The seven year crow, p.12
The Seven Year Crow, page 12
As I prayed for the death that Solas said would never come, I wanted this world to swallow me whole. I watched through blurred vision as the hall beyond the ballroom entrance danced with shadows. I wanted more than anything to crawl inside those shadows and disappear to a place where no one could hurt me. I reached with my soul and begged them to help me. No one else here would. They inched closer, tentatively, the more my mind screamed for them. As soon as I thought they’d whisk me away, they were gone, pulled back to the place where they had come from.
“Come back,” I whispered then sagged. Not even whatever haunted the halls wanted me. I was alone.
“Enough,” Solas commanded, and the guards dropped me into a pool of my own bloody making.
Solas dragged me to my feet, gliding on my own blood and vomit. When I couldn’t stand or walk on my own, he picked me up and carried me from the room, not up the stairs but down. I didn’t even know what sat below the Golden Court, but I didn’t want to know. With each step he took, the walls felt tighter and told me everything I needed to know about where I was going. Hell.
“How am I still awake?” I asked, my throat raw and burned from screaming.
“How is this a punishment if you pass out?” he replied. “It isn’t fun unless you’re screaming.”
My head lulled from side to side, catching glimpses of stone walls and candlelight. “Where are you taking me?”
“The rest of your punishment will be held in cells. You will wish for lashings once you’ve spent time in the dungeons of the Golden Court,” he answered, and I began to fade out of the awful world of Elphame. “You will always choose the lash over this place for as long as you live.”
“I don’t know what hurt more, being lashed with Faolan watching and doing nothing, or having to be carried by you, Soulless,” I whispered. “Next time, don’t stop them. Let them kill me.”
“Next time, keep your mouth shut and you won’t be lashed at all,” he answered. “Being a Crow can be as easy or as hard as you make it. Choose wisely, Perdi. Spend your anger on that which is worthy of your blood.”
I smiled. “It was worth it to slap him.”
“No, I don’t think it was. It cost him nothing. Next time, make sure you’re not the one to pay for your temper.”
“When I leave, I will burn this place to the ground on my way out,” I whispered.
“If you leave,” Solas replied.
“You don’t have to believe me, Solas. Whether you think I can do it or not means nothing to me.”
“Little Crow, I have no doubt you will try. But trying and succeeding are two very different things.”
“This is true. But the only way I’ll succeed is by trying, and I can light a great many fires before I die.”
“This is going to be the longest seven years of my life,” he grumbled.
Against my better judgment, I left him with parting words that I knew I’d regret. “I won’t leave you here. If you’re trapped here, I mean.”
“You are going to save me?” He laughed, and I bounced painfully in his arms. “That’s rich, coming from a Crow.”
“Or maybe I’ll leave you for the birds,” I answered, but knew I wouldn’t.
“Sleep,” Solas whispered with a small push of magick.
As the sleep finally tugged at my edges, I smiled. I fought to stay awake, even through the pain. As Solas had said, this was not the place to be unconscious. I couldn’t protect myself if I were asleep. Truth be told, I couldn’t defend myself while I was awake, either. Knowing I’d die no matter my alertness, I let myself go into the darkness with the sound of my cell door opening on hinges rotten from years of use. The last thing I felt was the sting of being dropped from too high and landing on my back. The cell door squealed shut, locking me into a room that already smelled of death. My last thoughts were of the warmth that blanketed me. I prayed that’s what death felt like when he finally decided to visit. But I knew better because it came to visit Whitwick often enough for me to appreciate that it was nothing like warmth and coziness.
Chapter Eight
I slowly came back from a fog of my own creation, my temper’s creation. The first time I woke, I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t understand why I stared up at a stone ceiling and not in my bed, safe at home in Whitwick. When I moved to touch the walls, pain surged, and the reality of where I was crashed down on me. From a sliver of light from under the door, I saw where my temper had brought me. I had been warned repeatedly but had allowed it to take control, and I paid dearly in strips of flesh and blood. I’d never make it to the end of seven years if I left pieces of myself on the floor each time I came out of my bedroom. I, like so many before me, would finish off my years as a twisted mess. I’d never survive, never be able to run, if I were hobbled in the Golden Court.
Each time I woke, I was both thankful and filled with regret. The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt. It burned and throbbed. But it was nothing compared to the pain I felt in my heart. I couldn’t do much more than lie there and cry. The tears brought an inability to taste and smell, and I was more than thankful for not smelling the rotten stench held in the air. Gone were the flowers, replaced with a disgusting odor that soured my empty stomach. Everything smelled of the dead and the prayer for death. I’ve learned that there are things worse than death, and one of those things was knowing the smells of rot were coming from my own body. I stank of infection and dying meat still hanging on the bone.
My prison cell was nothing more than a blood-stained cot on a wet, stone floor and a crude toilet in the form of a used bucket next to the steel door. There were no windows and one drain in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t a cell as much as it was a roomy coffin with better lighting. From under the door and cracks in the frame, a low flicker of light rolled in. When in complete darkness, not much light was needed to see. My eyes adjusted quickly. And once I could, I wanted to have remained blind to it all. Nail marks scarred the stone, claw marks on the floor of someone being dragged out made me wish the room had no light at all.
At the door, two plates of food and a jug of water sat, and I wondered how long I had been out. Did they feed me three meals a day or just enough for me not to die? I slowly sat up and ate my screams behind a clenched jaw. My head pounded from hitting the floor after the lashes, my skull bones taking the brunt of the landing. I swallowed back the bile. If I were to heal, I needed energy. It took three tries before I could crawl to the door. The movement pulled my ruined dress from the dried blood and wounds on my back, opening them once again. When I made it back to my cot, I was bleeding. I hoped the fresh blood would clean my wounds, since I wouldn’t dare put the water on my back.
I ate what I could and curled up but didn’t sleep, although I was exhausted. I was not the only prisoner, but I was the only one not currently being tortured. I tried to block them out, but the harder I fought against it, the more panic and fear built in my chest and crushed me, crushed my soul. I pushed myself against the far wall and cried. I had tried not to imagine what was happening to them, but each crack of a whip sent me back to the banquet hall. I tried not to allow myself to think of what they were enduring, but each scream reminded me of my own pain.
From under the door, shadows slinked across the floor—the shadowy tendrils I had seen in my bathroom and while being lashed. Painfully, I reached toward it, and it pulled back. My knuckles slammed into the floor with a thud.
“Please, don’t leave me,” I croaked around my sob. It left as quickly as it had come. “Please, come back.”
I was in hell, the kind of hell they taught us about in church every Sunday. There was no other word for it. I would die like this, in a dungeon, locked away, suffering, alone. I was sure every other Crow had met the same fate, punished and tortured until their human bodies could take no more. This is what it meant to be a Crow. We were the sacrifice, and they ensured we gave everything to this godforsaken land, from our hope and tears to our blood and bones. We would leave our souls splattered on the marble floors.
As much as I felt sorry for myself, I more pitied those in the cells. I pitied their Fae blood. They could be hurt harder and much longer than a human. They could take what would break me. Fae blood would allow them to heal time and time again. I covered my ears and wept for what they would suffer. Solas was right. This prison was punishment greater than lashes, and it pained me to think of just how bad it really was. I’d have preferred to be tied up and whipped by everyone in the court overhearing the begging and screaming of those in the cells next to me. Every sound was a reminder of how lowly I was in the pecking order.
A high-pitched shrill brought my swollen eyes open. My creature was pushing herself under the door. Behind her, the darkness I had begged to stay, rolled poppies from the crack under the door to my bed. They hadn’t left me. They’d gone for help. I watched her make a small hill of plants as the shadows slinked away and left her with me. I recognized the plants and was grateful Elphame held similar herbs as home. She had carried me painkillers and plants to help with the infection that even I could smell. I could only imagine how badly I reeked to her tiny nose.
“You shouldn’t be in here. If they catch you, they’ll kill you,” I whispered and held out my hand to her. “Thank you.”
She hopped off my hand and pulled at my shoulder. I rolled onto my stomach. She ground up the poppy seed and a few other leaves with a stone from the floor and placed them in my mouth, then climbed onto my back and began working. My little creature flinched each time a scream echoed across the stones of my cell. She trembled as she worked. She hopped off my back and sat a few inches from my face. Her wings hung. Even in the darkness, I could see her tear-stained face. I was thankful for the break, but it pained me to see her so sad. It had hurt more to fix what the lashes had done than to have it done. But I’d have endured the lashings all over again if it kept her from crying.
“Do you know them?” I whispered.
She sniffled, and her body trembled, but she made no actual sound. She finally nodded.
“Can you help them?” I asked.
She shook her head and shrugged. She couldn’t and didn’t know how.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. “If I could save them, I would.”
I reached my hand to hers. It was tiny but gripped enough for me to feel her squeeze. She stood and got back to work. Her sobs escaped her as she worked, and we cried together. It didn’t matter to me who the others were. No one deserved to be tortured endlessly. Either kill them or let them go. This in-between, dragging it out, sickened me. Only monsters did this. Only the Fae did this. I may have hated them all, but my hate didn’t include being sadistic. Then again, I’m still new around here. Who knows how deep my well of hatred would be if I lived another day?
My body began to relax as the painkiller kicked in. Eventually, I passed out just as my little creature started to chew at the rotten flesh on my back. The skin and meat were dead, the pain of it was either too minor to keep me awake, or the medications she gave me were more potent than I had thought. I was thankful for either.
I woke to the door hinges squealing in protest as they opened. I jerked and moved through the pain when someone walked in. The brilliance of the hallway lighting blinded me and ruined my night vision. I didn’t need to see him to know it was Faolan. I knew him even in the darkest of shadows. Him, Faolan, deserved the torture I had just condemned, long and drawn out. But I dismissed the thought. I didn’t think I could ever order him to suffer like that. I’d just simply kill him for his deeds. I wouldn’t even make a decent Fae. I wasn’t cruel enough. I doubted being a Crow would be any easier because of that.
“Why are you here?” I asked, my voice cracked. I pushed myself to my knees and gritted my teeth through the waves of pain and dizziness that followed.
He stood a foot from my front, forcing me to look up at him like a begging animal would. “To give you a choice.”
“Whatever it is that you want from me, the answer is no.” I didn’t want whatever he was he was offering. “If you came to offer me promises or oaths or deals, I’d rather die down here. You could give me my very freedom and I’d choose this cell over owing you a damn thing.”
“Perdi, you can choose to stay down here and die or…” He covered his mouth and gagged. I heard his meal try for an escape. “Or you may come with me now. God, Perdi, you smell of things worse than death.”
“You sent me to a place worse than death. How did you expect this to play out?” I asked.
“I certainly didn’t expect you to throw your wine in my face and slap me. I thought you had more sense than that.”
“More sense? How did you think I’d react when I saw you? You betrayed me. Because of you, I’m here. How should I have behaved?”
“Like someone who doesn’t want to die.”
“Oh, but I do.” I clutched my ribs as I laughed.
“Come with me, Perdi.” He held out his hand. “You don’t have to suffer like this.”
“Why would I go with you, now? I mean, look at this place. It has everything a prisoner would need. Why would I want to leave this fine establishment?”
“Because you will die here if you don’t.”
“Why, Faolan?” I asked. “Excuse me, King Faolan. Why did you sell me out?”
“We would both get what we wanted. You would have a safe place to be a Crow, and I could protect my people. You were coming here, no matter what. You were cursed to come, whether I collected you or not.”
“This was to protect your people? And only for them?” I asked.
“Of course… I’d never do anything to hurt you. But my people, Perdi, I can’t abandon them because I love a halfling girl. I can’t sentence them to war and death, not even for you.”
I smiled and closed my eyes. I had waited years to be loved—to be loved by him. And he says it now. I didn’t need to be Fae to know he was lying to me. I knew him well enough to know when he was lying. Even as he stood in front of me, he didn’t flinch to the sounds of bones crunching or flesh-tearing open. The begging and pleading of prisoners didn’t so much as stir a single emotion in him. He would have known that this cell, this pain, would have been my fate, and he willingly lured me to the place. He wasn’t just a liar. He was a coward, and as monstrous as those carrying out the punishments of the dungeon.
“Leave,” I said after moments of letting it sink in. “You never loved me in any way that didn’t hurt me. And that’s not love, not real love. You never bothered to tell me the truth. Not even now, after it’s already out. This was to protect yourself, and to hell with me.”
“You’d rather die? You could come with me and be safe, or you can stay and grovel like a Crow from the bottom. This will never get easier, only harder.”
“Yes, I’d rather die,” I said and meant it. “There are a million tortures I’d sooner endure than spend one more minute with you.”
“Suit yourself,” he answered. “Whether you come or stay, you’ll still see my face wherever you go. I won’t simply leave.”
“Faolan, before I am dead, I will see you lose everything you’ve ever gained. Mark my words, I’ll see you when this is over.” I smiled up at him. I meant every word I said.
His laughter was a slap in my face. It was a mix of surprise and frustration. “You have no idea, Perdi, what this court is capable of, what Elphame will do to a Crow. There is only suffering served in Elphame, and Crows eat the most of it.”
I pushed myself to my feet. Sheer will and grit got me but inches from his face. “You, Little King, have no idea what I am capable of. You have no clue what you’ve dragged into these lands and the blight I’ll release on you all. My desire to see you fall, see your court fail, outweighs everything you could possibly send my way.”
“That’s what Aoife said before she died. I was offering you freedom, but I’ll take you when you’re a broken Crow, just the same. If I have to drag you broken back to my territory, I will.” The look in Faolan’s eyes was the only warning I had, as Faolan grabbed me and pulled me to his front. The force of his body against me pushed me back and back until he held me against the wall. He leaned into my neck and breathed me in.
“Stop.” I fought the urge to scream and cry. Faolan released his hot breath against my pulse, and I squirmed, repulsed at his touch.
“No one can help you here, Perdi. You can scream all you want. No one will care. This is what Elphame is. This is what the Golden Court is. It’s hell, and I’m offering you a way out before you burn in it. I am giving you freedom. With me, you wouldn’t suffer a single day.” Faolan pushed against me and sighed. “Why must you be so bloody stubborn?”
“No.” I pushed against him and winced at the pain in my back. I wanted to tell him that I would not be the one to burn. This court would feel those flames long before I would. But no great plan came to fruition by spilling them before fulfilling them. “You’ll have to kill me first.”
“It won’t be me that kills you, here,” he answered. I froze as the light leached from my cell, leaving us both in complete darkness. “Stop this, Perdi, if you know what’s good for you.”
“It’s not me,” I whispered. “I’m not doing this.”
The darkness danced throughout the room, opening pockets in the dark where I could see Faolan’s face. He lifted his hand and formed a small globe of light. Each time he pushed against me, his light was eaten by the shadows. He stepped back, and his light returned. It was a warning. From where? I didn’t know. When Faolan moved toward me again, the shadows gobbled up everything in the room, every sight and sound and breath. But when he’d back off, the darkness eased.
