Page 108 of Defy the Fae

I cannot tell if it is guilt or humiliation that reels me backward. Perhaps it is neither but rather a hyperawareness of how he’s looking at me. From the tension stringing in the air, I conclude the man is hurling me a rather volcanic expression.

“You had better tell me this isn’t how you greeted Cove,” he wheezes.

The threat embeds itself into my ribs like barbed wire. “You know who I am.”

“Everyone in Reverie Hollow knows who you are.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” After consuming a thick draught of oxygen, I listen as he gestures to the key arrested in my grip and flaps his hand. “Give it to me.”

My reflexes appear to have waned. It could be the iron. It could be intimidation. Neither of which I know what to do with.

The human swipes the makeshift device and grunts for me to move. I maneuver out of his way. Every motion is transparent in my mind’s eye. He squats in front of the cage, clamps his fingers around the key’s handle, and thrusts it into the hole.

My grimace is fully formed yet pointless as he touches the iron. No putridness of burning flesh. No sign of pain. It does not poison him as it does my kin, and the sounds of his movements are seamless.

One twist to the left. Two pumps.

Mechanisms clatter from within the padlock’s shell. The bolt shudders and something loosens, splitting apart.

There’s a pause. One that I’m familiar with, a prelude to discovery. It’s the same dawning realization Cove had when she first beheld me after nine years.

“You can’t see,” the man says, his pitch low. When I nod, he stalls for a moment, then cautions, “Watch out for the door.”

I could have assured him I would hear the hinges beforehand. However, the warning trips me into another bewildered state.

My eyebrows pinch together. “You know what we’ve done. Why would you help us?”

“I’ll have my parental chat with you later,” he mutters as the door screeches open. “For now, help me lug this raptor out of—”

But the man’s tongue stalls, his voice fragmenting like something pushed through a grater. “Fables forgive them.”

If his disclaimer about knowing how to use the tool hadn’t already proven his identity, that exclamation does. I hear my lady’s sympathetic voice reflected in his own.

A nodule burns like a miniature sun inside my throat. The man sees what his people have done to Cerulean. He sees, whereas I hear and smell the damage.

The man accelerates his movements and crawls into the cage. “Cerulean,” he whispers.

My head ticks. “You know his name.”

“Lark told me.”

Of course. The iron must be diluting my comprehension. Cove’s youngest sister had briefly returned to her father after winning her game in the mountain labyrinth.

My brother does not stir. A labored noise puffs from the human’s chest. The cage floor shakes, a weight dragging across the foundation.

He won’t manage. I reverse my baldric, rearranging it from my spine to my bare chest, and harness my discarded dagger alongside the second one. With my hands free, I hunker inside the cage. The floor is made of steel and the size considerable, enabling me to hunch between the bars without my weapons skewering me. Nonetheless, my proportions combined with Cerulean’s wingspan and the robust physique of Cove’s father make for a tight squeeze.

One of the rods sizzles, scorching my calf and another the side of my ear. I hiss, the blistering pain urging me to move faster.

I race my palms over the fringes of my brother’s wings. Dried blood encrusts the plumes like scabs. And…a minefield of gaps burrows into the panels.

They have picked off his feathers.

The pockets behind my eyes singe.For this, I will drown you.

Vitriol rolls through my veins. I use that momentum to haul my brother from the cage’s maw. Cove’s father groans with the effort of helping, though I doubt he’s able to do more than balance my brother’s limbs.

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