Page 6 of The Manticore's Human Queen
I find myself drawn to that strength, to the deep well of loyalty and honor I sense beneath his silent exterior. My visits to the menagerie are no longer just acts of rebellion. They are acts of self-preservation.
He is my sanctuary, my solace. And the feeling he stirs in me, this strange, impossible kinship, is growing with every visit.
I am just a human, a pawn, a pretty, breakable toy. He is a manticore, a creature of myth and legend. We are two different species, from two different worlds, two prisoners on opposite sides of the same cruel bars.
Yet, the unspoken bond between us feels more real and powerful than any wall designed to keep us apart. I leave him that night feeling both rattled by the depth of my own confessions and strangely, wonderfully, comforted.
7
TAREK
The clank of an iron bucket on the stone floor is my only warning. I have been in a state of low-grade meditation, focusing my will on the slow, agonizing process of knitting bone back together. The sound shatters the fragile peace.
“Awake, are we, beast?” a voice sneers.
I open my eyes. A dark elf guard stands before my cage, his features sharp and cruel in the dim light. He is younger than the lords of the house, but carries the same innate arrogance. On his tunic is the sigil of the estate’s house guard. My gaoler.
He kicks the bucket, sending it skidding closer to the bars. It is filled with a gray, unappetizing slurry of what looks like discarded table scraps. “Dinner time. Don’t say your masters aren’t generous.”
I remain silent, my body unmoving in the back of the cage. I have learned in my first few days that any reaction—a growl, a shift of my weight—only fuels their amusement. Silence is my armor.
The guard, Kaelen, as I’ve heard another call him, is not deterred. He enjoys a monologue. “Big night coming up, you know. The young lord’s wedding feast. All the high houses willbe here. Quite the spectacle.” He leans against the bars, his silver eyes gleaming with a malicious light. “You’ll have a front-row seat, I imagine. Lord Zarren loves to show off his collection.”
He pauses, a smirk playing on his thin lips. “Speaking of the young lord’s collection, his prettiest pet was just telling him off. The little human thing. Annelise.”
The sound of her name from his lips is a vile desecration. A low, involuntary growl rumbles in my chest. It is a mistake. Kaelen’s smirk widens into a grin.
“Oh, so you’ve noticed her, have you?” he chuckles. “Hard to miss. A pretty little thing, for a mortal. Lord Renlir keeps her polished like a new jewel. A symbol of his… progressive sensibilities.” He practically spits the word. “But she has a mouth on her. Thinks her opinions matter. Zarren will have that trained out of her soon enough. A bride’s mind should be on her duties, not on thoughts.”
His words are a verbatim echo of what Annelise herself has whispered to me, and hearing them from this cruel, casual source makes my blood run cold with a rage so pure it is almost a physical force. I want to tear the bars from their moorings. I want to feel his neck snap in my hands. But I hold myself still, my discipline a dam against the flood of my fury.
“She’s a clever one, I’ll give her that,” Kaelen continues, oblivious to the storm he is provoking. “Always has her nose in a book. As if that will change what she is. A political pawn. A pretty, breakable toy for a lord to play with. Nothing more.”
He pushes off the bars and stretches. “Well, enjoy your meal, beast.” He kicks the cage one last time for good measure, the impact jarring my wounded leg. “Don’t want you looking too thin for the festivities.” He saunters out of the menagerie, his laughter echoing in the heavy silence.
I do not touch the food. His words have filled me with a poison that is more potent than any hunger. I have piecedtogether the details of her life from her own whispered confessions, but hearing it laid bare with such callous disdain… it gives her quiet suffering a new and brutal dimension.
She arrives an hour later, a ghost in the twilight. The fear I smelled on her before is sharper tonight, laced with a fresh, raw anger. She kneels before my cage, her hands trembling as she pushes a small bundle of clean linen and a stolen piece of bread through the slot.
“He was… particularly cruel today,” she whispers, her voice tight with a pain she is trying to suppress. “There is to be a grand banquet. He told me my only duties were to wear the gown he chose, shut up, and look pretty. He treats me as if I have no more mind than one of his hounds.”
I watch the silent battle raging within her, the fury in her eyes warring with a lifetime of practiced obedience. She is a force of nature being treated as a mere object, and the raw injustice of it, now confirmed by the gaoler’s mockery, ignites a fire in my own veins.
For weeks, I have held my silence. It has been my shield, my fortress. But her fight is becoming my own. She needs more than a silent confessor. She needs an ally.
I wait until she has finished tending to a gash on my forearm. She starts to pull away, to retreat back into her own solitary world of quiet endurance. I cannot let her go. I cannot let her face her monsters alone. The words emerge, not as a calculated strategy, but as a simple, honest, undeniable truth.
"You're a strong human."
The sound of her simple laugh seems to startle her as it did me. She freezes, her hand hovering in the air between us. She looks at me, her forest-green eyes wide with a mixture of shock and a dawning, fearful hope.
A faint, beautiful splash of color rises in her pale cheeks. She is shaken by my rare words, by the simple, unadornedacknowledgment of the strength I see in her. In a world that sees her as a fragile doll, this simple act of being seen as a warrior is a revolutionary concept.
She does not speak. She simply stares at me, a thousand unspoken questions in her gaze. And in that moment, in the shared darkness of the menagerie, I feel the last of my own self-pity burn away. My own healing, which has been a slow, painful, and solitary process, now feels… different. It is no longer just for me. It is no longer just about my mission.
Her presence, her indomitable spirit, has become a new and powerful catalyst. I have to heal. I have to recover my strength. Not just to escape, but to be the warrior she needs me to be to free us from this hell.
8
