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Why am I tied up?

It was the first question that sprang to mind when I started blinking after what felt like an eternity.

My head was pounding, and deep pulsations ran up my spine, settling into the lower part of my brain.

I felt the shackle that kept my right hand pinned in an uncomfortable position and even though I tried to move my shoulder to adjust my body, there was very little room around me.

Cold touched my skin in several places and an unpleasant ringing echoed across my temples.

I forced my eyes to adjust to the darkness that surrounded me and blinked a few more times, clearing the air around.

To see… a metallic structure made of bars, used to give shape to something I couldn’t quite piece together just yet.

My own wrist was tied to a long bar, which kept leading to an upright line towards a darker part of the room.

It seemed to be leading diagonally and joining with other metallic constructions, that held the weight of the ceiling.

This didn’t look like an ordinary room.

It looked like a tent.

A wide, large tent, supported by a skeleton of metal that I was tied up to for some reason.

As though I was becoming part of the very structure.

I had always been an analytical person, much to the annoyance of my professors who wanted me to see the colours and beauty rather than the technicalities and mathematics behind it, but no matter how much my brain tried to work this puzzle, there were a few pieces missing.

There was no logical reason why I would wake up, tied up, in a tent.

A tent that, the more I looked at, the more I recognised the architecture.

This was no ordinary tent, not one that anyone could walk into a shop and purchase, at least.

This one looked masterful, with embellished details worthy of royalty, if my eyes could spot as much in the darkness.

And it was massive.

I could make out some leather-made motifs and carvings gleaming all around in the darkness, it looked more like an altar than a practical space for sleeping.

If it weren’t for what I assumed was a bed in the far corner, in a space that my eyes couldn’t recognise yet.

I was either concussed and unable to clear my vision, or this place lacked the light that would help my eyes adjust.

And judging by the lingering chill in the air, I presumed it was the latter.

I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm my senses enough to force myself to understand my current situation.

Just a few hours ago I had finished classes, eaten a late lunch which Mrs Sabine insisted on criticising as per her usual self-imported tradition, and walked out of the school, with a plan to go to the market for some fresh eggs and peppers.

Instead of making it to the market, I woke up in the middle of the night, with a pounding headache, tied up in a place that seemed to be faerie made.

Not that I knew too much about their traditions, since every single art book that I was forced to memorise throughout my university days refused to acknowledge their presence and ability for higher creation.

Humans and faerie didn’t mix, that was a well-known fact, and god forbid someone tried to make commentary towards a mutual benefit or a union, they would instantly be penalised or barred.

That, however, did not account for my presence here.

Wherever here might be.

I assumed it was not that far away from my hometown since the salty breeze still lingered in the air so the ocean must still be close by.

All my questions were put to an abrupt stop when footsteps halted my line of thought and my breath along with it.

“Not too much trouble, and then another month of rest,”

a male voice croaked from outside, his tone heavy enough to be carried by the night air to my own ears.

“If Dahr keeps striking like that, man, we’ve got it sorted. And get fat rations along with it,”

another male voice lingered as the footsteps moved on the other side of the tent.

“Enderflagg should be a piece of cake, compared to the past two, it’s gonna fly by like a holiday,”

the first man cackled.

My heart wrapped around the name his mouth released before passing by, probably a set of guards on patrol.

Enderflagg, they had said.

My town.

This Dahr person was planning to strike my town.

Just before my neuronal synapse had time to settle and process the information, the side of the tent creaked with the movement of a silhouette. The silhouette of a man, which I could barely distinguish. Quite a large one if my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

I was tied up in a man’s tent, the reality of my situation hit me with a full blow.

Everything else suddenly seemed irrelevant. It didn’t truly matter at this point how I got there or why on earth these faeries made me appear from the school into this tent — that was if my guess was correct, and they were even faeries at all.

All that mattered right now was my safety. Plus, the fact that my wrist was tied up to what looked like a metal bar while a man casually slept in a bed less than 30 feet away from me.

My composure lost control of my muscles as they started shivering, my self-preservation instinct demanded I find a solution to get me out of this situation. And my right hand, the one involuntarily connected to the cold metallic bar started shaking harder, the shackles hitting against the bar that held me in place, the screech of metal on metal having anything but the desired effect of keeping me hidden.

A groan coming from the part of the tent where the bed was situated told me that my presence had been noticed.

“What is it?”

a deep voice grunted towards my general direction, while the large silhouette changed its posture and turned towards me. Or at least, the shape my eyes could see looked like it did. I bit my tongue and remained quiet, puckering my lips to ensure no sound escaped my mouth without command.

Still, my right hand refused to obey, the muscles shivering from both the tension in my body provoked by fear and the cramps that must have been gathering for the past hours.

“Speak,”

the manly voice ordered. This time the silhouette moved position enough that I could confirm it indeed belonged to a large man. Who, by the tone of his voice, wasn’t very keen on being awoken by my noise in the middle of his rest.

“I just woke up, and don’t know where I am,”

I pushed through the fear and replied to the man, hoping with every shred of my being that he would be moved to aid me.

Instead, he groaned again, as if bothered by the reason I was making such a fuss. A few seconds melted in the darkness, during which my heart threatened to escape out of my chest from anticipation.

“You are in the drake camp, led by Captain Xadom, under King Thayer’s orders,”

he said with annoyance, like one does a child who's been explained something multiple times but still struggles to comprehend.

The drake camp…

The drake camp.

My memory helped bring back a page from one of the books I had stolen from the library when I was still at university, from that far removed shelf we were never allowed to access in the second room by the window.

‘Drakes,’ the book had said.

“are a type of lower faerie species belonging to the Fire Kingdom. Drake faeries are used and bred for war purposes, their life mission being that of conquering territory.”

I was in a tent.

I was taken from my home.

The guards outside were talking about striking my town.

The faeries are here, my brain sent alarm signals to every part of my body that could receive it. And I had to make an instant decision.

“Release me at once, I am not supposed to be here,”

I half-pleaded, half-demanded, my tone of voice struggling to convey the two.

Another moment of silence passed me by, forcing the angst inside my throat to burn. Whoever this man was, he did not display surprise at my presence. Nor did he seem to be the merciful type.

I wanted to scold myself at the ridiculousness of my request, of what I could come up with to aid my situation. My tutors would have been solely disappointed in me.

So much time passed that I didn’t think I would get a reply, that the man had simply gone back to sleep, thinking me an apparition or a dream.

“Are you from Enderflagg?”

he moaned his grievance at me in the form of a question.

“I am,”

I didn’t miss a beat, my response following his questions like a dog chasing a rabbit.

“Are you a young woman?”

His next question followed in a split second, as though he too had become aware of this dialogue race and turned into a willing participant.

“I am twenty-six,”

I said without any particular emotion, unsure if my age would become a determining factor in his decision-making process.

His willingness to communicate with me turned out to be overrated, because he once more remained silent for a long while.

I blinked around in the darkness, forcing my gaze to fixate on the point where I knew he was located, willing my eyes to adjust better so I could at least spot his facial expressions, but the thickness of the night formed a wall around us, preventing me from seeing.

“You have to let me go, I have no business here,”

I started again, seeing how he had no plan to continue our conversation. I scoured my brain with enough details to blurt out in a coherent manner in the hope to plead my case. I planned to tell him more about myself, about my job, my classes and even my entire life story in no particular order, if any of it would help my case.

“My name is—”

“March,”

he interrupted with palpable annoyance.

“Your name is March and that is all I want to hear until morning. I am tired and need rest.”

To prove a point, I heard the mattress shriek under the weight of his body and spotted his silhouette falling back with an audible thud.

Leaving me on my own.

With my worries and fears, with the shaking of my right hand which had started again.

I was in a faerie camp.

I was a prisoner in a faerie camp, I corrected myself. And by the attitude of this man, I wasn’t going to get released anytime soon.

Which posed another question…

“Are you going to kill me now?”

I forced the words out, this time my throat refusing to even push the sound from fear of the answer it might bring.

To my surprise, this question earned me a quicker reply.

“I wasn’t planning to…”

he replied, blanketing relief all over my body, but before I had a chance to truly breathe a sense of safety, he continued.

“Unless you keep disturbing my rest. Then I’ll have no choice but to kill you and gain myself some peace and quiet.”

His words came out like a warning, though he also sounded curious. I felt him listening, daring me to say another word. To challenge him.

I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

I even started massaging my cramping hand to prevent it from shaking, taking away the metal-on-metal slapping which had disturbed him in the first place.

A few minutes later, silence filled the tent, settling the bed and my own movements, both the stranger and I keeping as quiet as a living, breathing person could.

On my part, I knew I wouldn’t be getting any rest, but I also wasn’t a fool to challenge him and see if he would actually murder me for not letting him sleep.

If history lessons had taught me anything, it was to live to fight another day, so I settled my body into a more comfortable position, if such a thing was even possible, and tried my best to respect my captor’s wishes, keeping quiet in my corner with the metal bar.

While my mind focused on the most important question: who was this man?