A battle against my town, that information had also been confirmed more than a few times. Some voices came disgruntled, not understanding why they had been commanded to overtake by the ocean when they thought moving through the mountains and then closing in the terrain would have been a much more strategic move, while others were faithful to the power of Grannicus and trusted whatever he commanded.
The late afternoon came with a twist in my stomach at the discovery that Grannicus and Dahr were one and the same and the realisation that I had been lied to.
The man whose tent I was sharing was the leader of the camp.
He had command over every single soul in here, yet he had looked me in the eye and told me he had nothing to do with my kidnapping and had no power to return me.
When he hadall the power!
By dinner time, I was boiling inside, sick of all the flattery and odes to Grannicus, how everyone respected the mighty ‘flame lord’ and how they would follow him blindly after the displays of power he kept showing.
Yet, he had the nerve to lie to my face, when I had been nothing but polite to him and tried to have a reasonable conversation. I had not shouted, screamed or kicked and tried to keep myself rational throughout the entire situation.
I had been collaborative; I had been friendly, and I had tried to hold meaningful conversations with everyone that acknowledged my presence.
Only to be treated like an inferior being whose judgement they must have believed so lacking, that I wouldn’t be able to piece together their lies.
Like I was some sort of idiotic damsel they believed too scared to use her brain and make up her own logical connections concerning her situation.
No longer.
If this Dahr wanted me to be his enemy, then that I would become.
The resentment I started growing for this man expanded throughout the night, to the point where it replaced my rest. I started vividly imagining him in pain, suffering the way I had heard he made others suffer in return.
Dahr was the man controlling this camp, the one ordering the movements and the one who made the decision to attack my town.
I knew we were at war, we all did, but there was never news of a faerie camp nearby, never an impression that our small lives and unconcerned livelihoods were ever at risk. After all, we formed part of a chain of towns along the coast, did not hold any higher power or great riches, so the planned attack on our territory made absolutely no sense to me.
The master manipulator returned late in the evening, when the blanket of night had already settled over the tent and walked with heavy steps, filling the entire space with the stench of blood.
Feeling my heart pounding and nursing that small sprout of hatred that kept growing inside my chest, I leaned over to theside of the bed and faked being asleep. I did not want to be partial to yet another conversation where I strived for politeness and understanding and he behaved as though he had no power at all, treating me like a child.
I had learnt my lesson.
So, I stretched on the bed and forced my body into stillness, while taking the opportunity to calm my senses and listen for his movements.
I was initially afraid that he would light a lamp to help him find his footing, but he must have known his way around the tent, because his movements were so natural that I had no doubt in my mind he could have performed them in a state of blindness.
He walked over to the side of the table, where a basin filled with water waited for him and splashed around for a few minutes, until the stench of what I assumed were other people’s blood released its claws from the air.
A groan of his mattress announced his arrival into the bed less than a minute later.
No other sound came for the rest of the night.
The lack of a blanket didn’t become noticeable until the early morning, when storm clouds gathered over the camp andstarted shivering their fury on top of us. It must have been early, because the man was still resting comfortably in his massive wooden bed, covered in furs and blankets. I assumed he wasn’t facing the issues I currently was and didn’t have to wrestle the drips in his sleep.
Over the side of the tent that was kept in place by the metal bars I found myself unwillingly attached to, was a joining of fabrics, sewn together to stretch the material and pull it over the arching bars. Unfortunately, at least a few of those stitches either gave out or were about to, because the entire section below started to flood with the cold tears of the rain.
Pouring down in the exact section my attached bar was, thus soaking not only me, but my bedding, the rest of the food I had kept from dinner and the makeshift toilet area.
The life of a prisoner…
By the time morning activities started, I was soaked and shivering in a wet bed that I had been too weak to push away from the destruction of the rain. My skin turned gooseflesh from the cold and deep shivers twisted my spine and shoulders in a futile attempt to shake away the chills reaping through my muscles.
I started to feel my blood going numb inside my veins and refusing to flow into my cells, which was exactly what I needed to make me feel even more rage concerning my situation.
Maybe that was for the best. Maybe the moment I had been advised to wait for was arriving sooner than expected and this was the day when I would find my end.
