Page 9 of The Manticore's Human Queen
I move past the griffin with its broken wing, past the pack of worgs who pace their enclosure with a relentless, desperate energy. My heart aches for them, a familiar, empathetic sorrow for my fellow prisoners.
Tarek is awake. He is a massive, dark shape in the gloom of his magically-reinforced cage in the farthest corner, a place reserved for the most dangerous of my guardian’s acquisitions.
He watches my approach, his deep-set, unreadable eyes following my every move. The moonlight slanting through the high, grimy windows catches the faint sheen of his scarred skin, the coiled power in the muscles of his shoulders. Raw, untamed strength, so cruelly contained.
The sight of him is a mirror of my own soul, a reflection of the fierce, wild thing I keep caged within myself.
I kneel before the bars, the cold iron biting into my skin, so different from the heat of my own desperate emotions. The suffocating weight of Zarren’s cruelty, of my own hopeless future, comes crashing down on me, and a single, choked sob escapes my lips.
I have held it together through the entire feast, a perfect, smiling doll. But here, in his silent, non-judgmental presence, the mask crumbles.
“He is a monster,” I whisper, the words a raw, ragged tear in the silence. “They all are. They live in these beautiful halls and they speak in beautiful words, but their souls are as cold and barren as this winter.”
I press my forehead against the bars, the metal biting into my skin, a welcome, grounding pain.
The raw, unfiltered truth of my existence pours out of me in a torrent of whispered words.
“They parade me like a prize, they dress me like a doll. They speak of my beauty, but they have no interest in my mind, in my heart. To them, I am just an object, a symbol of their power. A pretty, breakable toy for a cruel, spoiled boy to play with.” My voice trembles, thick with a grief and a rage I have never dared to express before.
I reach a trembling hand through the bars, an act of pure, unthinking instinct. My fingers, light as a feather, brush against the back of his large, calloused hand. The contact is a jolt, a spark of warmth in the cold, empty landscape of my life, and it seems to startle us both.
He does not pull away. He simply remains still, a mountain of contained power, allowing the contact. Emboldened, I let my fingers rest against his skin. It is rough, scarred, the hand of a warrior who has known a world of pain and survival I can barely imagine. And yet, beneath the callouses, I feel a steady, life-affirming warmth. “You’re the only real thing here,” I confess, the words a final, desperate truth.
Tarek does not speak. He simply turns his hand, his large fingers closing around mine. His grip is not crushing, but it is firm, absolute. A silent, unwavering promise.
In the shared, secret darkness, our breaths mingle in the cold air. His unyielding presence, a silent, steady anchor in the storm of my despair, is a comfort more profound than any empty words could ever be. It is a promise that in this cage, at least, I am not alone. And as I kneel there, my hand held in his, I feel the first, dangerous flicker of a hope I had thought long extinguished.
11
TAREK
Her hand is a small, fragile thing in mine, the bones as delicate as a bird’s. The contact, a simple meeting of flesh, is a more potent shock to my system than the magical wards that hum on the bars between us. Her skin is soft, her pulse a frantic, trapped rhythm against my thumb. I hold her there, in the shared, secret darkness, the silence stretching, becoming a living entity between us.
For weeks, she has been a variable, a complication I cannot control but have come to rely on. She is the bringer of food, the tender of wounds, the silent confessor to whom I have offered nothing in return but my own stoic presence. But now, something has shifted. The line between captor and captive, between beast and lady, has blurred into this single, profound point of contact.
The strategist in me, the part of my mind that is a constant, calculating echo of my brother Silas, demands clarity. Her nightly visits are a reckless, suicidal gamble. I have seen the casual cruelty of the elves who are her masters. They will not be merciful if they discover her treason. I have to understand the depth of her resolve. I have to know if she is a dependable ally, ora fragile girl whose compassion will get us both killed. I have to test the steel I suspect lies beneath her silken exterior.
I finally break the silence, my voice a low rumble in the quiet menagerie. "Why do you keep coming back, Annelise?"
She flinches at the directness of the question, her gaze dropping from mine to our joined hands. I feel her try to pull away, a flicker of her old, ingrained fear, but I do not release her. I hold her steady, my grip a silent demand for the truth.
"I... I bring you food," she stammers, the answer a weak, transparent shield.
"That is what you do," I correct, my voice patient but unyielding. "It is not why you do it. You risk a punishment I do not think you can even imagine, to bring scraps to a monster in a cage. Why?"
I watch her struggle, her brow furrowed in concentration. I can see her searching for a logical answer, a reason that would satisfy the grim, pragmatic warrior she sees before her. But there is no logical answer. Her rebellion is not an act of strategy; it is an act of the heart.
"I don't know," she finally whispers, the admission a raw, honest thing. She lifts her head, and her forest-green eyes, shimmering with an emotion I cannot name, meet mine. "I only know that my entire life has been a performance. I smile when I am told to smile, I speak the words I am meant to speak. My own thoughts, my own feelings… they are a secret country no one has ever visited."
Her voice drops, becoming thick with a desperate, beautiful truth. "But here," she says, her free hand coming up to rest on the cold iron bars between us. "In this place, with you… I can breathe. For the first time in my life, I feel like I can actually breathe."
Her confession is not the answer I had expected. It is not the answer a strategist can account for. It is a simple, devastatingtruth that bypasses all of my defenses and strikes me directly in the soul. She is not here out of pity. She is not here out of a misguided sense of charity. She is here because my cage has, impossibly, become her only sanctuary. The only place in her world where she is not required to be a doll.
In that moment, the last of my own carefully constructed walls crumbles. The stoic warrior, the grieving brother, the failed soldier—they all recede, replaced by a fierce, primal, and utterly possessive instinct. She is not a variable. She is not a complication. She is mine. And the thought of her, after this is all over, being left to fend for herself in a world that has shown her nothing but cruelty, is an agony I cannot bear.
The vow is forged in that instant, a promise born not of duty, but of a fierce, protective need so profound it feels as if it has been etched onto my very being.
"If I leave this place," I say, my voice a low, unbreakable oath. "You leave with me."
