Page 153 of Fated or Knot

I hoped, by age twelve, he started to see that Mother was right. That was when I’d found a bird struggling with a broken wing on one of our hunting trips and scooped it up off the forest floor. As I sat with Dad around our evening fire, he’d suggested I break its neck to put it out of its misery.

“It’s not a meat bird. We’d be wasting its life. I’m going to take it to the lodge to heal,” I’d said, at this point at least used to the idea that our trips always included us only eating the fresh meat we’d acquired that day around the evening fire. I still needed to roast the meat at that point. Dad ate his raw-ish. As afully grown fire fae, he could enjoy the bloody flavors and roast it going down his throat.Ach. Gross.

“A predator will kill it the moment you release it,” he’d pointed out.

I’d looked down into the beady eye of the bird, who wore the splint I’d made for its wing, hunkering in a scoop of rocks and moss. Patting it gently, I’d said, “Well, first it needs a fighting chance.”

He’d let out another sigh, shaking his head in confusion, but suggested an empty room I could use in the winter lodge for such a task. Then reiterated that I’d be wasting my time.

I seized the opportunity. As my set of duties became increasingly outdoorsy—managing stable hands, working animals, and hunting rights were some of Rennyn’s least favorite tasks, and he gladly let me have them—I gathered up more small animals to rehabilitate in the newly named critter room, as the lodge was only a half day’s journey on horseback from the palace.

I learned what it felt like to hold a tiny soul cupped in my broad palms and give it medicine, protection, and a second chance. The bird with a broken wing healed and flew away from my hand to continue its little life. I savored the feeling in my chest as I waved goodbye to its fluttering outline. It felt like peace and life and mercy, light as a feather. And that was ten times as moving as the final gasp of an opponent or the stilling of a heartbeat.

My favorite animal friend was Balti the squirrel, who I’d raised up from being a pink, blind thing. He stayed with me for nearly two years. He’d do flips for treats but eventually left the lodge forever one spring day for the love of a lady squirrel. I’d come to terms with it as what I deserved for the murder of his ancestor.

Soon enough, I turned sixteen and started blowing smoke out of my mouth. It was the first sign of several that heralded the rage form growing. I still didn’t develop a taste for the things that would keep the being of fire and fury within me satisfied: venting, fighting, killing, and sex.

Maybe that was the age when my problems really started. I avoided the things that would’ve gotten the rage form under my control. And once something gets out of control, be it a secret or a wildfire, it’s nearly impossible to rein back in.

Not finding a balance with the monster that lived inside me wasn’t the only failure I experienced at that age. The molten rage erupted from me early when I was informed I was failing a test I hadn’t even known I was taking: Rennyn was weighing the problem of whether or not I was clever enough to take over fully as his apprentice. Like Dad, he had two jobs, but the second one was the quietest secret—Serian’s spymaster.

Dad and Rennyn had sat me down to explain this in full and some of the life paths I could take from there, and while the dark elf king complimented my straightforward nature, I’d lost my mind and erupted.

“Are you calling me simple?” I’d asked with redcap menace. The sudden heat pouring out of me was a shock—I hadn’t even known what it felt like to be a monster until that moment.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up from a strike to the back of the head, naked in a tub, with house moths hurriedly adding ice to the melting mound packed around my body. I’d transformed early, before my alpha designation manifested. The internal heat had almost killed me.

I nearly died fourteen times succumbing to my rage form before my induction into the Bloodhunter Clan. Each and every loss of control was an emergency. I had to stay content and not feel any spike of negative emotions, or the heat within me would boil over. A nearly impossible task for any teenager.

Dad presented me for the first time at the clan’s annual meeting when I was seventeen, and I received my membership tattoo early. The tattoo activated the magical heat vents along my back and made them resemble the stylized knots of the Bloodhunter Clan.

A redcap without a clan is dead. Not just a saying, but a fact. Clans were created to give us a nonviolent outlet, as in the ancient times, only delivering death could make the rage recede. And redcaps nearly went extinct due to the sheer violence of that time, even with ongoing wars to be fought.

If I ever brought enough dishonor to the clan to be banished, those vents would vanish. It was the most common kind of death sentence amongst my kind now that delivering death was no longer a profession most of us could rely on in this time of peace. There was a small, cruel hope of living, but, as I’d experienced, that life was spent on the point of a knife, desperately balancing in an attempt not to unleash the monster within.

Only after I had my vents did Rennyn revisit the spymaster discussion. He’d said with his usual air of levity, “That was a self-improvement talk, not a ‘Tormund is stupid’ talk. You’re not simple, Tor-Tor. You’re still a kid. You just can’t seem to keep a secret to save your life.”

Even that had stung, but over time, I realized he was right. I got excited and blurted out most secrets I knew. We worked on it, tiptoeing into the vast amount of work I needed to do to become the next spymaster. Rule number one…never tell anyone I’m a spy. It was so, so hard not to share that.

I had one thing going for me; other fae liked me and my personality, even my fellow clan members. My attempts at being a better spy apprentice served me well during clan meetings; I fit in with them despite being the perfect example of a weakling redcap. And while weaklings weren’t banished, theywere relentlessly mocked in other clans, and I needed to keep up the appearance of being a strong prince.

Everything I liked, from poetry to li’l animal rehabilitation to the general scope of my duties, fell outside of the quartet of redcap interests: venting, fighting, killing, and sex. I didn’t talk about those things and pretended to be tougher. I hated fighting, didn’t kill unless it was for hunting, and sex, um…I had yet to see if it worked for me.

And since I now learned itdidn’twork for me, I was on an emergency hunting trip with my father. He was still waiting for me to alpha up and tell him what was wrong. I would’ve rather died than look him in the eye and say, “Dad, I made love to my mate, but during the act, I lost most of my control and finished in partial rage form. Now the very sight and smell of her is triggering my rage again.” So, I stayed silent about it.

Even if he was the male who’d taught me everything I knew about being a redcap.

Even if I’d rather experience a torture session followed by an even more painful death rather than talk about this with one of my friends in the clan.

Even though just thinking about the problem had me venting while I prepared our dinner. We’d caught two wild turkeys apiece, and I’d already spitted and seasoned the dressed meat. He and I made small talk about my pack’s trip to Thelis and back while I rotated the birds to cook them evenly. This would ordinarily take several hours, but I breathed the occasional wave of heat overtop them to speed the process along.

Dad would never admit it, but he ate a lot more on our hunting trips once I took over preparing the kills. Could be the salt. Or the herbs. Or maybe even the nice char on the skin after receiving the double flame treatment.

Or…he could just be humoring me. He had given me his usualachwhen I’d told him I’d gone out of my way last year tolearn how to cook from the talented house moths who made up the palace kitchen staff. He didn’t ask why, only told me it was now my job to make dinner when we went into the wilderness. Which I was happy to do to elevate our time together, because raw meat really was sadness.

I also wanted to know the ins and outs of food for my mate. What was more comforting than food? That was why I loved it so much.

“Dinner’s done,” I announced. I took his turkeys off the fire and presented them to him still spitted and sizzling.

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