Page 5 of The Manticore's Human Queen
Here, then, is the true test. To accept food is one thing. To accept her care, to allow her to touch me in my weakness, is another entirely. It is an intimacy I have not allowed another soul in years. My instinct is to snarl, to bare my teeth, to drive her away for good.
But I look at her, at the stubborn set of her jaw, at the unwavering resolve in her intelligent green eyes. To refuse would not be an act of strength. It would be an act of fear.
With a low groan, I shift my body, dragging my wounded form closer to the bars. I extend my forearm, offering her the deep, ragged gash there. It is a silent truce, an admission of need that costs me more than she will ever know.
Her hands are impossibly gentle as they work, her touch a foreign sensation against my scarred skin. She cleans the wound with a cool, wet cloth, her movements efficient and sure. I watch the way the faint light from the high, grimy windows catches thestrands of gold in her hair, the way she bites her lower lip in concentration.
The silence in the menagerie is thick, broken only by the soft rustle of the other caged beasts and the whisper of the cloth against my skin. I have to understand. The strategist in me, the part that is my brother Silas's echo, demands it.
"Why?" The word is a low rumble, rough from disuse.
She doesn't look up. "Why what?"
"Why risk this?" I press, my gaze intense. "I have seen the cruelty of your masters in their eyes. They will not be merciful if they discover this treason."
Her hands still for a moment. She carefully sets the cloth aside and finally lifts her head. Her green eyes, the color of a spring forest, meet mine. The fear is still there, a flicker in their depths, but it is banked by a fire that is startling in its intensity.
"You think this is treason?" she snaps, her voice no longer a whisper, but a sharp, bitter thing. "My entire life is treason. Every thought I have that is not one of obedience is treason. Every book I read, every dream I have of a world outside these walls is treason."
She leans closer, her face a mask of beautiful, righteous fury. "They are already killing me, manticore. A slow, quiet death of a thousand small humiliations. They parade me like a prize, they silence me like a child, they plan to marry me to a monster who will own me, body and soul."
Her voice drops, becoming a fierce, trembling whisper. "You are in a cage of iron, and I am in a cage of gold, but they are cages nonetheless. So why do I risk this?" She gives a short, humorless laugh that holds no joy. "Because I will not stand by and watch another creature die in a cage while I slowly rot in my own. If I am to be a prisoner, then at least I will be a prisoner who fights back in the only way she can."
Her words strike me with the force of a physical blow. I have seen her as a liability, a fragile human girl playing a dangerous game. I have been a fool. I have been so consumed by the shame of my own visible prison that I have failed to see the invisible bars of hers.
I look at her, truly look at her, for the first time. I see not a frightened girl, but a fellow prisoner. A fellow warrior. Her battlefield is the glittering, treacherous landscape of the elven court, her weapons are silence and secrets, but her fight is just as real, just as desperate as any I have ever known.
A new, unfamiliar feeling begins to take root in the barren soil of my soul. It is not pity. It is not gratitude. It is respect. A deep, profound respect for the small, fierce, and utterly unbreakable human woman who is kneeling in the filth of a menagerie, tending to the wounds of a monster she should have feared.
6
ANNELISE
His wounded presence in the menagerie becomes the new, secret center of my world. My days are no longer a grey, monotonous blur of empty rituals and veiled insults. They are a series of small, exhilarating acts of rebellion, each stolen moment a victory against the suffocating emptiness of my life. I am no longer just a passive observer of my own slow, quiet death; I am an active participant in his survival. And in his survival, I am beginning to find my own.
My handmaid, Lyra, has noticed the change in me. She is a timid girl who has been in service to this estate her entire life, and she sees the new light in my eyes with a mixture of awe and a deep, profound terror.
“My Lady,” she whispers one evening, her hands trembling as she helps me into a gown for the evening meal. “You are different. You are… brighter.”
I meet her worried gaze in the silver-gilt mirror. "Perhaps the winter air agrees with me."
"It is not safe to be so bright here," she cautions, her voice barely audible. She is right. Happiness, secrets, purpose—these are perilous luxuries for a woman in my position. But the riskis a fire in my blood I have not felt before, and I will not see it extinguished.
My nightly visits to his cage become a ritual. I bring him food and fresh bandages, and he, in return, offers the rare and precious gift of his non-judgmental presence. He is an exceptional listener.
Tonight, the weight of my fiancé’s cruelty is a particularly heavy stone in my chest. Zarren has spent the afternoon entertaining a visiting lord, and his favorite topic of sport has been me. I have been forced to stand beside his chair like a prized hound while he details my virtues and my failings as if I am not even there.
I flee to the menagerie as soon as I can, my heart a tight, aching knot. Tarek is waiting, a massive, still shadow in the back of his cage. I kneel before the bars, the familiar scents of hay and beast a strange comfort.
"He called me his pet today," I whisper, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "In front of Lord Valerius. He spoke of training the thoughts from my head as if I were a disobedient dog."
Tarek does not speak. He simply moves closer to the bars, his deep-set eyes fixed on my face. His silence is not empty; it is a vast, steady space where I can finally let my own words exist without judgment or dismissal.
"I hate him," I confess, the simple, treasonous truth a liberating weight off my soul. "I hate his smile, and his voice, and the way he looks at me as if I am a thing he has purchased."
I look up at the manticore, at the fierce, honorable creature so cruelly caged, and a wave of shame washes over me. "I'm sorry. You do not need to hear my petty troubles."
He shifts, the movement causing the magical wards on the bars to shimmer faintly. His presence is a solid, grounding forcein the chaotic storm of my life, a steady anchor I have begun to rely on more than I care to admit.
