“Ale?” the barmaid asks him, those pursed lips treating him to a smile.
“Aye. And a meal. Hell of a day.”
She pulls a tap handle and pours his drink. “Yeah?”
“The unclean ones have their powers back.”
Unclean ones?
The barmaid laughs. “Sure they do.”
“Nah.” He shakes his head. “It’s true.”
She shrugs. “If this means you can hurt them again, I’d think you’d be happy.” Her tone implies that she thinks he’s full of it.
“I’m not lyin’。 Happened overnight at the children’s camp. Little fuckers killed ten of my men before we knew what was going on. The last eighteen hours have been complete chaos while we waited for the injections to arrive.”
The barmaid shudders. “I don’t know how you pump that poison into anyone.”
“Easy.” He mimes pushing the plunger on a syringe.
She shakes her head. “Got some stuck in me back during the war. Feels like death itself.”
When Jalek was prisoner in the golden palace, he was given injections that blocked his magic. Is that what they’re talking about? Are they injecting the children with the same thing?
When the barmaid turns to me and arches a brow, I realize I’m staring. I bow my head again.
“Rather kill ’em,” the orc says, “but we have our orders. She wants the little bastards alive.”
Children. He’s talking about the Unseelie children in her camps.
Rage simmers in my blood. I hate all of them. The fae are liars and manipulators. If it weren’t for their cruelty and political scheming, I could be home with Jas right now instead of here. Alone and aimless. Broken and stuck in this new, immortal body I never asked for.
But the children? They may be fae, but they’re innocent in all of this. Taken from their parents and locked away as part of an endless power struggle between two courts that already had too much power to begin with. It’s disgusting.
Maybe I was never imprisoned, but I spent my childhood caged by an unfair, exploitative contract.
I know what it’s like to be an orphan, and I know what it’s like to have your choices stolen from you by those who have so much power they can’t see anything beyond their greed for more.
The barmaid slides a bowl in front of orc, shaking her head. “The curse is really broken, then?”
“Aye.”
She sighs. “I’m sorry to hear about your sentinels. Will you be needing a room?”
He shovels a heaping spoonful into his mouth and doesn’t bother to swallow before speaking again. “Yeah. Need a few hours of shut-eye before I go back.”
She grabs a key from the board behind her and drops it in front of him. “Careful tonight, ya hear?”
The orc grunts in response and returns to shoveling stew into his mouth.
My stomach is sour at the thought of children being injected with anti-magic toxin, at the thought of them being imprisoned at all. The unclean ones, he called them. Is that a term used for prisoners or for Unseelie? I think I already know the answer, and it makes anger steam in my blood.
I force myself to finish my dinner, because I’ll need the energy, but the bread feels like ash in my mouth and the stew sits heavy in my gut.
After the barmaid has cleared my dishes away, I nurse my water while the orc finishes his meal and gets seconds. Only when he’s finishing those and making satisfied noises do I drain my glass.
“Mind refilling this and letting me take it up?” I ask, hoisting my empty glass in the air.
The barkeep nods and uses her pitcher to refill it.
With one last glance toward the guard, I head for the stairwell. I hide in the shadows, wrapping them around me so none of the patrons see me as they pass. I wait in silence, my lids heavy as the shadows stroke my frayed nerves, my body begging for rest. I wait and wait until, finally, the orc appears in the stairwell and heads up.
Keeping to the shadows is easy in the candlelight, and the guard’s lumbering breaths mask any sound from my own steps. He stops on the second floor and heads to the door two down from mine.
When he enters, the door swings into the hall and not into the room. Perfect.
Once he’s inside, I go to my own room. It’s small, dark, and musty, but there’s a bed and, as promised, clothes and a bucket of warm water for washing. I drain my glass and refill it with soapy water before returning to the hallway. I position the glass directly in front of the orc’s door so it will topple over when the door opens. I wish I could set a more elaborate trap with my magic, but I’m too unskilled and I don’t trust anything to hold while I sleep.