The faerie’s thick brows crinkled. “That you care when the woman clearly cared nothing for you makes you awfully stupid.” There was a pause as he eyed my hands, then carefully, my face. “Your name.”
Most had left the field for town, leaving only a few stragglers awaiting entry into the tent. I turned in a circle, wondering what to do, where to go, what came next...
Home. I had to return to the apartment that had never been mine. Tomorrow, I would try to figure out what might happen next. Tomorrow, I would try to accept that nothing might ever change. That I’d still be stuck—
A throat cleared. I’d forgotten I had company.
The cloak-wearing murderer snapped, “Name.”
I startled, flinching as I spun back and had my first proper look at the male awaiting an answer from me. “Flea,” I croaked.
The giant with golden eyes tilted his head, watching me shift on my feet as my cheeks flamed. Of course, there was no need to repeat myself and say it clearer. He’d heard me just fine.
Those catlike eyes crept down my body. Not in a lewd way, yet I still grew hotter—more uncomfortable—by the moment. “Flea?”
“Yes,” I rasped.
“You’re lying.” He set loose an impatient breath and cursed quietly. “I’ll give you one more chance to tell me your true name.”
“I don’t have one.” My shaking hands grasped my brown skirts, clutching them tight. Perhaps I’d hit him again otherwise. Perhaps I’d seize the throat of his high collar and howl at him for changing and ruining everything within one measly second.
Perhaps I’d even thank him.
A death sentence, any and all of it, I was sure.
But as he lifted his hair-dusted chin, his gaze meeting mine down the bridge of his slightly crooked and slightly too long nose, I found myself asking this cruel stranger, “What am I to do now?”
He blinked, as if he were just as taken aback by the question as I was.
Then he scowled.
After a moment of unbending silence, he turned so swiftly for the tent, the breeze kicked up with the swish of his night-absorbing cloak.
And I was left more alone than ever before.
Freedom.
For so long, I’d imagined what that might look like.
Not once had I imagined merely a larger cage. Not once had I guessed that the freedom to live a life of my own would actually leave me with little choice at all.
I’d never worked. Not for coin. I’d cooked, cleaned, washed, shopped, and dreamed of a world beyond the warded borders of Crustle and the recesses of my imagination.
The rare escape I’d found hid amongst the pages of books. Whenever Rolina was out, I would study pictures and read or sneak downstairs to the library to exchange books for more.
In the stairwell of our apartment building was a wooden door barely big enough for a grown creature to squeeze through. I’d discovered it one night when I’d been too young and afraid to leave the building.
After sitting upon the landing for countless minutes, I’d failed to find the courage to venture down the last curl of steps and outside.
Hesitant to climb back upstairs to the woman with a temper I’d been desperate to escape, I’d wandered over to look closer at the door. The wood was worn, hinges rusted and flaking. Yet the padlock gleamed like that of true gold with intricate engravings of birds and leaves.
With one touch of my curious fingers, the metal hadn’t just moved—it had unlatched.
The goblin who’d greeted me inside with such fright he’d nearly dropped his teacup had mercifully never had the padlock replaced. And though I shouldn’t have been permitted to borrow anything at such a young age, Gane had never sent me away.
My only companions, a lifeline and a bridge to adulthood, I’d handed myself over entirely to fiction and the tales and lore of other realms.
It was possibly the one and only thing I would eternally remain grateful to Rolina for—that she’d taught me my letters, the basics of reading, and numbers.
Of course, she had merely wished to make it seem as though she’d done whomever my faerie parents were a great service in caring for me so well. Not a year passed before she eventually grew tired of bothering with me at all. By the age of eight years, I could clean myself and parts of the apartment. I’d discovered the library during that year, and I’d learned enough to continue learning without her.
Books couldn’t save me now.
And after days spent cleaning the already pristine apartment and staring at Rolina’s extravagant belongings, I didn’t know what to do. There was nowhere else to go, and only one creature who might have cared.
Gane grew paler by the second as I finished informing him of all that had happened.
“That vile and foolish woman.” The goblin’s furry and crinkled arched ears twitched with discomfort as he glanced to the street-facing doors I’d never once used. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I know,” I said, sighing as I perched atop his tall desk, which sat giant and imposing in the middle of the narrow library. Due to his short stature, he had a set of wooden steps behind it, as well as a stool. I’d once asked him why he’d never sought a smaller desk for himself. He’d said that he’d rather people not look down upon him when requesting his assistance. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“You count yourself blessed by Mythayla to still draw breath, and that you can now do so without living under Rolina’s tyrannical rule.”
I snorted, though he was right. I was fortunate, I knew, but I was so many other conflicting things that I couldn’t seem to feel any one feeling for too long. “Is it bad?” I asked, hesitant. “That I do not grieve her.”
Gane scoffed. “You are too human for your own good. She was a monster of a woman.”
“But she gave me shelter.” I traced a fractal of light spearing through the aisles and over the worn desk from tall rectangular windows too grimy to see beyond. “Food, and some semblance of safety.”
“And you were required to slave after her in return until she could send you away. If you ask me, that woman was far more faerie than you and those she despised. Hypocrites always meet their matches in the end.”
Indeed, Rolina had.
Gane laid his quill down on his afternoon checklist and placed his gnarled hand over my fidgeting fingers. “You’re feeling bereft because you did not get what you want after hoping for all these years, and now you’re afraid you never will. But Flea...”
I studied his hairy fingers, and how my own far exceeded their stubby length, but I looked up at him when he said, “You have a chance to live a life of your own choosing now. You don’t need to cower nor answer to anyone. Nothing is stopping you from doing exactly as you wish. You do not need Folkyn.”
Nothing stopping me.
Those words rang through me, bittersweet. “I still need answers,” I said, and I’d told him as much hundreds of times before.
The goblin did as expected. Taking his hand from mine to remove his spectacles from his almond eyes, he shook his head as he cleaned them with his plaid shirt. “You only think you do, but that you were dumped in Rolina’s care says otherwise.”
Rolina had always loathed to be reminded that her daughter was likely dead. All these years, she’d refused to believe it. Her few friends in town and at her place of work—the Lair of Lust—had supposedly ceased trying to convince her to grieve and move on long ago.