CHAPTER 41

AUREN TURLEY

Despite Wick's threat, Brennur doesn't look affected whatsoever.

"You won't kill me," he replies evenly. "You think someone hasn't threatened that before? I know my worth. My magic is rare—very rare. I'm one of the only fae who can still control ring magic. I'm far too valuable."

His words echo in my ears and make my teeth snap together as if I could gnash him between them.

"Are you?" Wick challenges. "Because you still refuse to tell us where that fairy ring took the king."

Brennur looks between us. "I'll tell you. For a price."

"How about your life?" Wick growls.

He rolls his eyes. "As I said, you won't kill me. So it will take more than that."

Instantly, I open my palm and let chunks of gold fall onto the table, startling him. They land with metallic clinks, each and every one tracked by his seedy eyes.

"Alright, what's your price?" I question lightly. "Gold? Enough wealth that you can become a king in your own right? Enough riches to own all of Annwyn?" I clasp my hand around one of the larger gold nuggets and hold it out to him.

He reaches forward and takes it from my grasp, turning it around in the lantern light, and eyeing every black vein. I let more gold nuggets form, some tipping off the table and falling onto the ground. Then I push the pile toward him like he's just won the winning hand in a card game.

"There," I say as his greedy eyes take it in. "Now, where did your fairy ring take the king?"

Brennur strokes his beard as he regards me for a long, silent moment. He's not going to answer. He knows gold does him no good if he's stuck in this room. But that's fine.

I have other questions for him.

I glance down at the wrinkled leather vest he's wearing. Open at the front, a muddy brown color.

"Do you tan your own leather?"

Brennur frowns in confusion at my change in subject. "What?"

I jerk my chin. "Your vest. You were wearing one before too. I'm just wondering if you tan your leather yourself."

"Yes, I tan my own leather," he answers with a scoffed impatience. "What of it?"

My fingers twist around a nugget of gold as I spin it on the table. "You use oak bark, is that right?"

The question is simple. My intent behind it is not.

And even though I keep my face expressionless, my tone easy, I'm coiled so tight I could spring at any moment because I recall what happened when he took me through the fairy ring, just before Una stole my memories.

I remember… remembering.

Brennur hasn't caught onto the rage that's simmering beneath my skin, because he looks impatiently to Wick. "What is this about?"

I lean forward slowly, and I can feel the flame from the lantern casting off against my face as I draw his gaze back to me. "It's the scent. The taste," I say, my tone gone dark. "It leaves an impression when someone shoves a piece of polishing cloth into your mouth to shut you up as you're being kidnapped. That oak bark was very distinct, and you still reek of it ."

His eyes widen. Only a fraction, only for a second.

But it's enough.

"It was you." My voice is low. Even.

Full of terrible rage.

"You were the one to kidnap me from Bryol and take me into Orea. It didn't matter that the bridge of Lemuria had been destroyed for hundreds of years. Because you…you can make a fairy ring capable of transporting between realms ."

His face stays absolutely still, but I hear it. The quickening of his heartbeat. Behind him, Slade seems to swell with chilling fury.

"Tell me. Whose side were you on when you took me?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he spits.

I ignore him as my head cocks in thought. "That's what I can't quite work out. Why take me to Orea? If you were working for the king, then surely he would've wanted me either as his prisoner or executed with my parents. But if you were working with the rebels…you could've given me to them. I must've been far more valuable in Annwyn. So why Orea? Who were you working for?"

Silence spreads, but this time, the balance has tipped.

Slade takes a step forward.

Just one step. A colossal threat.

" Answer her ," he says, his voice cold and terrifying.

From the edge of my vision, his spikes seem to lengthen. Anger pushes through him, filling the room and making it snap against my skin as his gaze stays locked onto the back of Brennur's head.

Brennur stiffens, but he shakes his head. "You should be thanking me."

" Thanking you?" I say incredulously. "For kidnapping me and taking me to Orea?"

"Yes," he snarls. "The king wanted the entire family wiped out. You would've been captured and killed right alongside your parents if I hadn't done what I did. I practically saved you."

" Practically saved me ?" I lash out, studying the red tinge of his suddenly skittish gaze. "I think we both know that if you had any good intentions rooted in what you did, you'd have taken me to the Vulmin. But you didn't, did you?"

He stays silent.

"The other children with me that night. What happened to them?"

He looks at me blankly, but there's an undercurrent of apprehension. His thin lips flatten even more as he presses them together, silently showing that he has no intention of answering me.

Magic tingles at my fingertips, demanding to be let out, and I give in. Power grips me, and all the gold piled up on the table in front of him liquifies in an instant.

Before he can even jolt back, the molten metal encapsulates his hands and arms, pinning his limbs to the table. It hardens over them like a shell, trapping them in place.

He struggles, and I watch his face grow blotchy, teeth gritted as he tries to get out from within its grip.

"Uncomfortable, isn't it?" I ask. "To be helpless. At the mercy of someone else who wishes you harm."

"You can't kill me!" he screeches in panic.

My brows lift. "Who said anything about killing? I'm not killing you, Brennur. I'm not even injuring you. But for every lie you tell or every question you choose to ignore, more of that gold will spread. If you refuse to tell me everything I want to know, you'll be stuck inside a gilded statue. Alive. Breathing. Unable to move."

Fury and fear seem to war within him, making his jaw jump, his arms straining.

"But…" I go on. "For every truth, I'll drag the gold away. Simple as that." I glance up at Slade. "Humane, even."

"Very," he agrees with dark menace. "I would've just started rotting him alive."

"See?" I say, turning back to Brennur. " Much more humane. Now, let's get back to it. What happened to the other children that night?"

When he doesn't answer immediately, more gold ripples and pours up his arms. It hardens past his elbows, reaching up to his shoulders. "Wait!" he cries as his body jerks awkwardly, half sitting on the chair, half yanked from it. "You think the soldiers who get sent in for a mission like Bryol have the best character?" he shouts. "The ones sent were chosen because they're the most vicious during a raid, and they don't do so out of duty. They enjoy it. Pillaging, killing, kidnapping…they know how to get more coin from it. Raids are lucrative if you're brutal enough."

I pull back a few inches of gold. "Keep going."

Panting, he tries to catch his anxious breath, though I can see he's slightly relieved that I've stayed true to my word. "They offered me half if I helped smuggle a group of kids out. They were going to sell them to someone up the coast. I don't know who. But then we realized we had you ."

My stomach twists.

"Couldn't risk selling you. You're too recognizable. Anyone in Annwyn could figure out who you were."

"And the king?"

"Wanted you dead, of course," he answers. "The whole family."

I drag away the magic another inch, even as I start to shake with mounting rage.

"That would have been a problem for you and your group," I muse as the pieces come together. "And selling the rest of the children wasn't enough. You still wanted to make coin off me, but you knew you couldn't do it in Annwyn."

He nods. "I had contacts in Orea."

My gaze hardens. "Of course you did."

His lips stiffen before he lets out a cough, hacking at a scrape in his throat. "I had to make a living. Once the bridge was destroyed, smuggling things in using the fairy ring brought in a lot of coin. Buyers in Orea would pay well for fae goods, and vice versa."

Fury fires my heated words. "Not just goods. People. Children ."

But he shakes his head. "No, I hadn't ever dealt with flesh traders before or after you," he says, as if that absolves him of his guilt. "You were the only one I ever took to Orea."

"How magnanimous," I say flatly.

"Connecting a ring within Annwyn is one thing. Connecting it to an entirely different realm takes far more power. That magic left me crippled for days. I used it sparingly." He tips his head to gesture at his arms, and I grudgingly pull away more gold. It's below his elbows now, but his released skin is discolored from where the metal pinched.

"I saved your life," he repeats again. "Once the soldiers realized they weren't going to be able to get anything for you, they were ready to just kill you like the king wanted. So I told them I'd end you. They took off with the other kids, and I made a ring and smuggled you into Orea instead."

My voice seethes. "You didn't take me there to save me. You took me there to sell me."

"Better sold than dead."

I laugh coldly, thinking of my childhood in Derfort Harbor. Thinking of what I endured. For him to say that, with his tone so horribly benign, makes me want him to suffer.

Behind him, Slade ripples with rage.

"So you sold me to Orean flesh traders," I say evenly. "Then what?"

"The king was quietly informed that you and your family were dead just like he wanted," he says with a shrug. "So when it was rumored that you'd returned…he was looking to point fingers."

The gold slips down to the middle of his forearms.

"But that finger didn't land on you?"

"Of course not," Brennur replies, actually having the audacity to look offended. "I made sure nothing could come back on me."

Every single one of his confessions makes impact. His words rupture me from within, sending shards flying, dust spraying.

Kidnapped for coin. I was taken away from everything I knew. Ripped from safety. Abused, used, destroyed. All for coin .

How cheap it makes me feel. How utterly devastating that someone decided what my life was worth.

Beside me, Wick looks distraught.

Slade looks murderous .

Keeping my composure, I give a sharp nod and then pull away my gold until it's only capturing his hands, still fusing them to the wooden table. "What part of Annwyn did your fairy ring bring the king and Emonie?"

He chews on his answer for a moment, but then he decides to finally answer. "Near the bridge."

I can feel Wick tense, but I lean in. "Near the bridge—but which side ?" Brennur's eyes flash, and I hum in affirmation. "That's why you're so valuable to the king, isn't it? Because he knows now that you can open a ring in Orea. You've been using your magic to transport him directly there so that he could figure out a way to rebuild the bridge and invade."

He tips his head, arrogance bleeding into his expression. "Like I said, far too valuable to kill."

"How did they manage to fix the bridge?"

"I don't know."

I arch a brow.

"Truly, I don't," he says with frustration and a sneer. "I've told you everything. Take away your shiny little threat now. I've done my part."

Slade audibly growls, but I give him the tiniest shake of my head, and the sound cuts off.

With a sweep of my hand, the rest of the gold puddles, slithering back toward me and drifting up my arms where it hardens like spiraling arm bands.

"Now." Brennur coughs again before he straightens up and smooths down his vest. "You will release me, we will negotiate a price, and only then will I take you to the spot where I transported the king and that female impersonator. We're done here."

Nodding, I slide my chair back and get to my feet. "We are done."

Brennur starts to get up too, only to realize he can't.

Body stiffening, he looks down. The golden nuggets that had fallen to the floor are gone. His gaze shoots back up to me when he realizes, but it's too late. They've already melted down and fused to the bottom of his shoes, though there isn't a single blackened vein to be seen.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asks, trying and failing again to move his feet.

"Oh, that? That gold melted down right around the time you told us how you'd decided to help flesh traders sell children."

He looks around the room with confusion, like he's trying to figure out what's going on. His demeanor grows more agitated, and he starts to cough again, but this time he can't quite get it cleared.

"That'll be the rot soaking into your throat," I tell him calmly, and he blanches at me.

" What ?" he shouts, eyes bugging out, the blood draining from his face. "You can't!" His voice has gone raspy and jagged, barely able to chafe out.

"Hmm, seems I can."

Forgetting he can't move, he tries to lunge for me, but Slade is a step ahead of him. All it takes is one hand slamming down onto his shoulder, and he holds Brennur in place in his chair.

Slade's eyes don't even drop down to him. They stay on me. Ready to support me in whatever way I choose for this to play out.

"Unfortunately for you, Brennur, you've made a very large error."

He glares at me as I sense the rot settling into his lungs, tainting his labored breaths. It becomes harder for him to draw his inhales. His heart slugs out poison through the rest of his veins, making him shake violently as he has another coughing fit.

"You thought you were worth more to me alive than you are dead," I say as the rot in his throat thickens, decaying the windpipe with his next scraping inhale. "You're not ."

His body jerks and he collapses against the table, wheezing with a failing ability to breathe as the rot attacks his every organ, focusing on his heart.

He doesn't need it. He certainly never showed he had one.

I pass him on my way to the door and tip my hand, letting a gold coin land right in front of his mottled face. "Your payment."

Then I walk away, leaving him to rot.

Because that is exactly what he did to me.