What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(55)

The body of the Fae female was humanoid. A dark sweep of feathered wings covered the back of the blood-red jumpsuit she wore. Her hair was parted down the middle, flowing in silver cascades along the feathers of those great wings as she scrubbed. She spun as if she felt me staring, and her silver eyes glinted maliciously as they landed on me.

I swallowed, staggering forward when Malachi placed a single hand on my shoulder and shoved me forward. “Get to work.”

Nila took my hand, guiding me into the fray, while Malachi lurked by the doors, watching as we moved toward Fallon and Imelda. They were already working to remove Adelphia from the cage that held her remains. Her charred flesh stuck to the metal frame, melted to the ore as if she’d been set on fire right where she hung.

They looked up as I bent forward, leaning into the confines of the cage so that I could pull each strand of hair that remained out of the blood matted to the metal while they worked.

“She decided you needed to be useful in some way too, I suppose?” Fallon asked, breathing through her mouth as she pressed a hand against Adelphia’s charred shoulder and shoved. The burnt flesh crackled, and then it tore from the rest of Adelphia’s body in a strip. Fallon gagged.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, glancing toward Nila, who nodded as she and Imelda worked on the other side of the cage.

Glancing around the throne room as I worked, I shoved aside the stench of rot and decay as I grasped one of the rags from a bucket of water.

Or rather, what had been water at one point. Dark, inky swirls of blood and gore floated within it now, the clarity and pureness of the water itself long gone in the time the Fae here had been at work cleaning.

I started at the top of the greasy cage, trying not to think of the burned fat and flesh and blood that made the surface rough and uneven. The rag was too soft. I pressed into the cage with all the strength in my body, and the metal groaned as it bent, then gave way beneath me.

A gnome appeared at my side, a spiked, bristled brush in his hands. It was almost as large as he was, the spikes as sharp as any weapon the Mist Guard possessed in their armory. He lifted it up for me.

Accepting it from his hands, I smiled down at him and tried not to think of Lozu and his desire to eat me.

I nodded instead of thanking him as I knelt in front of him.

The blood and gore upon the stone stained the chartreuse skirt Nila had dressed me in. The skirt reminded me vaguely of the pea-green dress I’d worn when I’d escaped Mistfell. It seemed so long ago, like I’d been an entirely different person then.

“It is a pleasure, Princess. We watched you,” he said, looking over his shoulder as two other gnomes stepped up behind him. Lozu lingered behind them, his spirit as corporeal as a body despite its translucence as he stared at me beneath the sweep of his hat across his forehead. “You did not object when you were given work beneath your status. You stepped into the fray like you belong.”

I smiled softly as he approached my knee, hauling himself up onto it so that he could come to stand in my palm. “Only a ruler who does not deserve her people would think that she is better than them.” I stood, allowing him to come to stand upon the cage.

He picked up the rag I’d been using, wiping down the surface with water so that I could follow the path he created and scrub at it with the harsh brush. Bits of burnt flesh scraped from the cage, some dropping to the floor, others flying into my face as I closed my mouth and focused on my work. A gag swelled in my throat, making my tongue feel heavy in my mouth as I fought it back. I would not appear weak—would not seem disgusted by the manner of this work—not when so many in this room had undoubtedly been forced to do worse.

“You must have very different rulers in Nothrek than we have here,” he said.

I considered how well he spoke. Lozu’s language had been stilted at times, his use of it less advanced. As if summoned, the shade of my dungeon companion stepped into the cage with Adelphia’s body. He set to work, picking up the pieces of her that were large enough chunks to be carried out and laying them atop her torso.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, scrubbing each and every one of the bars where they met at the top of the cage. I didn’t want to think of how thick the debris would become when I moved lower, of what might shift or change when we hauled Adelphia’s body out.

Of the gore that would cover the cage beneath her.

“You have a very different perception of a ruler than we do,” he admitted, leaning forward to run his tongue up one of the uncleaned bars. His tongue peeked out from behind those sharp, menacing teeth, dragging over the metal slowly as he breathed deep. When he pulled it away, it was filled with tiny chunks of burnt flesh, the red somehow deeper in hue from the tint of blood.

I ignored it, barely disguising my shudder. “The man who ruled me had me beaten if I did not curtsy deep enough. So, no; I think the humans and the Fae have far more in common than the Queen or my Lord would have wanted us to believe,” I said with a scoff, turning to look at Fallon and Imelda as they reached into the cage. They grasped Adelphia by what remained of her legs, pulling her out slowly as pieces of flesh sloughed off. “Cruelty is not solely a Fae trait nor a human trait. It lives in all of us.”

“Even you?” the gnome asked, forcing me to level him with a meaningful stare for a moment before I abandoned my brush and moved to help my friends.

“Especially me,” I said, glancing toward where Malachi had abandoned his post at the entrance to the throne room. He held a short whip in his hand, cracking it against the floor when creatures did not clean fast enough or work hard enough for his liking.