Page 4

If I thought I had any chance at reaching an understanding with Dahr on the first day, a good night’s sleep and the daily gossip of the camp told me that I had been dreaming in vain.

I didn’t know how long I had slept for, my body passing out from the tension and accumulated pressure, my bones screeching under the weight of my own muscles. When I lay down on the mattress and allowed my tired body to stretch, I simply gave up and sleep overpowered my other senses and will.

I didn’t know if the man had returned throughout the night or not. If he had, he must have left at dawn, because I did not hear him or sense his presence in my sleep.

Had anyone told me that I’d have one of the best nights of rest in a kidnapping situation, with a strange man whose tent I shared, I would have not so politely told them to shut it. Yet, here I was, committed to use the necessities pot which had been emptied early in the morning and I even dared to ask the two females who returned with breakfast for some water and soap to wash myself before I ate.

They promptly accommodated and allowed me to have a plentiful breakfast made of eggs, cheese, bread and steamed spinach, drink plenty of water and lie comfortably in bed while listening to the camp life outside.

I had hoped that Karisha would come again and even listened for her voice, but she must have been too concerned with other duties. Or I must have overestimated our bonding over a broody, stunning warrior-man.

Lunchtime came with boiled potatoes and chicken stew, along with the information that there was a training section of the camp just by the ocean, where the males spent most of their day and prepared for battle.

A battle against my town, that information had also been confirmed more than a few times. Some voices came disgruntled, not understanding why they had been commanded to overtake by the ocean when they thought moving through the mountains and then closing in the terrain would have been a much more strategic move, while others were faithful to the power of Grannicus and trusted whatever he commanded.

The late afternoon came with a twist in my stomach at the discovery that Grannicus and Dahr were one and the same and the realisation that I had been lied to.

The man whose tent I was sharing was the leader of the camp.

He had command over every single soul in here, yet he had looked me in the eye and told me he had nothing to do with my kidnapping and had no power to return me.

When he had all the power!

By dinner time, I was boiling inside, sick of all the flattery and odes to Grannicus, how everyone respected the mighty ‘flame lord’ and how they would follow him blindly after the displays of power he kept showing.

Yet, he had the nerve to lie to my face, when I had been nothing but polite to him and tried to have a reasonable conversation. I had not shouted, screamed or kicked and tried to keep myself rational throughout the entire situation.

I had been collaborative; I had been friendly, and I had tried to hold meaningful conversations with everyone that acknowledged my presence.

Only to be treated like an inferior being whose judgement they must have believed so lacking, that I wouldn’t be able to piece together their lies.

Like I was some sort of idiotic damsel they believed too scared to use her brain and make up her own logical connections concerning her situation.

No longer.

If this Dahr wanted me to be his enemy, then that I would become.

The resentment I started growing for this man expanded throughout the night, to the point where it replaced my rest. I started vividly imagining him in pain, suffering the way I had heard he made others suffer in return.

Dahr was the man controlling this camp, the one ordering the movements and the one who made the decision to attack my town.

I knew we were at war, we all did, but there was never news of a faerie camp nearby, never an impression that our small lives and unconcerned livelihoods were ever at risk. After all, we formed part of a chain of towns along the coast, did not hold any higher power or great riches, so the planned attack on our territory made absolutely no sense to me.

The master manipulator returned late in the evening, when the blanket of night had already settled over the tent and walked with heavy steps, filling the entire space with the stench of blood.

Feeling my heart pounding and nursing that small sprout of hatred that kept growing inside my chest, I leaned over to the side of the bed and faked being asleep. I did not want to be partial to yet another conversation where I strived for politeness and understanding and he behaved as though he had no power at all, treating me like a child.

I had learnt my lesson.

So, I stretched on the bed and forced my body into stillness, while taking the opportunity to calm my senses and listen for his movements.

I was initially afraid that he would light a lamp to help him find his footing, but he must have known his way around the tent, because his movements were so natural that I had no doubt in my mind he could have performed them in a state of blindness.

He walked over to the side of the table, where a basin filled with water waited for him and splashed around for a few minutes, until the stench of what I assumed were other people’s blood released its claws from the air.

A groan of his mattress announced his arrival into the bed less than a minute later.

No other sound came for the rest of the night.

The lack of a blanket didn’t become noticeable until the early morning, when storm clouds gathered over the camp and started shivering their fury on top of us. It must have been early, because the man was still resting comfortably in his massive wooden bed, covered in furs and blankets. I assumed he wasn’t facing the issues I currently was and didn’t have to wrestle the drips in his sleep.

Over the side of the tent that was kept in place by the metal bars I found myself unwillingly attached to, was a joining of fabrics, sewn together to stretch the material and pull it over the arching bars. Unfortunately, at least a few of those stitches either gave out or were about to, because the entire section below started to flood with the cold tears of the rain.

Pouring down in the exact section my attached bar was, thus soaking not only me, but my bedding, the rest of the food I had kept from dinner and the makeshift toilet area.

The life of a prisoner…

By the time morning activities started, I was soaked and shivering in a wet bed that I had been too weak to push away from the destruction of the rain. My skin turned gooseflesh from the cold and deep shivers twisted my spine and shoulders in a futile attempt to shake away the chills reaping through my muscles.

I started to feel my blood going numb inside my veins and refusing to flow into my cells, which was exactly what I needed to make me feel even more rage concerning my situation.

Maybe that was for the best. Maybe the moment I had been advised to wait for was arriving sooner than expected and this was the day when I would find my end.

I was mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepared, and I wouldn’t put it past my unlucky self to find my ending in a drake camp, tied to a metal pole.

“Good morning,”

the male voice arriving towards my direction addressed me, pulling me from dark thoughts that had started to gather.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t even look at him and made a point to turn away from Dahr and lie in the wet bed, forcing the most comfortable position I was able to put together at a moment’s notice.

“Do you maybe want to move away from the rain?”

his commanding tone reverberated through the tent, holding a competition with the echo of the clouds.

I pressed my lips together and shoved my face even deeper into the mattress, trying to cover as much of my wet hair and damp clothes as I could. I didn’t even dare breathe too loudly until I heard steps creaking away from my general direction.

I heard him say.

“as you wish, March,”

before the outside noise covered whatever else he had to say to the people he met there, making my rage towards him expand more than the storm clouds did for the rest of the day.

Allowing my spirit to embrace the possessed rage that overtook my senses, I launched into the rest of my day with a single word on my lips: no. Anything that came from the lying leader of this camp or his cohorts received an automatic negation. Did I want breakfast? No.

Did I want to be moved out of the rain? Reluctant… but no.

Did I want lunch? Again, no.

Did I want a fresh set of clothes? Yes, a million times yes, but the answer that my mouth let through was another… no.

Begrudgingly, I even said no to Karisha’s visit and felt terrible about pushing her away and sending her back out in the rain, but I was also proud of myself for keeping my mind fast and steady.

I had decided that, after all, I would soon be dead anyway, so I might as well make a statement and show them that I could not be treated like this. My existence as a prisoner didn’t bother me as much as they did while playing tricks on my mind and disparaging my intelligence so easily.

I would have expected at least a conversation, some sort of briefing with regards to my current situation and an action plan that I would be expected to follow. Instead, I had been tied to a pole and treated like an animal, whose only basic necessities were food, water and a place to relieve itself.

Unfortunately for them, they had made a mistake in picking me if they were planning for a docile prisoner. Not that I had any expectations of surpassing my status as captive and running into the camp by myself with heroic hopes of saving my town, but I could at least do my part to become a large inconvenience and a thorn in Dahr’s side.

“No, thank you,”

I said by instinct as soon as the tent flaps opened to probably reveal another attempt at either offering me food or fresh clothes.

“As I said, anything that comes from Dahr will receive a ‘no’ from me.”

“And why is that, March?”

The man made himself visible inside the tent, sporting what I assumed was his usual uniform, a black leather vest and leather pants, his hair and body dripping with both rain and remains of blood.

His arrival made me stop for a beat, my eyes too focused on his presence, on the way rain and blood mixed and poured down his tense biceps, adorning his tanned skin with a violent glow. How his wet hair spilled over his nape and tickled his jawline, small curls wrapping around his ears and how his heaving breaths made the entire surface light up with tension.

His chest rose up and down in strong and determined breaths, the after-training tension and need for release obvious in his body language.

I had stumbled on my words because I was involuntarily in awe of such displays of masculinity. Even though I had been studying representations of the male body all my life, the one in front of me seemed more truthful to what the artists intended to portray as god-like than any other I had seen before.

“Well?”

He took a step closer to me and leaned in just slightly, towering over me enough to allow his head to be rained on through the cracked seams in the roof of the tent.

“Because that is the conclusion I have decided to be in my best interest,”

I said pointedly, yet still struggling to take my eyes off him. The last thing I wanted was to lust over my captor, no matter how my insides tensed in his presence. It was a natural reaction, I told myself. One that my sex-deprived body expressed as a biological need when brought in the presence of a fine male specimen. That was all. I willed more blood to go towards my brain than towards other parts in order to help me continue this conversation.

“Forgive me if I reached my own conclusions while enjoying my prisoner status, you will have to admit that you weren’t much of a conversationalist,”

I pointed out and lifted my chin to display my full bravado, lest he think my words were dominated by fear.

He pursed his lips for a second, taking in my admonishment and dipped his chin just slightly, the highest sign of agreement I would get.

“That is true,”

he said with no particular tonality.

“And what sort of conclusions did you reach?”

“That you made a mistake,”

I immediately jumped into action.

“That you are the leader of this camp, and you clearly underestimated me when thinking that I would simply sit here tied to a pole and beg for your mercy.”

The press of his lips this time looked slightly different. Even though the corners of his lips curved, they were quickly pressed together by his mouth preventing the full motion.

“And what will you do now, March?”

he asked with a challenge.

“Make sure that I put all my remaining breaths and effort into hating you. Into making your life as miserable as I possibly can, just like you plan to do with my people.”

When his eyes widened, I replied with a snarl.

“Yes, I know. I know that you are planning to attack Enderflagg at the end of the month. If you didn’t want this information to be revealed, you should have told your soldiers not to brag about it every other minute.”

I must have been feverish from the rain and caught some sort of cold that affected my brain and gave me hallucinations, because this man couldn’t possibly be smiling at me. With… pride.

“I’m impressed,”

his gaze twinkled with the acknowledgement I no longer wanted.

“And I assume you already have a plan that will induce this… plague upon my destiny?”

he said, barely avoiding a chuckle. It was obvious for the both of us that I did not present a physical challenge to him, but he didn’t have to be so presumptuous about it. Even enemies could respect each other, but we were clearly past that frontier.

“I haven’t decided yet,”

I admitted. Instead of feeling ashamed, I made sure to fix my eyes on him.

“But as soon as I develop my plan, I will make sure it burns your very soul. That, I swear to you.”

It must have meant nothing to him, just the vain promises of a silly girl, but he had not met my determination yet. He did not know that when I took an oath, I would live and breathe it. Like the time, I graduated from university in two years and only slept four hours a night for the entire period, or when I promised myself not to break any more hearts and never touched a man again.

This time he truly chuckled, allowing the echo of his voice to clink alongside the rain drops that kept pouring over the both of us.

“If you made an enemy of me already, girl, you might as well enjoy some comfort.”

Saying that, he leaned over my bed and moved to reach for my shackle. I didn’t have time to shimmy out of his way when his hand touched the metallic chain and yanked it in less than a second, ripping the tie apart and setting my wrist free.

The relief of full motion after three days overpowered my senses, and I didn’t have time to study what had just happened. My eyes must have played a trick on me because I could have sworn the metal turned orange for a second, as if melting for a beat before coming back to its original temperature.

When I looked over at the support bar, I noticed it was twisted, dipping in the shape of a fist.

“What are you doing?”

I tried to shout but it was too late. My body swung in the air and over the man’s shoulder, who lifted me without permission as one would a sack of potatoes and started walking away with me towards the other side of the tent.

His shoulder blade pushed into my ribs and his wet skin connected to mine and for a moment, just for a small instant in the large universe of the passage of time. I felt my heart flutter. Until I realised what was happening.

Anticipating this nonsensical situation and unwilling to participate in hinting at any sort of romantic scenario, I shouted while hitting his back to ensure the receipt of my message.

“Don’t you dare throw me in the bed.”

I barely had time to finish my sentence when my body dropped with a thud.

“I wasn’t going to. My bed is sacred. You will stay on the floor tonight.”

I groaned at the pain in my tailbone, those furs did nothing to alleviate my fall, and he didn’t show any care towards my body either, throwing me from the height of his shoulders, which was probably six feet.

“What’s this supposed to solve?”

I whimpered and took full advantage of having two free hands to massage my lower back.

It was an unfortunate move, because it must have given him the idea and my freedom came to a quick stop when the man caught my right hand and wrapped a leather binding around it, which he then proceeded to tie to the wooden leg of his massive bed.

“Is this really necessary?”

I sighed but did not protest too much. It was still a bind, yes, but it was an improvement compared to the metal and this leather bind was long enough to allow me to rest my hand in a natural position.

Instead of a reply, he threw me one of the blankets from his bed, burying me under its weight and I had to struggle for more than a few seconds —much to my shame— to detangle my limbs from the weight of the fur cover. By that point, he was already in bed, turned to the side, his back to me, without paying me any importance.

“Are you truly trusting me to be by your bed while you sleep?”

I asked the question without thinking, too surprised by his nonchalant attitude.

Dahr did not turn, but his reply came out playful.

“Sleep now, March. We’ll fight more tomorrow.”