Drake
I hated to leave her.
But to be perfectly honest, she wasn't going to make it.
Not without a shelter to block the relentless wind, not without something to lock in our body temperatures to thaw her out.
Her lips were losing their color.
Her cheeks were painfully red.
The skin would dry and peel in a few days.
I knew that sensation all-too-well from the early days of my captivity. Back when I didn't have enough muscle, enough fat to keep me warm. Back before I had time to slowly fill in some of the holes in the barn that was my home, caking them with mud where I could, filling others with masses of dried leaves, spare bits of fabric if they could be found.
Those early winters were a bitter memory of being curled in a corner of a room, shivering from head to toe, teeth chattering, sure I wouldn't make it through.
Maybe I had even been somewhat disappointed to find out I had at times.
I didn't want that sad fate for her, the feeling of unending coldness, the certainty of your impending death.
She had barely even gotten a taste of a life on her own terms.
I'd be damned if I let her die before she even got an opportunity to live.
Even if leaving her alone made a pit settle in my stomach.
Sure, this was the Light.
And, sure, it was the most brutal time of winter where most fae were holed up indoors to stay away from the severe weather.
But that only meant that the fae with ill intentions would be all the more on the prowl, on the lookout for those who would not know to defend themselves until it was too late. If they could defend themselves at all.
I had no idea if Amethyst had any skills, any way to protect herself. If she was named after her potential skill set much like her half-brother and half-sister were, then it would imply any skill she might have would be a passive one. One that brought peace and calm, one that maybe gave her some slight intuition.
That, mixed with her ignorance of The Green as a whole meant she was about as defenseless as a babe.
From the sound of things, she would be able to navigate much better on her own once we crossed the veil. She knew the human ways. She would find her way there.
So it was my job to keep her safe until I could get her there.
I owed her that and more.
She gave me something I never could have gotten for myself.
She had given me my freedom.
It was something I had all but lost hope in.
I didn't know what freedom would mean for me.
But I was thankful for the winter, for the heavy jacket wrapping up my body.
The last beating I had endured had broken some of the plates in my back, making it impossible to slip back inside my skin like it normally would after I forced the Change to stay mostly at bay.
They would heal.
They always did, given enough time, given the chance to repair without being broken again.
As soon as they healed, they would slide harmlessly back into my skin once again, making it impossible for someone to know who - to know what - I am.
And so long as no one knew I was Draca - that I was descendent from a line of fae so rare they thought us the stuff of fables, of myths to tell their children about at night to spark their delight, to deepen their wonder - then I was relatively safe. As safe as any fae in the woods in winter.
They might wonder why I was bigger, stronger, why I was corded with muscle while most fae were slight and almost delicate.
But there were excuses for that.
The work camps, for example.
You could claim to have done a spell in one of the Dark camps for a few years, the unyielding hard work and long days causing your body to bend into a new shape.
It was a passable excuse.
They'd believe me.
Or, well, I'd kill them for their silence.
Maybe that was harsh, but so had been my life.
I would do anything to prevent myself from living that way again.
If the price of my freedom was bloodstained hands, so be it.
That may have sounded cruel, heartless.
But the Green was not a place for softness, for sweetness, for goodness.
Which was why Amethyst needed to get out as quickly as possible.
It would eat her alive.
Possibly even literally.
You never really knew.
I had been out of the world for so long. It was hard to tell who the players even were anymore, which fae had risen in power, which had fallen.
I wasn't even entirely sure which Court was holding more power.
They were supposed to be equal, of course, but only fools believed that. Power always tilted ever so slightly in one direction more than the other. For generations, it was Light, back when the lineage was secure, the powers unparalleled.
But then rumors swelled about the Princess taking ill.
And just like that, everything tilted Dark.
It was why the forests were so unsafe, even in the Light.
But new rumors were surfacing.
I'd heard the guards talking about it in whispers for ages, knowing Opal would flay them if she overheard.
The Princess had made a full recovery.
And the Light was guarding Cece. Celestine. The daughter of both Courts - something never before heard of in all of our history. A fae bound to be more powerful than any before her.
If she chose the Light Court instead of the Dark, who knew what was to become of them.
But those were problems for those whose lives were bound to be affected by those decisions.
Amethyst was going to be out of reach in the human realm.
And me, well, I was going to see what - if anything - was left of my tribe.
It had been so long.
I wasn't even entirely sure I could find my way back. But I would die trying. Die in my efforts to regain what was ripped from me so long ago.
We live on the fringes. Lived. Maybe I was getting my hopes up too much by thinking in the present tense. But we had survived on the fringes for generations behind our own veil created by a grateful mage so long before that no one even remembered the details, they had been long lost in the haze of endless seasons.
There had been a hunt the summer before, dozens of our kind slaughtered for their blood, their teeth, their plates, parts ripped off of still-living bodies, leaving who was left to scramble away lest they be forced to burn down entire villages, killing innocents in the name of taking out one of the guilty.
They were odds our elders had chosen not to take, burdens they did not want on their souls.
So the veil had been created, appearing to others like a festering swamp, boiling hot, impossible to cross.
And our kind had lived behind it for generation after generation, isolated from the world. Our wings were forced to become accustomed to small spaces, to cramped flying when we were meant to have the whole sky.
But it was safe.
And our consciouses were clear.
That was what mattered most.
I wanted to know if the veil held. Or if it had broken, and my kind had been annihilated.
The very idea made my stomach twist into a knot, making nausea rise up my throat.
I couldn't let my mind go there.
What was left for me if not hope?
Hope could help me trudge through this infernal snow, could burn a fire within me to keep myself - and Amy - warm through our journey.
So I was going to let myself hold onto it.
Even if that was perhaps naive of me.
As predicted, the winds had knocked endless pine branches free, their needles the only thing to keep us protected.
I heard a shuffling, a scraping, like something breaking through the icy top layer of snow. Turning, I looked down, finding something red poking out, just an inch or so at first, then more, and more.
A hat.
A pointed red hat.
I felt my lips curling up, unable to stop it, finding myself perhaps a bit childishly excited at the idea of seeing a gnome.
Having been as isolated as I had been for so long, I hadn't seen much of anything except the guards, the family, and that beast of Cece's - a barguest.
I watched, frozen in place with curiosity even though I knew I was supposed to be rushing back, seeing a laughably wrinkled forehead follow the hat, then almost beady brown eyes, ruddy, fat cheeks, a rounded jaw.
His hands rose out of the white snow, planting knobby fingers in the snow, hauling a pudgy midsection out of the ground, a tight red belt making his belly roll.
He stood, brushing the snow off, twittering about how hard traveling was in the cold season, reaching to pat the brown satchel settled at his side.
"Oh, good, good. There it is. Safe and sound." Flipping open the bag, his hand went in, dragging out a small, twitchy-nosed mouse, the ears laughably oversized, a small compress wrapped around his obviously shortened tail. "Getting you some nuts," he promised, rubbing his fingertip over its whiskers before tucking it back into the satchel, securing the top. "Oh, Draca," he declared, very matter-of-factly, as he finally noticed me. "Red, hm?" he asked, nodding like he already knew the answer, making me feel suddenly naked before him, as absurd as that was. "Very nice to see one of you again." His head lifted, ear raised as though he was listening to the air. "Hungry fae 'round these parts," he told me, making my spine stiffen.
"Amy," I hissed, turning, running without even realizing I was dragging the pine limbs along with me.
The snow felt suddenly thicker as I tried to close the distance I had put between us.
Too much.
I said I would stay close.
I had gone far, way too far.
But close enough, I had been sure, to hear her if she screamed.
Though that was asinine, of course.
There were many fae who could prevent her from screaming, who could catch her, entrance her before she could even think to scream.
I flew over the cliff she had been situated against, a low, lethal growl moving through me at seeing a figure bent over Amy's curled form.
She seemed asleep, eyelids pressed closed, body comfortably situated half-propped up by the rock. Whether she had been asleep before he'd gotten there or not, I wasn't sure.
But she was clearly not conscious as he bent low, lips close to her ear, whispering.
Tall, dark, smooth skin, perfect features.
It shouldn't have, but took me a long moment to realize who he was. What he was.
It wasn't until Amy's body started to fall backward, back arching, lips parting to let out white tufts of heated air, hips writhing.
It wasn't until then I knew.
A sex fae.
There were countless kinds, breeding had created untold numbers of deviant fae where there had once only been a precious few - Succubus, Incubus, Satyr, the usual suspects.
The branches fell from my hands, falling silently on the snow as I rushed forward, plowing bodily into the fae in question, feeling satisfaction when he landed with a grunt.
"What did you do to her?" I demanded, reaching down to close my hand around his throat, dragging him back to his feet.
It was risky not to plug my ears, to take the chance that he may have powers over men as well, but I was more worried about Amy and that despite the fact that he wasn't whispering to her anymore, she was still writhing, whimpering just a few feet to our side.
"Oh, just brought out her need," he told me, smile slow and - if I perhaps found myself the kind to be brought in by such urges - sexy smile. "It's sweet, you know? Girls like her. So... fresh. So... untapped. There's nothing like their desire. Sweet as a ripe peach still warm off the tree."
"Break the spell, or I break your neck."
"Ah, but then you would have no answers anyway, would you?"
"Undo it," I seethed, lifting him up a foot, making his feet dangle in the air, slamming him back against the stone, taking a bit too much pleasure at the crack of his skull against it. "You have no idea the rage I have inside me. And if she doesn't get better, nothing in The Green can prevent me from making you suffer in new and inventive ways. And, trust me, I have endured more torture than you can know about, so when I say inventive, I mean you'll scream until your throat bleeds, you'll cry until your cheeks burn and peel, you'll beg for mercy until your lungs give out. And you will find none."
To the side, Amy let out a choked sound, drawing my attention.
And it was too late when I had realized my mistake.
It was all but five seconds before I turned back to find him gone.
There was the choice - to chase him, or to stay with Amy.
Chasing him might show me how to break whatever spell she was under. But he hadn't cooperated when I'd demanded it. The chances of him ever doing so were slim.
Choice made, I flew over toward Amy, hand touching her cheek, finding it hot and clammy.
At the contact, her hands reached out almost frantically, clawing at the material covering my arms, pulling with all her strength - which wasn't much.
But pulling me to what?
Come over her?
That was what it seemed like.
Like she was trying to get me on top of her.
Like she was, fuck, like she was trying to get relief from the desire the fae had awakened in her, intensifying it the way the sex fae were known to do, making it like a fire inside, like something that may overwhelm them completely.
"Amy, wake up," I demanded, grabbing one of her small shoulders, shaking her hard enough that her teeth cracked together. "Snap out of it," I yelled, feeling her body heat through multiple layers of clothes.
Feverish.
She was going to overheat.
And soon.
"Fuck," I growled, watching as she cried, clamping her legs together, curling up on her side as if in pain of the acutest kind.
Heart thundering, I was finding it hard to force my mind to grab hold of singular thoughts, all of them racing around, plowing into one another, falling like branches in a storm.
Her arm clawed harder into my jacket, whimpering as she pulled me closer.
It was only then that the idea came to me.
Maybe she was demanding for her cure.
Maybe her body knew what it needed to break the spell, to return her sanity.
My stomach twisted painfully, knowing what I had to do, knowing how wrong it was, how it was overstepping a line, how she might never be able to look at me the same again.
But if the options were taking her choice away to save her, or let the fever burn her up from the inside out, well, there really wasn't much of an option, was there?
I grabbed her shoulder again, easing her onto her back once again, keeping my hand there as I took a deep breath, and pressed my hand between her thighs.
The orgasm was instantaneous.
It racked through her body like a bolt of lightning, making her legs fly outward even as her hips rose to demand more of the touch. Her lips parted on a ragged moan that echoed across the forest as the tremors moved through her.
And, finally, her eyes snapped open.
Open.
And seeing.
And understanding.
And on me.
The guilt was overwhelming, making me snatch my hand away, curling it into a fist.
"Are you back?" I asked, even though the keen look in her eye said she was.
"I fell asleep," she told me between somewhat trembling lips as she moved to sit up, pulling her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, folding into herself, keeping me away. "I'm so stupid," she added, resting her forehead to her knees.
"You're not stupid. You were exhausted. And cold. It's not your fault that you fell asleep. And it's not your fault that he took advantage of it."
"Is he..." she started, head popping back up, eyes huge.
"Gone," I told her with some finality.
I couldn't be positive of that, of course, but I figured it was a safe bet.
He'd gotten what he had needed.
He fed off her desire.
Sure, he could have fed off it until she climaxed - something that would have sustained him for longer, but I was pretty sure he was not going to come back and risk dealing with me yet again just to get that. There was always other pray to be found.
She exhaled so hard her whole body shook with it, her gaze going over my shoulder, refusing eye-contact. "Can I help build?" she asked, sounding needy.
Figuring she needed to do something, not sit there and think, I slowly moved to stand. "Sure," I offered. "First layer, we lay them with the stick ends up, letting the needles create a skirt around the bottom. Overlapping them. You get started on that. I will start tying things together while you do that," I offered, reaching in my pocket for the loose, rope-like pieces of shrubbery I had lucked upon.
"Okay," she agreed, ignoring my hand as she pulled herself up to her feet, setting to work with a single-minded focus that was impressive, laying things quickly, thickly, like she had done so a million times before instead of having been entirely ignorant of it.
"Survivalist shows," she mumbled at some point after likely having caught me looking at her with drawn down brows.
"I'm sorry?"
"On the television. In the human realm. They have these... programs where you watch people learning how to survive in foreign, brutal lands. Survivalist shows. I like them. That's how I know how to do this," she explained, pulling up the final row of pine branches. "I also know how to get water out of cacti, and create a snare."
"A snare?" I asked, unfamiliar with the word.
"Oh, well... you know how the humans eat other animals?" she asked, making my stomach turn a bit.
"I've heard rumors."
"It's not a rumor. Humans don't all survive on plants. Well, some do. But most eat flesh. And to catch the animals, they make... traps."
"Have you eaten flesh?" I asked, trying not to be disgusted by the idea.
"No. We can't. Or, at least, that is what other fae who have lived in the human realm say. We get violently ill if we try. Some don't survive."
I nodded at that, tying up the last of the branches.
"Will that do it?" she asked, hunching forward to try to get away from the wind.
"It will have to," I said, shrugging. "Come on. It's getting worse," I added, holding open a small spot where the rock jutted out ever-so-slightly, just enough room between the rock and our wall to let us slip through.
She hesitated enough to make me stiffen, realizing she still hadn't let her gaze move above my chest since she had woken up.
Maybe she never would again.
A part of me wanted to bring it up, to clear the air, to let her tell me how violated she felt. Even if we both knew it wasn't exactly my fault.
But the other part wanted to keep the relative peace between us.
She shrank small even before she ducked low, doing so to take up less space, to lessen the chance of brushing up against me as she slipped past me to crouch inside.
I'd cleared the snow out as best I could before I finished tying everything up, scooping it all out with my bare hands left blistering red afterward, but knowing that being wet would only make it less likely that we could keep warm, survive the night.
Taking a deep breath, I went down on my knees to climb in, securing the branch back in place, watching as the pine wall bent inward slightly, but barely let in the slightest of cool.
It was going to work.
I moved inward, thankful for the bit of light that came through the needles, finding Amy plastered up into the furthest corner, legs pulled up inside her jacket, her head on her knees again, attempting to keep in what was left of her body heat.
I moved halfway inside, trying to get close enough to her that my body heat might warm her as well, but give her enough space to feel comfortable.
And then all there was between us was silence.
The wind whipped, batting snow up against the bottom of our wall which kept it from moving around at all, securing it in place, keeping us as insulated from the weather as possible.
But as the evening approached night, her body started quaking gently, then more violently as the minutes dragged on.
When I heard her teeth chattering together, I couldn't keep silent anymore.
"Amy?"
"Yeah?" she asked, voice small.
"You need to get closer to me," I told her, looking over to find her gaze on my face, then falling suddenly when our eyes met. "I get that it might not be ideal right now, but this is survival here. You aren't going to make it through the night unless you get closer to me. I give off more heat."
There was a long moment before she answered. "Okay."
But she didn't move.
It would be smarter for me to move to her anyway, blocking my heat into the small space she had wedged herself in.
"Can I move toward you?" I asked before doing so.
"It's a smaller space over here," she agreed, reminding me again that while she was new to having to actually survive, she wasn't ignorant. She'd seen her shows, whatever those were. They sounded a bit like plays, but I wasn't sure.
I scooted over toward her, stopping when my legs were just a few inches from hers.
It wasn't long before the air lost its chill in the small space, until her teeth stopped chattering.
"Better?" I asked, unable to take the silence. Why? I wasn't sure. My life had been about silence. There were weeks that went by that I had no cause to speak to anyone else. Maybe I couldn't stand it because it was an option now, it wasn't the only possible reality for me.
I'd talked more since Amy walked into the barn than I had likely talked in years.
Realizing that, I felt the roughness in my throat, something I had attributed to yelling at the sex fae earlier - which may have contributed - but it was likely simply from having a conversation, something my vocal cords were not used to anymore.
I remembered days with my tribe when we would sit around a fire, sharing stories, legends, dreams for our future. It would go on for hours, until we were all too tired to do anything other than curl up and sleep.
The memories had faded around the edges, softening the way dreams do upon waking.
But there were things I still remembered, hints of voices, the sound of laughter, the ribbing from a friend. Precious things I had held onto over the years to remind myself of my lineage, to give myself a reason not to succumb, to give them what they wanted so badly of me, to let them break me, control the beast that lay within.
The beast wasn't theirs to have.
It was mine.
It was my tribe's.
It was not something vicious and ugly as they thought, but something wild and majestic, something to be respected, revered, not used for cheap war games, to tear other creatures apart for profit.
So I clung tight to what I had of my kind, the nights talking, the ceremonies when tribe boys or girls were entering adulthood, when they would Change for the first time, how the whole community would come together, create feasts, music, adorn their heads with crowns befitting their new roles in life.
Those were the things that had gotten me through.
And I never needed anything but silence to have them.
But there in that makeshift shelter with Amy, the silence was closing in, cutting off my air supply, making my skin feel itchy and uncomfortable, causing me to shift around in my spot just for some sort of relief from it.
"I'm afraid to sleep," Amy admitted, voice barely above a whisper, hard to hear over the scream of the wind on the other side of our little shelter.
"There's no reason to be afraid. Not now. Not with me here. I won't let anything get to you again."
"What if he gets to you first?"
"He won't." It was a promise I had no business making, but couldn't stop myself from doing so.
"You're sure?"
"Positive," I told her, voice confident enough that she believed me.
And slowly, little by little, her body lost some of its tension, her breathing got slower as she eased herself down on the ground.
And she fell into an exhausted sleep.
It was maybe an hour later when I felt her roll into me, her whole face and torso colliding with my legs, letting out a low sound of approval at - I imagined - my warmth.
I looked down, seeing her pale lashes fluttered closed on cheeks that were no longer alarmingly red, lips not pale nor blue, feeling a sense of satisfaction that I had done the most basic thing I could do for her.
Keep her alive.
Keep her safe.
She made another murmuring sound as her arm rose, flinging across my thighs to hold onto more of my heat.
And I felt it.
Something I had no business feeling.
Because she was young.
Because she entrusted me to take care of her.
Because men like me didn't get to feel things for women like her, women who attracted the gazes of princes.
But there was no denying the way desire uncurled in my stomach, spread through my system, until there was a whole new reason my body was radiating heat.
My hands curled into fists at my sides, my jaw setting to steel as I gritted my teeth and simply felt the desire, knowing there was nothing I could do to ease it.
Even as she snuggled closer, her hand just inches away from a part of me that was begging to be touched.
Eventually, it eased.
And I found some rest as well, warmed by her body against mine just as her body stole from me.
There was an odd crackling sensation across my chest as I drifted off, something warm and light, thawing. Something that I maybe started to interpret as contentedness until sleep claimed me, wiping all memories of it away.