long eyebrows rose in surprise, and I noticed how intensely green his eyes were, like true gemstones .

“I do,” he said. “I was in the room with you too. Do you not remember me?”

I took a closer look at him, but it proved useless.

“No, sorry, I don’t,” I confessed. “But I don’t remember many things. Hours and even days seem to have disappeared on me. I think it’s because I didn’t put much effort into remembering them while I was living through them, just wishing they’d pass by quickly.”

“You didn’t care to remember?”

“I didn’t care…” I echoed. “I remember being scared when the shadows grabbed me. I screamed. But I don’t recall what happened next, not the travel to the queen’s palace, not our arrival to the sarai .

I only have a very vague memory of the harness fitting.

The memory of waking up the last morning…

I mean the last evening, is the clearest recent memory I have.

And now, I’m trying to go back in time and sort through all my past memories too. ”

“Why?” he asked with a wince, as if the very idea of remembering one’s past repulsed him.

I pondered his question. When it came to my past, I’d probably be better off not remembering some things. But oblivion felt like a numbness trapping my mind, when I longed to be free.

“Because I’ve lost myself over the years, Kurai. And now, to find and pick up all the pieces of me, I feel like I should retrace my steps along the same path.”

“I’m afraid I don’t fully understand,” he prompted. “How?”

“Like, I’ve just remembered that when I was in school, I used to talk so much that people would joke about me never shutting up.

But now…” I rubbed my throat. “Now, I often have to make a conscious effort to even make a sound. I used to laugh a lot. And now, I can no longer remember what made me laugh. I used to smile so much?—”

“You still do.”

“What?” His words shocked me.

“You still smile quite often. ”

“I do?” I became suddenly aware that I was indeed smiling right now too.

“Yes. A smile rarely leaves your face, and I’ve been trying to understand why. Humans usually smile when they’re happy. But Councilor Terent couldn’t find a single positive emotion inside you when he tried last night.”

I wondered what the councilor would find in me now. Because I didn’t feel that bad at all. I believed I actually enjoyed Kurai’s company.

“Like right now.” Kurai pointed a finger at my face. “You’re smiling again, but you’re looking rather sad, not happy. Why?”

“I suppose a smile can convey many things. Maybe if shadow fae smiled, you would be able to read its other meanings too? Like, we can read body language. For example, I can tell by the way you’re leaning away from me or by how straight your back is that you aren’t nearly as comfortable in my company as I am in yours. ”

“I don’t mind your company,” he protested stiffly.

I shook my head with a knowing smile. “Look how firmly your feet are planted into the ground, like you’re ready to jump up and flee already.

” I waved a hand casually. “You can leave. Don’t worry, I won’t be offended.

You’ve been brave and enduring enough, lasting here for as long as you have while listening to a sad woman’s musings. ”

I hadn’t really told him anything about my past yet, but I had a feeling I would if he stayed longer.

I didn’t lie when I said I felt comfortable with him.

It was probably because he was a stranger and didn’t really care about me or my past. Kurai listened with that kind of detached attention that made it easy for me to open up to him, like I could say anything I needed to say because he would eventually forget it all anyway.

“It’s not that…” He slid his gaze down my face, focusing on my bruise, then on my split lip that started to throb again under his attention.

His chest expanded with a breath, as if he was going to say more. Then he glanced away, spotted my empty dinner plate, and grabbed it like a lifesaver.

“I’ll take back the plate.” He jumped to his feet.

I watched his tall, graceful figure stride away swiftly. He was clearly fleeing me and likely for good. But he’d lasted longer than he should’ve and escaped at the right time just before I would’ve plunged us deeper into the mucky story of my broken heart and my even more broken life.