Captive of wolves bound.., p.1
Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae Book 1), page 1
Captive of Wolves
Book 1 in the Bound to the Fae series
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Digital Edition, 2020
Copyright © 2020 Eva Chase
Cover design: Yocla Book Cover Design
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-82-6
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-83-3
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Next in the Bound to the Fae series
Cruel Magic excerpt
About the Author
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1
Talia
I can always tell when they’ve come to steal my blood. It’s only those times that my captors arrive all together, the three hulking men-who-aren’t-men marching into the room that holds my cage.
When they enter on their own to shove food and water through the bars or to change my toilet bucket, they have a curt, preoccupied air as if paying me any attention bores them. The group effort gets them excited. They always come in chuckling and giving each other hearty smacks on the shoulders, congratulating themselves on a job well done before they’ve even done it.
Or maybe it’s mostly done already. I have no idea what they want my blood for or how large a part of those activities it is.
All I know is that while my entire existence here is awful, these days are the worst.
The second I hear their merry voices on the other side of the door, my fingers clench around the scratchy fabric of my wool blanket. Every nerve in my body clangs to propel myself away from the threat. But the farthest I can go is the corners of my cage, which isn’t anywhere at all.
It’ll be over faster the more cooperative I am. And my one chance at ever getting out of this awful existence depends on me tamping down on my dread enough to focus all my attention on listening.
As my captors walk in, my fingers keep clutching the blanket. It’s the only protection I have against their harsh gazes and sneers. They can’t be bothered to go to the trouble of clothing me, but they don’t want me coming down with a chill either. I’m valuable enough to be kept alive but not remotely comfortable.
The man at the head of the bunch gazes down at me where I’m crouched on the hard metal floor of the cage, his nose wrinkling in undisguised revulsion. It must stink in here—I must stink, considering I can’t remember the last time they bothered to even hose me off. I’ve lived in filth for so many years I can’t tell anymore.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, that man—the one with hair as brilliantly yellow as the petals of a sunflower and ears that rise to inhuman points—is the leader. Yellow doesn’t do much other than watch and order the others around. But he’s the one who unlocks my cage. I have to concentrate on him.
The second of my captors, the one with the rotund belly and heavy feet, goes to the plain cupboard that’s the room’s only other furnishing. I think of him as Cutter because of his role in this ritual. He gets out the little ivory-handled knife and a glass vial. My skin twitches in anxious anticipation.
The third of the men bends down beside the cage until he’s almost at my level. His lips curl into a grin that looks cut into his ruddy face. He isn’t burly like the other two but all sharp angles, from the tips of his ears to the toes of his narrow boots to the tufts of his blueish white hair that poke from his scalp like icicles.
I’m uncomfortably familiar with Ice’s angles. Occasionally he gets bored enough with whatever else his life consists of to saunter in here and “play” with me. He’ll poke and prod until he forces out a gasp of pain.
They have a rule about injuring me—I’ve heard them talk about it. Nothing that could jeopardize my life is allowed. Ice has made a hobby out of discovering all the ways he can torment my body without causing any tangible damage.
Not surprisingly, he’s always the one who volunteers to pin me down.
I could make it even easier for them. I could sprawl out on my belly the way they’ll want me positioned so he has no reason to shove me down. But he’ll push me around anyway, and whatever small fragment of pride I’ve somehow held onto balks at the thought of prostrating myself quite that willingly.
Yellow leans forward. Black tattoos in unfamiliar symbols mark all of their bodies, but he has the most, several on his arms and neck, one poking from his hairline at his temple. A twisting line from one stretches across his chin all the way to his lips.
He’s going to say the word—the word that spills from his mouth with a resonance that prickles down my spine. The word that opens the door.
The word I have to learn.
He rests his hand on the latch. His lips part, and the sounds slip out fast and sibilant, one blending into the next. “Fee-doom-ace-own.”
That’s what it sounds like to my pricked ears, anyway. That’s what it’s sounded like since I realized some kind of magic holds my cage closed and that the word is the key, although it took several attempts before I was sure of each of the syllables. I replay everything I’ve heard my captors say over and over in my head, searching for meanings beyond the obvious that might offer a helpful clue to ending my torment, but that word is the one I’ve returned to the most.
I’m still not really sure of it, or I’d be able to say it properly, wouldn’t I? Just how much does his voice lilt upwards with the “ice” bit? How long does he stretch out the “o” in “own”?
What am I missing?
I might be missing the capacity to work any kind of magic word at all, no matter how well I say it. In the back of my head, I know that, not any flaw in my concentration, could be the problem. Because these aren’t really men, and they have powers beyond anything I understood before they threw me in this cage. He says the word quietly and quickly, but I don’t think he’s all that worried about me overhearing it.
He doesn’t think I could use it. But it’s all I have.
He unhooks the latch. The hinges squeak as the door swings open.
The cage is barely big enough for me. When I’m sitting, I can touch the bars overhead without raising my arm completely. Standing is out of the question. But the doorway is large enough for Ice to squeeze through. There’s just enough space for him to grab me by the back of my neck and slam my face against the floor.
Pain radiates through my skull. He clambers on top of me with his pointy knees digging into my calves and the spikes of his elbows jabbing my ribs. His weight bears down on my back, squashing most of the air from my lungs until I’m on the verge of suffocating. He grinds one of those elbows into the tender spot just below my shoulder blade, and I catch my lower lip between my teeth.
I hate the whimper that slips out of me anyway. I hate his fingers burrowing into the hollow between my cheek and my jaw to press my face even harder against the grubby metal. I hate that he knows exactly how to take me from discomfort to agony in the space of a breath.
I hate the jagged snicker that tells me how much he loves it. There are easier ways they could position me, but this one is more fun for them.
A jolt of adrenaline shoots through my veins, more panic than anything else, and I have to clamp down hard to smother the urge to thrash against Ice’s hold. There is no escaping him. I know that. And the one time I tried, when I didn’t know very much yet, the man on top of me repaid me in spades for the one kick I landed to his gut. He grasped my foot and twisted his hands, and the bones snapped in an explosion of pain.
That pain has never quite gone away. They didn’t let the fractures heal right—a little extra security against me running away. I can’t really walk in this cage, but any time I put weight on that foot, a dull ache spreads through it. Extra security and a constant reminder of the consequences of fighting back.
I have other ways of defying them that they can’t see. I pull all the way back into my mind, into the depths where the pain is only a distant buzzing, into an imagined vision of the world they wrenched me from. It isn’t a part of that world I ever experienced in real life, but one I dreamed about traveling to someday back when I could have dreams that large.
Before me lies a broad poo
Cutter lets out a raspy sound of amusement. “Can we have her arm already?”
Ice leans his weight onto his left elbow in a way that nearly dislocates my shoulder. The spike of pain shatters the illusion I’ve formed in my head. As he yanks my other arm toward the open door, I grit my teeth, but a little cry seeps out anyway. He snickers again. I squeeze my eyes shut, tears leaking out despite my best efforts.
Cutter doesn’t revel in the process, but he doesn’t appear to have any objection to his companion’s antics. Without another word, he slices the knife into my wrist.
It’s a shallow stinging, mostly drowned out by the cacophony of hurts already coursing through my body. From the glimpses I’ve gotten of the vial, they only take a few teaspoons. He pinches the flesh and then ties a thin bandage over the wound with a perfunctory tug to fix it in place.
Cutter straightens up. Ice pushes off me, knocking my head against the metal floor once more for good measure. When he’s clambered out, Yellow shuts the cage door and voices his magic to lock it.
Normally, this is when they’d leave. Instead, Ice peers down at me, folding his arms over his chest. The light glittering off the pale, spiky tufts on his head turns them even chillier-looking.
“She barely responds anymore,” he says. “It makes this rather tiresome.”
Cutter shakes his head. “Only you would wish for a fight.”
“I’m only saying that while we have her, we might as well make use of her for some entertainment in between more vital matters.”
“What did you have in mind?” Yellow asks as if he doesn’t really care about the answer. He’s eyeing the vial rather than me, with a triumphant gleam in his eyes.
Ice rubs his jaw, showing the tattoo that spears across his knuckles. “We could give her the run of the castle. Make it more of a chase.”
Hope flickers to life in my chest despite the throbbing of my ribs. I might not even need to make the magic work to get my chance. If I could get that much closer to—
His sneering voice cuts through my thoughts. “Of course, I’d break her other ankle to ensure she can’t get far without our say so. She can crawl around the place like the vermin she is.”
My blood freezes, a wave of hopelessness dousing the flare of hope in an instant. No. Fleeing this place with one unsteady leg would be hard enough. Escaping without the use of either… They might as well cage me within my body and swallow the key.
“Let me think on it,” Yellow says in the same distracted tone. “It is something of a waste putting her to use so infrequently. Perhaps she could polish the floors while she’s down there.”
He’s really considering it. I bite back the scream that’s trying to bubble up my throat.
“Sleep well, dung-body!” Ice calls over his shoulder to me, and they all laugh as they head out.
A shiver runs through my limbs. Within moments, I’m shaking so hard I can’t get a hold of myself. I roll onto my side and pull my knees up to my chest, gulping air and groping for control.
I can’t let it happen. I can’t. I can’t. I’d rather be dead.
But they won’t let me take that escape either.
Listen. I have to listen to that magic word again. Listen and then try, oh please, oh please…
I close my eyes and reach back to the turquoise pool I pasted into my scrapbook of wonderful places years ago, when I was still a kid. I can’t quite conjure up the warble of the breeze over the water or its warm caress against my face, but gradually, my shudders peter out.
Over time, I’ve built an extensive imaginary world inside my head. Along with the exotic locations from my scrapbook, I summon up scenes from favorite movies: mine, sweeping fantasy epics of heroic adventures, and the ones Mom always loved, comedies where everyone speaks in arch remarks and often with British accents. In the long stretches of when I’m left alone, I fantasize about stepping into those stories, joining conversations with comments that sound just as valiant or smart. It stops my brain from turning into mush with boredom.
If it weren’t for that pretend world, this existence would probably have reduced me to a mess of vague thoughts, shudders, and pain by now. I run my fingers down my side to my right hipbone, to the tiny mottling of scars there. One for each year I’ve been able to mark, digging my ragged fingernail into my skin until it bled. Eight altogether.
How many more years lie ahead if they shackle me to a ruined body and set me to work? Will I even be able to drift away inside my head in between the worst parts, or will I lose even that make-believe escape?
Another shiver ripples through me. I force myself to breathe slow and steady. The chance isn’t gone yet. I have to focus on that and not on the terrors that might lie ahead.
As I uncurl myself, I reach toward the ceiling of my cage. I might not be able to walk in here, but I’ve kept myself strong however I can. Gripping the bars, I heft myself up and down, over and over, until a different sort of ache burns through my muscles.
It isn’t comfortable, but there’s something satisfying about knowing I still have some small say over what my body is put through. It helps that the exertion makes it hard to think about my future, now even more precarious than before.
I’m bicycling my legs in an attempt to work those muscles too when the sound I’ve been waiting for reaches my ears. The muffled but audible thud of what I assume is the building’s front door carries all the way to this room.
I flip into a crouched position, keeping most of my weight on my good foot. My captors never say much around me, but from the snippets I’ve gathered over the years, I’ve gotten the impression they have to leave this place to complete their plans. I don’t know who else might live in the building other than the three of them, but to the best of my knowledge, no one else here has ever seen me. Even if I run into another inhabitant, they might not realize I’m meant to be a prisoner.
If I want to regain my freedom, this is my best opportunity. Possibly the last opportunity I’m ever going to get.
I just have to say that strange word right.
I tip so close to the cage door that my forehead brushes the bars. Fixing my eyes on the latch, I dredge up my memory of my captor’s lilting pronunciation. My voice comes out in a whisper. “Fee-doom-ace-own.”
When I reach through the bars to rattle the latch, it doesn’t budge. I’m sure I said it exactly the same way Yellow did. But then, I’ve felt that way dozens of times before.
“Fee-doom-ace-own,” I say at the latch, letting my voice rise, shifting my inflection. “Fee-doom-ace-own. Fee-doom-ace-own. Fee-doom-ace-own! Come on!”
My heart is pounding. I grasp the bars and gather my composure. It’s not just being trapped in here that I’m scared of. I’m also scared of what will happen if I do get out. What I might face beyond this room. What my captors will do to me if they catch me. Every time I’ve tried this, that terror lurks right behind my resolve.
I can’t let the fear stop me. I can’t. Nothing could be worse than what I’ll face if the sharp-edged man gets his way.
Thinking about dragging myself around this place with its bone-white floors and walls, scrubbing them clean, enduring jabs and kicks all day long, my soul recoils. That tropical pool I dream about is out there somewhere. Even if it feels like a fantasy now, it’s a place as real as this one. Wouldn’t it be worth anything to get there?
I’ll scream at the lock until I’m hoarse if that’s what it takes. I can do this. I have to.
