Page 7

“What am I supposed to do all day?”

Snapping at Dahr was the epitome of our long conversation, which had lasted over twelve hours, ever since he returned to the tent after I had my dinner.

I had started slowly, offering my gratitude for the day and for the garments I had received, which proved a lot more comfortable than I had initially thought. Except the shoes. Those, I absolutely despised.

Then, I made sure to ask about his day and give him the opportunity to share any developments with me, to which he only grunted and made himself busy with maps and notes that were waiting for him on the table. I hadn’t realised those had appeared there while I was gone and made a mental note to check any information he left behind as soon as the next opportunity presented itself.

After doing his best to ignore me until it was time for bed, Dahr physically had to chase me around the tent, since I blatantly refused to be tied up again.

I was ashamed of myself.

I thought I would have presented more of a challenge for the man and clearly overestimated my sneak-around capabilities, because it took him a total of three tries to grab hold of my waist and throw me over his shoulder to then release me at the side of the bed and bind my hand once more.

“Why can’t I sleep in my own bed?”

I snapped as soon as he situated himself on the mattress, throwing the towel on the day and turning off the small lamp he had on the other side of the bed, where I couldn’t reach.

That had been a new addition, I hadn’t noticed it before in the past days and it was also the first night where Dahr had used the lamp to illuminate the tent. I initially thought he needed it for the worktable and to read the maps, but it stayed on the side of the tent I had been placed on. Confined into was a better word for the situation I was in.

“You proved to me time and time again that you are not to be trusted, March. If you wish to return to the bed that was allocated to you, I will have to satisfy your wish, but that will also come with your return to the shackles. Is that what you want?”

Dahr rasped at me, without even turning to face me from where he was lying on the bed, his back turned to me.

“I didn’t think so,”

he added with a sass I hadn’t expected to encounter from him.

“Excuse you…”

I snapped back at him.

“It’s not like I was taken away from my home and my entire life. Forgive me if I want some sense of normalcy back,”

I retorted but he didn’t bother to reply.

So I kept asking him question after question, out of pure ambition and the need to annoy him and get a reaction out of him.

“Maybe you can finally tell me why you took me away from my home?”

I tried initially, with a slightly sweeter tone.

“Or maybe you can tell me what the hell you have against my town and those innocent people?”

I started, slightly more irate.

“Or… I don’t know… maybe we can have a chat about what the fuck you are doing here???”

I scowled, surprising even myself. I wasn’t one to curse. I had always considered it a sign of lack of emotional intelligence. Of a person who couldn’t express their feelings and thoughts without resorting to curses and insults. But this man brought me to such a state that I couldn’t even get hold of my own ideas, and the word simply snapped out of my mouth. Not that it mattered, it had absolutely no effect on the man who seemed to be using my voice as background noise to help him sleep better.

So, I continued talking through the night, asking question after question and when it became clear that all my attempts at conversation would be ignored, I even started reciting passages from textbooks and other documentation that I had to memorise for my thesis.

Sleep caught up with me late into the night and I fell into it so deeply that I almost missed Dahr’s departure in the morning. Luckily, he poured himself a glass of water from the jar that had been moved onto a chair and within my reach and the sound of liquid dropping woke me up. I immediately realised his plans to leave for the day and demanded my release.

Once more, he ignored me and made a move towards the exit, forcing me to shout at him and beg for his attention.

“Not my problem…”

he finally addressed me after what seemed like an eternity.

“Do you honestly plan to leave me here, tied to the bed, for the entire day?”

I shrieked and lifted my arm to attest the situation he planned to leave me in.

“Do I have any other option?”

Dahr turned to me and took a step back inside. Closing the distance in between us just slightly. It was a small show of intent, and his interest might vanish in a split second, so I immediately jumped into action.

“I can’t spend the entire day tied to a bed frame,”

I made sure to pose the affirmation as a simple observation and let him take the initiative. Or at least try to plant the idea inside his mind. Yet, like many of my conversations with this man, it failed to lift his interest.

“Why not?”

he barely replied. Grunted was a more accurate description of what he did.

His question took me aback.

Was he seriously asking why I didn’t deserve to be left on my own for an entire day, ensnarled in a faerie camp?

“Because I am a person!”

my voice elevated, and I wasn’t able to control it.

“I have needs and feelings. Apart from just the physiological. I want to explore, I want to connect, I want to—”

“Escape!”

he shouted, his voice so deep that it raised goosebumps all across my skin and the entire tent reverberated with his power. My skin felt ablaze, the entire room’s temperature rising to boiling levels, to the point where the air burnt my breath.

What was happening?

I had been in this tent for almost a week now and I never suffered from such a heat stroke before. It came instantly and settled deep within the skeleton of this tent.

“I apologise,”

Dahr said as he took a breath in and, as soon as he did, the heat levels returned to a comfortable spring day.

“What just happened?”

my tone came out low, hushed. Scared.

He stopped for a few moments and continued taking deep breaths, as if to calm himself. For once, I didn’t feel the need to interject and offered him space.

Had he been responsible for this rise in temperature? It happened when he’d shouted at me, showing me anger for the very first time. Did he hold some sort of power over the climate? Was that why they were travelling up North?

“I would like to end our conversation here,”

Dahr replied and moved to turn away from me once again, giving me a view of his naked back and…

“The flames!”

I cried. “They…”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Yet I was sure of it. I had so many hours to study them and knew every single design from his back.

“They moved…” I blinked in wonder, my words halting his steps, once again.

“You are too observant for your own good, March,”

Dahr noted but did not look at me before he opened the tent flaps and made himself disappear into the day.

I cooked in a stew of my own rage throughout the day and thought about nothing but ways to get back at him.

The two women that refused to speak to me, Mira and Slatanya, brought me breakfast, lunch and dinner and they also picked up the necessities pot twice. They even brought me water to clean myself and towels to wipe my skin, as though to make an extra effort to compensate for my situation for the day.

Part of me expected Karisha to visit too, but when lunch passed and she hadn't arrived, I started thinking that she may have been in a little bit of trouble herself.

I felt bad for it, especially if I had done something to cause her a rough day. Amongst all of them, she had been the only one who spoke to me as a person and had tried to befriend me, even though she wasn’t a hundred percent truthful to me either.

Needless to say, I had nothing but time to plan my next conversation with Dahr. I thought about the precise words to say to him, putting extra care into not triggering anything that might spark his anger towards me. I even dared to take a seat on the side of the mattress and wait for him, making myself look more presentable and not wanting to give the impression that I was accepting my fate as a prisoner.

When the tent flaps opened however, all my plans fell into a crumble because Dahr arrived with a deep grimace and was covered in blood.

“Are you alright?”

I wanted to walk towards him but managed to only stray away from the bed for a few steps before my binding pulled me back. “Argh…”

I snarled and started pulling at it with anger, sick of this silliness.

“Can you free me already?” I sighed and stopped wiggling my hand as my wrist started to hurt and the tie around it pressed on my veins.

“No,”

he replied simply and, very unlike other nights, where he at least deigned to look at me or at least scan me to confirm I was still alive and unharmed, Dahr circled the bed on the other side and put out the only source of light within the room to leave me in complete darkness.

“I want my own tent,”

I didn’t let go of my request and, seeing how the evening was not going the way I had planned, I summarised my one wish. The one I had circled around and theorised over all afternoon.

Dahr’s deep chuckle annoyed me more than it should have. He was probably tired and looked fairly beaten up. One only had to assume that the training day didn’t go as planned and probably the last thing he wanted right now was to deal with me.

Too bad.

The last thing I wanted was to be a prisoner and to be tied to his bed night after night, but here we were.

“I can’t continue like this,”

I schooled my voice into my teacher one, the same one I used when I had to convey heavy information and needed to make things as logical as possible.

“You took me away from everything. You took me away from my life, from my future, from everything I love. You blatantly refuse to have a conversation with me and explain yourself. You keep treating me like an animal and have absolutely no respect towards my condition. If I am to remain your prisoner, I require some sort of better accommodation,”

I finished my sentence with a slightly more understanding tone, hoping that he would pick up on it.

“Like what?”

his heavy voice sounded tired, almost put out instead of incentivised, the way I had initially planned it.

“Like my own tent. Some freedom to walk around the camp. To be a human again,”

I explained.

“You are a human,”

Dahr pointed.

“Your location does not change your race.”

“That is not what I meant, Dahr, and you know it,”

I tried to keep my calm and even wanted to lean into the mattress and get closer to him, as though to make sure my request truly reached him.

“As I said, March, I had no say in the choice,”

the man replied and, as per his usual gesture, I saw him turn to the side and display his back to me with the same position that told me he was planning to go to sleep.

“Then release me and get someone else, someone of your choice. We clearly cannot stand each other, so why even bother?”

Was my proposal the right choice? Sacrifice someone else to get my freedom?

Absolutely not.

Did I say it anyway?

Regretfully, yes.

“It’s too late to pick someone else, March,”

Dahr sighed, as if sick of the conversation.

“So what, am I just to spend my days here, in your tent and be tied to your bed until I die?”

I retorted. Deep pulsations raised in my throat and an urge to slap him overpowered my senses. I absolutely despised this man and the way he treated me. As if I was the most insignificant thing, just an annoyance he had to deal with before bed.

“It’s the bar if you don’t shut up and let me sleep,”

his gruff tone released the threat.

“I freaking hate you!”

Having no other choice but to spend yet another night on the fur covers, I leaned back and held my mouth shut. I was absolutely going to avoid losing the little territory I had gained so far. Even if I had to lose this battle, I still had to keep enough ammunition for what seemed like a long war.

“She bites,”

Dahr chuckled from the darkness of the tent.

Something was shaking.

I opened my eyes as the sleep abandoned my embrace abruptly, but I couldn’t see anything apart from the heaviness of night creeping into the tent. I blinked a few times, doing my best to force my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but there weren’t too many light sources, and it was impossible to see anything.

I decided to use my other senses instead and started feeling around to try to ascertain what exactly the problem was. What that soft shiver that moved the world around me was.

Generally, I slept either on the floor, covered in the blanket Dahr had thrown over me a few nights ago, or I leaned my back into the bedframe to rest my head on a small part of the mattress when I missed the comfort of a pillow.

Unsure what was happening around me, I decided to reclaim my sleeping position and feel that small movement again to better analyse the situation.

My heart jumped into my throat thinking of some intruder coming into the tent and creeping into the night, but I settled myself at the thought that there was a warrior sleeping here and hopefully, he must have enough sense to protect himself in his sleep.

After a few seconds of stillness, I came to realise that the mattress itself was shaking, and nothing coming from the exterior forced it to make that movement. Which in turn, told me that Dahr must be the one executing it.

Was he truly so bored with his life that he needed to bother my sleep? I almost chuckled, since I had done the exact same not a night ago. Was he trying to reverse the roles and show me how bothersome he could be?

I could very well return to the floor and wrap myself in the blanket, but decided to take the bait, if only because it presented another opportunity for conversation. And I wouldn’t find my rest until I made this man either release me or confess why my presence was needed here.

“Is this a new way to punish me?”

I asked, my voice slicing through the tendrils of night to get to him. This darkness was so heavy that I couldn’t spot him, even though he must have been three or four feet away from me. Silence and the echo of my own voice were the only replies I got. As per usual, I was not dissuaded.

“I know you are awake so it’s fruitless to fake it now,”

I said again, desperately trying to get this man to speak. I swear to god, if there was a competition of ‘most futile attempt repeated on a loop’, I would be the international champion. Again, no sound came out from the man’s mouth, the only sign that he was awake was the rhythmic shaking of the mattress.

“Look Dahr, I guessed by now that you are not much of a conversationalist, but still, it would be polite to acknowledge me and at least try to be a good host, since you ordered my kidnapping and all…”

I waited about half a minute before I started again.

“Okay well, I am tempted to attempt an escape right about now, because this is getting tedious to say the least…”

This time, the silence of the tent came accompanied by harsher shivering. What in the hell was this man doing?

“Hey, are you alright?”

I dared ask, because even though he was my enemy, he’d never missed an opportunity to respond to my challenge. It seemed odd that just the moment I had threatened to make my escape was when he decided not to care for my actions.

So, something was amiss.

“Dahr?”

Nothing.

No answer, no grunting, not even a grumble or a curse to make me shut up.

Something was wrong.

“Are you alright, Dahr?”

I moved closer to the mattress and, even though I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t go nearer to him than necessary, I took a seat at the edge of the bed, the only part that I could reach and fumbled around in the darkness, trying to find him.

My hands touched the fur lining of his bed covers, same as the one he had spared for me, and moved upwards towards where the pillows should be in search of him.

I started by touching his locks and inching closer, not wanting to make an abrupt movement, should he wake up startled and take his anger out on me. That was, if he truly was sleeping.

My fingers danced slowly into his hair and claimed more territory until I reached the top of his head. To realise that his locks were drenched in sweat.

The shivering was coming from him, the movement of the mattress gentle enough to placate his abrupt motions, but I wasn’t spared when I touched his forehead. To find it burning. I dared to trail down the side of his face, caressing his cheek and reaching his jaw in need of confirmation.

The man was feverish, sweating and shivering to the point of needing urgent medical care. I had never witnessed anything like this. His body temperature was higher than ever, a fever-induced warmth, to the point where I could barely touch him without feeling pain. It gave the term ‘burning up’ a whole new meaning, because this man was… actually burning. His skin had reached an inhuman temperature, and his entire body shook with its effect.

I didn’t know much about drakes specifically, apart from the general information I had been able to find in books and other materials. Even though the fae had been among us for a few decades, the humans blatantly refused to acknowledge their presence and educate the people in regards to these new and unwelcomed companions that had started to claim the earth we had been solely occupying.

There wasn’t medicine for them or even medical knowledge concerning the faeries, so I was lost for what to do. Was this an issue that a mere dose of antibiotics would fix? Or did it need some sort of specific healing? Did it have any connection to the way the air burnt that morning?

“Dahr?”

I tried to shake him awake, unsure of what else to do.

“Wake up, you are burning up.”

Like every teacher, I had to pass the advanced first-aider course and, just like everything else I was obstinate to complete in my life, I had achieved the highest mark in my class. But for once, my knowledge did not prove useful in this situation.

I found myself tied to the bed, with a possibly delirious man by my side, unable to call for help.

I seriously doubted that if I started screaming in the middle of the night someone would come, given the fact that I had spent various portions of my late evenings singing, screaming and making a fuss, and no one dared to come into this tent, apart from the two females who took care of my needs and refused to speak to me.

I was on my own, at least until morning.

I moved back to the floor and felt around in the darkness to find the carafe of water and glass that were placed on a chair within reach. The water was room temperature, so I doubted it would do much to calm his rising fever, but it was the best I could do. I grabbed the jug and one glass and felt my way around the bed until I reached Dahr.

My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness of the night yet, and I doubted they would at this point, so I was left with no choice but to feel my way around his body and hope for the best.

The first thing I did was to pour some water into the glass, after which I carefully laid the container to the side and moved over to where his mouth was supposed to be. I took advantage of the fact that he was still turned to the side and would not choke in this position, and tipped the glass into his mouth only slightly, just enough to let some water in.

I didn’t hear him swallow or wake up, I didn’t feel his lips or his throat move either.

Fine.

Plan B.

Moving back to place the glass of water on the floor, I raised to my knees and started pulling Dahr’s body towards me, doing my best to shift his weight fully onto his back. It took me a good minute or two to pull the giant’s massive limbs towards me, the entire situation humbling the thought of the strength I thought I held. Because if I struggled so much when Dahr was passed out, I didn’t even want to think how my attempts to escape would be when the man was fully recovered and well. Fine, my hands barely reached him, and I had to base most of my skills into my non-dominant hand, but still…

Once I was satisfied with his new position, I grabbed the extra pillow I had contemplated stealing many times and removed its covering, then spent a long while pulling and ripping it apart until I obtained long pieces of fabric.

Or at least that’s what I hoped, my temporary blindness preventing me from observing the quality of my work.

The hardest part, however, was making journey after journey towards the carafe of water, trying to wet the pieces of fabric one by one without wasting more than necessary and feeling my way around towards Dahr’s body to stretch the pieces of wet fabric over his naked and burning torso, shoulders and arms.

And keep doing it over and over again, because this man’s skin was like a stove and less than five minutes after I’d placed a piece of cloth over his skin in a poor attempt to decrease his body temperature, the fabric came up dry.

To say I spent one of the longest and most uncomfortable nights of my life would be an understatement. I prayed for the first tendrils of the day to arrive, but when they did, they brought anything but the relief I was hoping for. I could finally see Dahr, shivering and sweaty, his skin aflame and almost crimson, so at odds with the beautiful golden tan he usually displayed.

I would not lie, I had studied the man’s every single feature, and some of them were for absolutely selfish reasons. But seeing him like this, powerless and so different from the ruthless man I had come to know did something to my chest.

Something I immediately pushed away and did not allow myself to feel, choosing to focus instead on the never-ending journey to place more wet cloth over his body and try to calm down his fever.

My movements had become so abrupt after repeating the same motion over and over again, that I didn’t even realise I had bruised my wrist and part of my arm from the pull of the leather binding that kept scraping up and down my skin.

Even though it had started to hurt and swell, I was determined to continue my work and hoped that someone in the camp would search for him and come to my aid.

My wish was granted only a few hours later, after the camp started its daily commotion and chatter clung to the tent. I started shouting for help and telling people that Dahr needed assistance, but the voices frolicked over my own as though I hadn’t even spoken. I decided to save my energy, since the water was almost running out and I didn’t know what else to do to help my captor.

I had already removed the furs from the bed and pulled his pants lower, forcing the waistband to lie on his hips and barely cover his manhood, with the thought of giving his body more space to cool. Ideally, I would have wanted to pull those leather pants down completely and let his legs breathe, but I couldn’t reach lower than his knees, so the last thing I wanted was for someone to come in and find their leader half-naked with his manhood out and me on top of him.

With the light of the new day, I noticed that part of the mattress was stained with blood, and it looked to be coming from the other side of his hip, but no matter how much my fingers tried to find the cause, I didn’t feel or see anything protruding out of his leg. I couldn’t reach him too well however, he had to be turned and examined once more, but the sleepless night and exhaustion caught up with me and my strength.

I chose to let him rest on his back and kept changing the wet fabrics his skin continued to dry up every few minutes.

“I didn’t take you for a man who gives up after a beating, cousin,”

Markos’ voice came as the answer to all my prayers when he opened the tent flaps and made his stunning appearance into the tent.

At the sight of me, his blue eyes grew wide.

“He’s sick, I need help,”

I immediately shouted, urging him to come help me.

The tribe lord ran towards to bed and pushed me aside in his need to reach Dahr’s feverish body. I fell on the floor, over the furs, my back pushing the jug of water and spilling the remains I had treasured for so many hours.

“What did you do to him?”

Markos shouted as he grabbed Dahr’s limp body into his arms, trying to shake him into alertness.

“It won’t work,”

I said without taking offence to his reaction.

“I already tried that,”

I added, making a stand again and moving back towards the bed in slow and noticeable motions, lest he think I was approaching them with ill intent.

“What… what happened?”

Markos kept shaking his friend and probably taking in the pillowcase remains I had just recently placed over his cousin’s shoulders and torso.

“He’s been like this most of the night. I tried calling out, but no one came, so I tried to lower his fever. He’s not shaking as much as before,”

I spilled the summary of my entire night and the more information I gave him, the wider Markos’ eyes became, shining their curiosity at me.

“You cared for him?”

the tribe lord barely asked, his brows so furrowed that they completely covered his eyelashes.