Taken Page 6

  Flipping open the art book again, I showed him the sketch of Tash. “Have you seen this girl? I need to find her—we came here together.”

  “There.” He jerked his head to the truck again.

  “She’s on the truck?”

  “Go.” He gave me a violent shove forward, and I staggered to a stop in front of a wall of soldiers. One of them grabbed me harshly, then marched me up to the truck. I was passed off to another soldier who loaded me on, then slammed the rear door shut.

  I looked around the people crammed onto the truck. Some of them were stuffed onto the floor. There wasn’t any place left to sit.

  “Tash?” I called out just as the truck rumbled to life and started to move up the street. “Tash, where are you?”

  “Vale!” Her voice struck through me like lightning. Cold, hard lightning—because her voice didn't come from inside the truck. It came from outside.

  I spun around and gripped onto the truck door. “Tash!”

  Tash barrelled through the wall of soldiers at the evacuation point. A scream ripped through my throat before I tried to boot open the door and get to her. From the inside of the truck, a soldier’s hand yanked me back from the door. He shouted at me to sit down, but his words were a distant echo to me.

  “Tash!” I screamed and reached out the back of the truck.

  She was chasing after me, fast. Soldiers came racing after her, though. Some of them shouted at her to fall back and get in line. One of them drew his rifle...

  “Tash, go back!” I shouted at her. “Go back! I’ll meet you in the city!”

  My words carried away on the wind. She didn't slow down. She kept running after the truck.

  And the soldier pulled the trigger.

  “Noooo!” I fell to my knees. My hand was outstretched as though I could grab her before she dropped—

  But it was too late. A burst of crimson spattered from her chest. And the last look I ever saw on her face was pure shock before she fell dead to the road.

  7

  Hands clutch my shoulders and shake.

  Sleep clings to me. I break through the foggy veil enough to squint up at the person waking me. Nicole’s severe face scowls down at me.

  “Get up,” she hisses at me. “I can’t do everything by myself, you know.”

  It takes a moment for her words to string together and make sense in my hazy mind. She needs me to help with the washings. Exhaustion clings deeper to me at the reminder, of all those tents we didn’t collect dirty clothes and armour from, of the clothes left to dry on the rope.

  “We have a lot to get through,” she says to punch her point.

  My eyes roll back as I let out a guttural groan. The last thing I want to do right now is work. The thought of all those clothes, the armours, the pit of simmering water, it all begs me to fall back into a deep slumber.

  Maybe it’s because I haven’t slept this deeply in weeks, but all I want to do is turn my back on Nicole’s scowling face, and slip away again. She doesn’t give me the chance. Before my eyelids can flutter shut again, she’s shaking me so violently that my whole body rattles on the dirt ground.

  I swat her away sluggishly and force myself to sit upright.

  Balling up my fists, I rub at my puffy eyes, then look around the tent. It’s empty, expect for me and Nicole. Everyone else must be up and about already, preparing meals again for the dark fae, and tending to the fires and steeds.

  I think of the copper tub in Caspan’s tent and wonder if he’ll bathe again—then I hit the image from my mind as quickly as it came. Don’t know why I thought about that.

  “Give me a minute,” I say groggily before I stretch up my arms.

  Something pops between my shoulder blade, and the relief is like a wave of water washing over me. All those aches that stuck to my bones, all the pains that infested my muscles, they seem to have evaporated.

  With a huff, Nicole storms out of the tent, leaving me with a speck of privacy that I realise is short-lived. So I’m quick to peel up my tank top and inspect my bruised ribs. The black stain from the injection is gone. It’s as though it was never there to start with. Only hours ago, the black was spreading through my torso like a plague through quarantine, and I was fearing that I would wear the black stains forever.

  Fortunately, the black is gone, and so are the bruises. All that’s left are small nicks on my skin that I suspect are scrapes from when I fell off the wall back at the village, when I was trying to escape the dark fae.

  Abandoning my middle, I reach back to the rear of my head. I have to dig my fingers through my hair to find the spots that were sore only yesterday (has it been a day and night since I saw the healer? It feels like it). A small patch of hair has been cut away, leaving a bald spot on my scalp where there should be a gash to feel with my fingertips. But as I gingerly stroke the area, it feels smooth to the touch. No gashes, no cuts, no bumps or even bruises. There’s no pain there anymore.

  I’m awed. The magic of the dark fae strikes through me like lightning, and I’m left silenced at how amazingly their concoctions work. It’s no wonder their armies seem unstoppable. Because if any of them are injured, they will be healed back to full strength with a single short visit to their amazing healer.

  A team of the best doctors in the human world couldn’t do what this one healer has done, not in such a short amount of time, and not in such a short visit.

  I let my hand drop to my side before I lift up my other arm and turn it over. It’s hard to see in the dim lantern light that illuminates shadows in the tiny tent, but I see the scars well enough. They gleam pearl-white against my pale skin. The fresh cut is fresh no more. It’s knitted together, all traces of scabs and blood vanished.

  All my wounds are healed. Completely.

  Scars are all that remain on my arm, but the recent cut I branded myself with doesn’t look to have left much of a scar at all. All that’s left of it is a paper-thin white line that reaches from the tattoo on my wrist to halfway-down my inner forearm. It’s as though I never cut myself at all.

  And I feel healed. Tired, exhausted—yes. But my head doesn’t throb with every move anymore, my arm doesn’t pulse with that familiar soothing ache, and my ribs no longer swell with agony when I twist to the side. Other than the loosening grip of exhaustion, I feel better than I’ve felt in months.

  Despite all of that, I’m not as relieved as I perhaps should be. Adrianna made it crystal clear that humans aren’t sent to the healer. Never in the history of this camp has a fae healer treated a human, no matter how severe the injuries.

  Just yesterday, I watched as the General tore out a human’s throat with the blade of his dagger like he was cutting rope from a tree. Our lives aren’t valued here. And in the eyes of the dark fae, why would it be any other way?

  The healer himself was adamant that he didn’t want to treat me. No kuri, only dokkalf. That’s what he told me. So why now did that change? What was it about my wounds that had Caspan ordering me to the healer’s tent?

  I have a cold feeling in my stomach that warns me I won’t like the answer. Of all the things I am and want, this is not at all close. Just want to fly under the radar, hide in the shadows and be forgotten. But something tells me it will take a lot of effort on my part to blend in with the other humans, to be just another captive.

  I need a way of slipping out of the attention of the General, without turning him against me. Maybe I can convince Nicole to collect and return the laundry we do. I’ll clean, she can deal with the dark fae. Seems like a perfect solution to me, but the problem is getting Nicole on board. I doubt she’ll go along with anything I say, after I wrestled that scarf of hers out of her fearsome grip.

  As I push up from ground, I start to brew strategies. I might need to trade something with Nicole to convince her to switch roles with me. Especially since I’m suspecting she doesn’t want much to do with the dark fae either.

  Running around to collect their dirty clothes means being around them m
ore than she might want to be, and I can’t blame her for that.

  As I slip out of the tent, I’m taken aback by the relaxed atmosphere down this end of the camp. Most of the human captives are lounged around fire-pits, eating dry cereal from wooden bowls, and chatting amongst themselves. The drying-line that Nicole and I set up divides the camp, separating the humans from the dark fae ahead. Only the fae guards that patrol the area infringe on this human-only zone.

  I spot Adrianna up ahead, stirring a long wooden stick around a large metal pot atop a fire. Before I search for Nicole, I head up to Adrianna, and notice the other two humans parked on a log behind her. They wipe clean some wooden mugs with rags.

  When Adrianna sees me coming, a sincere smile lights up her face. I never know what to think of her, what’s a mask and what’s the truth behind it.

  “Hey, thanks for helping me get back from—” I stop short once I catch a sniff of what she’s brewing in that pot. My mouth floods with saliva instantly and I take a tentative step closer.

  Coffee. Sweet, bitter coffee.

  I haven’t had that since before the quarantine in Finland. I knew I missed it. I mean, it’s coffee forchristssake. Everyone misses it. But until you smell it in the air wisping all around you, that distant craving punches through your body with a violent hunger, and suddenly all I can think about is guzzling down mugs of the bitter, brown heaven.

  Adrianna laughs. “Yeah, everyone around here would give their right arms for a taste of this stuff.”

  My face falls. “You mean we can’t have any?”

  She looks at me, amused. “You can,” she says slowly, and fixes a dark smile on me, “if you want to end up at the post, of course.”

  “Of course,” I echo, my shoulders deflated.

  “You wouldn’t want this brew anyway,” she says, as if to comfort me and my crestfallen face. “It’s got tree bark in it.”

  My brows knit together. “Why?”

  She shrugs. “That’s how they like it.”

  “Earthy,” I mutter under my breath.

  That earns a sharp laugh from her.

  In answer, I smile tightly.

  It’s been a while since I let my guard down with someone, laughed with them, joked around with them. It’s ... odd to be doing it again. Worry is quick to gnaw at my heels. Don’t get close with anyone. That’s my rule. And it’s a rule that’s fast to crumble around Adrianna.

  There’s something so disarming about her. The way she switches from bubbly to wicked, the darkness behind the blue veils of her eyes. It reminds me of, well, me. The way I was before all of this. Happy and fun on the outside, dark and bloody on the inside.

  At parties, I would dance on the tables and line up shots, force people to down them with me. But in the dark of the night, by my bedside lamp, I would pull out my sketchbook and draw painful images. Pictures of what I imagined my parents looked like in their fatal car crash, the way the cuts on my arms opened up and showed those ugly, thick layers of flesh beneath the skin.

  Maybe Adrianna and I aren’t so different, and that’s why I’m drawn to her.

  Though, it’s dangerous in these times to attach to someone. To let yourself care about them, even just a little. There’s always that chance that she could wind up at the post, and I would have to watch her die. And then what? I would have lost another person I cared about.

  That’s why distance from others in this world is so important.

  For now, I should just keep my head down and do my duties. Be a slave to the dark fae. It’s the same to what I had before with the tribe. We were all out for ourselves, doing what we had to do, but surviving together. It’s no different.

  As I head to Nicole by the far fire pit, I look beyond the rope at the dark fae end of the camp. It’s obvious, as I watch the fae. We live to serve them now. And that’s exactly what they kept us alive to do. Serve them.

  We work down this end, washing clothes, brewing coffee, making their meals, and up there the dark fae enjoy themselves. I can’t deny that glaring fact as I watch them.

  The fae are mostly shirtless up there. Some are stark naked. And they wear no shame in that. So unlike us humans. They laugh and talk and clean their swords. Some share fruit, others wash their bony, grey-skinned horses.

  A few dark fae sleep on the ground, as though they are basking under the heat of the sun. At the far end of the glade, a pale-haired fae forces the runner-prisoner to dance at his post. He throws knives at his feet every time he stops. All the fae have one thing in common right now—they are all enjoying themselves.

  But even as the human captives talk around the fire pits, the atmosphere is different. Relaxed, yes, but not joyous. There is no happiness to be found down here.

  I count twenty of us all up—the captives. Six work the meal service, I notice. Three of them take the bowls filled with water-oats, and deliver them to the dark fae.

  Two humans are carting boiled water up the hill to the tents ahead, where they fill the washtubs I assume. Another two are filling the wooden washtub in the middle of the camp that most of the dark fae share. Beside it, Cheekbones is playing a black flute that sings a haunting sound. A melody that pulls at my heart strings.

  Then I see him. General Caspan.

  He stands at the wooden table beside the post, where a map is spread out. The healer is with him, speaking into his ear, and Caspan’s coal-black eyes find me instantly.

  I shiver as his gaze hooks me. The look is unforgiving, and I force myself to turn away and rush over to Nicole.

  “Finally,” she snarks as I stumble to a stop beside her. She shoots me up-and-down with a sneer. “Bet you were hoping I’d done all the work so you could slack off,” she spits.

  “No,” I say, but there’s not much heart in it.

  I can’t shake the stare of the General from my mind. Every bit of me itches to turn around and see if he’s still watching me, but I force myself to keep my back to him.

  “What do you need me to do?” I ask to distract myself.

  Nicole throws me a tired look. “Use your head, for a start. Check the clothes on the line. If they are dry, fold them, basket them, then take them back to the tents.”

  I look over my shoulder at the rope. The clothes we hung there still dangle, swaying softly in a gentle breeze that I don’t feel touch my skin.

  “How do I know what belongs to who?”

  Nicole throws a handful of clothes into the simmering pot. “Check the emblems—they are embedded into the leather. You’ll learn them over time.”

  I don’t move. That didn’t help me in the slightest. Still, I have no clue what I’m meant to do, or how I’m supposed to know which clothes belong to which fae.

  Nicole pushes out a frustrated sound, like a hoarse cry. Then she marches past me to the rope-line. I shadow her up to the clothes.

  “Look.” She grabs a familiar leather vest that I recognise all too well. Caspan’s. Beside it hangs his vest armour. “We hung everything in order of the tents. This is the General’s. Then work your way down section by section, tent by tent.”

  I get the gist of it. But still, I slide a glower to Nicole and ask, “Doesn’t it tire you out?”

  “What?”

  “Being such a raging bitch all the time.”

  She shoots me a glare before she storms back to the fire pit. I don’t offer any apology. Instead, I smile to myself and start to remove the pegs from the line. So much for trying to convince her to swap roles with me.

  Maybe another day, when we’re a little sweeter with each other. I might have to loot some tampons to tempt her with before I ask for a trade.

  It’s lonely work, I decide, when I’m finished sorting the clothes into organised piles. They fill four baskets that are stacked at my feet. But before I can lift them onto my hip, Adrianna shouts us over from across the fire pits.

  Nicole and I join her for a short meal. The bowls are only mid-way filled with dry cereal, but it’s enough to satiate our tummies. Food i
sn’t something I turn my nose up at. I’ve gone too long before without food, so long that hunger always seemed to be a constant companion in my stomach, and that bile-burn was forever stuck at the back of my throat.

  Adrianna sets her empty bowl down at her feet. “You know what I miss?” she says. “Beer. Cold beer, straight from the tap. Pub beer.”

  Nicole just looks darkly at her with a face like glass.

  I force a small smile. “I’m more of wine lover.”

  “What kind?”

  “Any that tastes like fruit and gets me messy,” I say.

  “But what do you miss?”

  My art. My sketchbook, coloured charcoals, the rich flavour of that perfect hangover coffee in the morning. I just shrug and throw her a smile.

  Her smile mirrors mine. “Come on, you’ve got to miss something. Not just ‘oh I wouldn’t mind that’, but a yearning in your soul.” She hits her palm to her chest to punch her point.

  I choke back a laugh. “Fine. It’s silly though.”

  “So is beer. But we miss what we miss.”

  “Yogurt.” My answer is firm. “Not the taste of it—the fun of it. I like the watery film that sits on top of it, and you have to stir it to get this really nice, smooth texture. That’s what I miss.”

  “You’re right.” Adrianna nods. “That’s silly.”

  I elbow her in the side, but she just laughs.

  “You know,” starts Nicole. “You both make me want to bash my head in with a hammer.”

  Adrianna turns a wicked grin on her. “If I find the hammer, you promise you’ll go through with it?”

  Nicole just sneers.

  We fall silent as the noise from the dark fae side of camp starts to rise up into the air. It’s jovial, which spurs a curdling feeling of danger deep in my gut.

  As I pick at my cereal, I watch movement rustle over them, one by one. Some of the fae start to dance as music picks up from the strange black instruments. I notice bottles with leather-grips being passed around all over their camp. Wine, I suspect. Or some sort of alcohol.