Chapter 4 Never Bargain with the Fair Folk

Cian

Pain. Then warmth. Earth and sunshine. I blink. Not a hallucination. Real. So real. So sweet, so soft, so fragile. So mine. Mine. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. How is this happening? How, in this place, with all this torture and death, after all these years, have I brought her here to me? My mind cannot seem to hold anything beyond that. My soulmate is human… And I cannot protect her here. The thought slices through the haze. I am useless to her. A failure not only to my court and my people, but also to her. My mate. My female. Brought into this hell by my own hand and hung before me while I stand here in chains with nothing to offer her but ruin.

Eiran says something to her. Then Saoirse. I hear her answer them, and the sound of her voice nearly undoes me. It is so soft, warm, and bright in a place that has known only iron and pain for too long. What can I say to her? What can I possibly offer? Look at me. A chained animal. A broken prince. A disgrace. Then my tiny human shocks me to my core.

She offers me food. My eyes lift to hers, searching them, needing to know if she truly means it. If she understands what she is offering. A better male would ask. A better male would warn her. I am not a better male. In this moment, I am entirely selfish. I want what she is giving. I need it. Slowly, I nod. Wanting her offering and taking it without the proper words to beg for it.

Her delicate fingers lift toward my mouth, careful and a little uncertain, and I move as much as the chains allow to receive it. The berry passes between my parted lips and bursts against my tongue. The taste hardly matters. It is the sensation that tears through me. When a female offers her male food, it means something. It is the acceptance of our bond. A promise. Whether she knows it or not, whether she understands the weight of what she has placed in my mouth or not, I feel it all the same. And I take it. I take the offering. I take her sweetness. I take the bond she does not know she has given me. Mine. The berry bursts sweet across my tongue, and for one suspended heartbeat, the cell falls away. All I see is her wide blue eyes fixed on me like she cannot decide whether I am something to fear or pity. Mine.

She pulls her hand back slowly, basket still clutched in the other, and clears her throat. “So… uh… I’m not supposed to be here.” Her gaze flicks around the cells. “This was all a bit of a mistake, actually. I thought my Nanna was superstitious and a little bonkers, and then I just sort of casually strolled into a fairy ring and...” She laughs weakly. “Well. Here we are.” Fairy ring. So that is the threshold that answered. “Anyway. Is there some sort of hoodoo voodoo situation where one of you can just… send me back?” Back. Home. No. No, she cannot go back. Not yet. Not away from me. Not while Bright Thorn breathes and my people rot behind bars and the roads lie silent beneath stolen stone. She is mine. And if I must use every last lawful inch of fae truth to keep her, I will.

“The roads only answer to my kind,” I say, voice rough from thirst and pain. It feels like I am tearing the words up through blood. Her eyes snap back to mine, and I drag in a breath. “You cannot return by yourself. A crossing opened for you, but it will not open again on mortal wishing alone.”

She blinks. “That is… deeply unhelpful.”

“It is truth,” Saoirse says softly from the dark. Her gaze shifts toward the sound, then back to me. “Okay. Cool. Great. Hate that.” She swallows. “So how do I get home?” Mine. I taste the word behind my teeth and bite down on it. Careful now. Careful. Only truth… but I can bend it. “My people can call the roads,” I say. “We can open them, but not from these cells.”

Her brows pull together. “Right. And this is where someone tries to get me to make a deal, isn’t it?” Smart little thing. “Nanna said never strike a bargain with the fair folk,” she mutters, almost to herself. I see a laugh nearly escapes Eiran’s throat across the corridor, but he wisely keeps it there.

I keep my eyes on her. “Wise advice.”

The room is starting to tilt again. Pain drags at the edges of my vision. I do not have time for gentleness, and I do not have the luxury of honesty in all things. I have only what I can make of the truth.

“I will take you home,” I tell her. The words are true. They are simply not true in the way she thinks.

Her gaze narrows. “If I help you escape, right?”

“Yes.” She studies me with suspicion and fear, moving one after the other through that bright face. “It’s true, then? You can’t lie?”

“No,” I say, and feel the trap close around us both. “We cannot lie.” We simply do not always say what humans think they hear. She chews the inside of her cheek. Thinking. Weighing. Brave enough to do both in front of chained predators. I want her out of here. I want her closer. I want too much.

“In about an hour, they will come for me. They will take me down from these chains and move me away from the ward-stone. That is when you begin.” I say, forcing the plan out before my body can fail me again.

Her eyes widen. “Begin how?”

“You will cower,” I say. “You will tremble. You will tell them you are frightened of us. That you stumbled through a crossing and found monsters in the dark.” I hear a faint huff of amusement from Saoirse.

My human looks unsettled. “I don’t know if I can stage a prison break. I’ve seen the movies; they’re terribly long and very complicated.”

“You simply need to act as though Bright Thorn, the people who have locked us here, are your saviours. Befriend them. Let them think you are small, harmless, and grateful. Learn where they keep the keys. Open these cells. Help us reach the roads.”

“And then?” she asks quietly.

I hold her gaze.

“Then I take you home.”

She bites her lip, hoping from one foot to another. Thinking, thinking, thinking. She looks around the cell again, for another way out, where there is none. “Fuck.” She swears. “Okay, I’ll do it.” Mine. I hold her gaze. “So we have a deal?”

Her free hand tangles in her hair. She blows out a breath. “Yes. We have a deal.”

A slow smirk pulls at my mouth. “Then we must shake on it.”