Page 121 of Wingless Crow: Part 1

“The only kind that can get him hard, it seems.” Bitterness burned my throat. Someone had to know the truth about the revered king of Sky Kingdom, and that someone might as well be Voron. “Apparently, your marvelous King Tiane likes to see people hurt. He thrives on it. Making people suffer is the one sure thing to get his dick up. He doesn’t care about sex that much, unless it’s with himself, but he uses people as foreplay props. I don’t think he had actual intercourse with me, not even on the night when he made me remove your necklace, then sucked out all my memories of my time spent in his rooms.”

“He did that?” Voron gritted out, holding his back straight like an iron rod. His entire body seemed stiff as iron, too. “You removed the necklace?”

“Yes. I know. Stupid.” I hung my head.

“I didn’t say you were stupid.”

“Yet here I am.” I spread my arms to the sides. “I’ve drunk the damncamytetwice now. Both times because I felt a hint of compassion for, or a connection with—or whatever the hell that was—with the men who poured it for me.”

He brushed the side of my face with the back of his knuckles.

“You have a kind heart, Sparrow. The shame is on those who took advantage of that, not on you.”

Having a kind heart, sadly, meant the same as being stupid in my case. At least, that was how I felt now. The only solution seemed to be never to trust anyone ever again.

“Either way, I was duped and taken advantage of,” I concluded. “But I refused to fall for that again. The second night the king brought me to his bedroom, I wore the necklace, hidden from him.” I fingered the berry beads through my clothes. Voron’s necklace was back where it belonged, around my neck, with the rock pendant nestled between my breasts. “I remember everything.”

“What happened that night, Sparrow?”

I released a long, slow breath, gathering my resolve.

“The king cut me,” I said. “He was going to cut more of me and do other, God-knows-what horrible things to me. But I stabbed him before he could do them. He has a secret room off his bedroom, with a bunch of torture equipment in it. That’s how your king gets off, Voron. He has hot, sweaty fantasies about impaling people. He revels in the gory details of tormenting others. He said something about making me last. But in the end, I’m convinced, he would’ve killed me in some torturous way, anyway. You see, I’m not fae. To him, I’m even lower than an animal. He believed there would be no consequence for him if he hurt me or even killed me.” I drew in some air, starving for oxygen as I spoke. “And of course, he was right. There is no law in Sky Kingdom that protects me.”

Voron listened quietly without interrupting, allowing me to get it all off my chest. And the words poured out of me.

Oh, how they poured.

All the hurt, the fear, and humiliation just spilled over. I didn’t even care what he thought of me or what he would do with all that information. I was just glad not to be the only one drowning in all this filth and horror.

“I didn’t believe even for a second that my stabbing the king would kill him or even incapacitate him in any way. He’s a mighty fae. How could a knife harm him? It wasn’t even an iron knife, either. The most I hoped for was that he’d just murder me faster, instead of taking his sweet time torturing me. But he fell and didn’t move. So, I ran.”

I couldn’t tell him about Dove. Omitting her role in my escape didn’t distort the story much, but it protected her from the risk of being punished for helping me.

“It wasn’tmydagger, Voron. I didn’t bring it to his bedroom with the intention of hurting him. He kept it there, planning to hurtme.”

“You said the asshole cut you?” His voice was strained, with a growl tearing through the restraint. His words boiled with anger. Low, but terrifying. Magnus leaped into the air from Voron’s shoulder, and the horse flicked his ears nervously.

Instead of being frightened like them, I was relieved. Finally, someone believed me.

Voron didn’t tell me to feel honored being selected as the king’s favorite. He didn’t try to explain how important it was to make the king happy. He didn’t expect me to keep the disturbing truth to myself and be grateful for everything the king’s favor had brought me.

He simply believed me, and he felt outraged on my behalf. It was the best thing he could do for me in this situation.

“Yes he did. He cut me right here.” I pushed aside the cloak on my chest and pulled down the neckline of the tunic to expose the cut on the top of my breast.

The fresh scar was thin, finer than from a scratch by a cat, which was a good thing, considering what the much deeper wound from the dagger did to the king.

Voron lifted his hand to my breast to touch the scar, then promptly moved it away.

“He did it fast, didn’t he? Not very deep?”

“Right.” I nodded, adjusting my clothes to cover up the scar again. “The king wished for me tolast,remember? The dagger is new, by the way. He said he just got it that morning. What is that dagger for, Voron? Was it supposed to do to me the same thing it did to the king?”

His arm tightened around my shoulders, and I felt the press of his lips to the crown of my head. But he sounded his usual distant self when he spoke.

“The dagger came from the World of Under. The plane of Nerifir directly beneath the Below. The shadowy dwellers of Under are void of joy. Nothing is sacred to them, not even the spirit of a living soul. The blade was cursed to repel the spirit without killing the body. Little by little, one shallow cut at a time, King Tiane planned to separate your mind from your body and eventually turn you into his mindless plaything. Over time, you would’ve lost all sense of self. Only your body would have remained, for him to do with as he pleased.”

My skin crawled with horror.

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