Chapter 6 - Ninth Night

that is

A Short Tale of an Old Experience, Another Tale From Dylan's Childhood, a War of Words, a Meeting of Memories, and an Offering of Peace

.

.

Seven nights later, Nuada fell asleep watching the even rise and fall of Dylan's chest as she breathed. Her eyes were closed, but he wasn't certain she was sleeping. Except when lulled by the magic in the bathing chamber, the Elf prince had not seen the mortal sleep at all until now. Nearly nine days without any true rest... But then, who could sleep, after what she had been through? Men had ripped away her innocence, attacked her, beaten her, raped her, nearly killed her. Now she was in a strange place; perhaps even, to her, a lonely place. In a strange bed, alone with a strange male she had never met, who spoke of killing her as if it were nothing, yet who needed her care.

Ugh, the very thought of him needing her left a bitter taste in Nuada's mouth. This mortal, who dared to defy him, who dared to force oaths from him, now lay curled upon the lone bed in his sanctuary, huddled beneath the golden quilt his mother had made for him before her death. Part of him wanted to hate her. The rest of him merely wanted the complication of her gone from his life.

The Elf prince had never known a human like Dylan. Instead of being uncaring, lazy, and hateful, she was seemingly compassionate, industrious, and careful. She had spent the majority of the time not required for stitching his wounds in such domestic tasks as sewing up the tears and holes in his clothing. His boot, the one that had received the slice from the human wolf's blade, had also been carefully sewn closed, with stitches so small and neat the prince felt almost as if he were looking at a noblelady's embroidery instead of a mended piece of leather. The mortal had taken the time to wash his soiled and bloodstained clothes while he slept off the blood-loss-induced exhaustion. He'd awoken to find them laid out across the chairs and trunks to dry. Using the flat lid of a rectangular trunk, the human had set up a little first-aid station, with scissors, thread, salve, bandages, and other items laid out neatly for easy access. The bloodstains had been cleaned from the mat and the stone floor. Finally, the fireplace had been swept clean and washed, the stones no longer soot-black but pale white, the grate now gleaming silver.

The sylph from the bathing chamber informed the prince that the strange mortal woman had quietly and politely requested the means to clean up the mess she had made in the prince's sanctuary. Though lacking the intriguing rhymes the little elementals preferred, the human was so nice and so polite that they had decided to see what she would do with the things she'd asked for. Sure enough, this human had cleaned up the bathing room and the main chamber.

The human, the sylph tinkled at Nuada. Her voice chimed like bells. Only someone well versed in the languages of the fae would have been able to understand her. She weep much, long time. Try not to, but can't help. Her pain, very bad. Cleaning help. She smile then. Sometimes sing.

"Indeed?"

Yes. Pretty. Like child. But soft.

Dylan sang. Interesting. He must have been far more exhausted than he'd imagined, if the sound of it hadn't woken him. And what humans sang nowadays? True, the wretched mortals had something they claimed to be music, but anything with functioning ears knew it for what it truly was – human garbage. For the sylph to say Dylan sang... well, what did she sing? What music could the human possibly know that would justify the little fairy's compliment?

And to say she sang like a child... children did not sing well. So what did that mean?

Nuada watched the human curl up tighter on the bed, shivering. If she had been anything other than what she was (and had he been anything but what and who he was), he supposed he might have fetched another blanket for her. If she had been one of his people, and not a mortal, he was certain he would have.

The Elf did not move. He merely watched the human woman, and pondered her.

This strange human was young, perhaps thirty - Nuada was no connoisseur of mortal ages, but she could not be much older than thirty-five; an infant compared to the prince, who had lived for over four millennia. This young mortal, one of the wretched progeny of Adam, should have betrayed her bad blood in some way by this time. Running away, perhaps, or attacking him. Stealing one of his weapons, maybe, to pawn for paltry coin. Even simply indulging in slothfulness.

But no. Dylan remained in the sanctuary, seeking only to aid him in any way. She completely defied every concept he had formulated over the years about her kind. He watched her, and waited, wary of some sort of trick. Part of him wondered still when she would betray him. And yet... and yet.

Frustrated with the turn his thoughts had taken – to consider this mortal less than a threat was ludicrous! He was beginning to sound as mad as she! As beguiled as his father and sister had become by the promises of men – he swiftly drew his mind to a different track, something trivial and inconsequential.

What sort of name for a woman was Dylan? Something more feminine was more suitable. And that ridiculous other name – Roberta. A human name, and decidedly British sounding. Sahara – that barren, desert waste. That did not fit the mortal, either. Nor did Niamh, though it was a good name. None of those names fit the human who had inexplicably saved his life.

The prince thought of the ladies of Bethmoora's court and other courts that he knew or remembered; allowed their names to fit through his mind. Ailís, Jocasta, Sorcha, Líle, Boann, Iselle, Eilonwy, Pádraigín, Gráinne, Iúile, Siobhan, Liadan, Maev. Yes, even Niamh... and Nuala. His precious, beloved Nuala. Her name fit her like a silk glove, but the human's...

Dylan-Roberta Sahara Niamh Myers. No, it didn't fit the provoking, enraging, impossible human woman.

Nuada did not mean to, but the exhausted Elf fell asleep in his chair as he thought of how foolish humans were in the naming of their children. He fell asleep listening to Dylan breathe, a soft sigh like the wind in the trees, the only other sound in the chamber besides the crackling fire and his own pulse. It had been a long time since he'd had that experience. Not since the last night of his last visit to Bethmoora, to Findias, listening to the shushing lullaby of his sister's breathing.

As he drifted off into slumber, his perception shifted, driven by his slowing thoughts, and Nuada was almost sure he could feel the rise and fall of Nuala's breast as she breathed, far away in Bethmoora's new capital city.

.

The Elf prince awoke to the sound of sobbing.

Instantly awake and alert, he stretched out with his senses, trying to catch any signs of intruders in his sanctuary. How they might have entered without his knowledge, he knew not, but he did know that caution was often the better part of valor. When he heard nothing but quiet weeping, smelled nothing but the scents he had grown accustomed to in the nine days Dylan had resided in the sanctuary, the blond warrior allowed himself to open his eyes and slowly, carefully scan the room.

The fire that he had built up before falling asleep glowed red and sullen in the fireplace, only embers now. Even in the near-darkness, his keen eyes saw the empty bed where the mortal woman had recently slept. And silhouetted against the angry glow of the coals was a hunched figure, crying quietly, rocking slowly back and forth as if trying to comfort herself. Nuada thought briefly about telling her that he was awake, but decided against it. He didn't want to intrude on her pain, didn't want to deal with a mortal's tears.

And, a voice whispered in the back of the Elf's mind, cruel in its honesty, you do not want to see a frightened woman cringe from you, human or not, mighty warrior.

I care not if she behaves as a coward towards me. She is a human – what else can one expect?

Again, as before, the situation was taken out of his hands.

In a quiet lull between her sobs, the human's voice came out in a broken, wretched whisper. "I know you're awake. You don't have to pretend."

"I have no reason to pretend," Nuada said softly, voice like ice, and began to rise slowly to his feet, though pain lanced through his thigh and ankle. Anger lent him strength. Helped him to ignore the sharp slicing burn.

How dare she spurn his kindnesses? He had no reason to even let her live, and he had saved her, clothed her, fed her, given her a bed, given her sanctuary. Now this pathetic, weeping girl had the gall to spit his courtesies back in his face? How was it that every time he thought to do her a kindness, tried to forget the putrid human blood in her veins, she wrenched his memory back to the fact that she was as lowly as the filthiest mud, and never to be trusted?

Voice dripping frigid venom, he continued, "I thought only to spare you embarrassment, as you seemingly despise your own weakness. I see now that courtesy is wasted on humans, even one such as yourself. What are humans, after all, but hollow, greedy, lustful, vicious creatures? Slothful, cruel, and hateful? And with no thought for anyone but themselves? No heart. No soul. No feelings-"

Dylan looked at him then, her face stricken, and it was as if she had struck him. There was more than rage there. It was... nameless, a conglomeration of pain and grief and incredulous anger. She opened her mouth, and poison poured out, black and thick and choking.

"How dare you? How dare you! I have no feelings? You disgusting toad! You, O Prince of Elves, seem to have the feelings of an animal! How dare you talk to me about how humans are? Mortals are the enemies of your kind – that you've made super clear. I got it, you hate me, I heard you the first time! But don't you dare lump me in with those monsters who have, through their negligence and stupidity and plain uncaring, decimated your people, thrown them back into the shadows. Don't you dare! Don't even dare! You have no idea what I have suffered to defend your kind. What people I care about have suffered! How dare you speak to me like that? You pompous little pri-"

"Suffer? Suffer?"

He was suddenly on his feet, his face twisted with fury. A cold light glittered in his eyes, so at odds with the heat in his voice. Without even a thought, he reached for his twin-dagger, which lay in its sheath upon the table. The Elf drew the blade from the leather sheath, allowing the dim light to catch blood-red on the pain bright metal. He relished the shimmer of fear beneath the rage burning in that mortal gaze. Welcomed the thrill, the sudden lust for blood and battle, when the human shrank back a little.

"You wish to speak of suffering? You mortals, you are always so selfish! It is all about you! Everything is always centered around you! Well, I have some news for you, human! My people have suffered! Your kind broke the treaty with us! And because we know honor, because we know justice, because we refuse to break our vows, our oaths, your kind has forced us into the twilight of the world, to the very edge of darkness, when we are the ones whose task it is to protect and care for this world."

He took a step toward her, and noted with some surprise that she didn't back any further away from him. Her face, splotched with dark bruising, was flushed with anger where otherwise pale flesh would have been. That scarlet outrage and the tears glimmering in her eyes flooded his veins with an answering wrath. How dare she look him in the eye and try to garner his sympathy with her pathetic mortal tears?

"You wretched mortal! We suffer! We are locked away in the minds of mortals, fading away, dying, because of the disgusting, wretched humans!"

"You think I don't know that?" She yelled, struggling to rise to her feet. Old hurt was flaring up beneath her skin, making her body burn.

Later, she'd probably be horrified – not to mention retrospectively terrified of repercussions – of what she'd said and done. But right then, she was so achingly furious. All she could do was scream at him. Her throat burned with things long locked away. Fury and grief scorched her. Blood dripped from her hands where her nails sliced the skin. Images flashed behind her eyes, drowning her in pain. Blood, so much blood. Hurt and death. Betrayal, and darkness...

"I know the Fae are dying!" Dylan shrieked. Her own voice cut at the inside of her throat. "I've seen it! I've suffered for it!"

"Liar! Filthy human liar-"

"Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about! My parents had me locked up for eleven years, thinking I was insane, because I tried to keep your kind safe from humans! Humans like me!"

Tears were streaking down her cheeks now, burning in her cuts, but the tears were tinged with the taste of rage, not grief. She could grieve over her ancient, half-healed soul wounds later. Right now, her anger pulsed in her blood. Copper washed over her taste buds. Crimson flooded her vision. Dylan was drowning in memory, in blood, in midnight black hate. Looking into eyes like twin pools of scarlet-tinged molten bronze, predator eyes full of an answering hate, she let herself scream. For the first time in a very long time, she spat out all the poison in her memory. She smashed Nuada with it, tried to scald him with it, hurt him, hating him.

"Do you know what they used to do to children in mental institutions? Do you have any idea? I was seven years old! They electrocuted me!" Dylan screamed. Her skin itched with memory and her eyes blanked to phantasms –

– Pain
Heat pain burning her skin
White lights flashing in her eyes blinding blinding
Flash bulb photo pain
Only a second lasts forever
Sizzle sizzle burning flesh burning
Hurts hurts please can't move hurts
So much pain... –

The Elf warrior stared at the mortal woman in front of him. His eyes took in her white shift and green kirtle, the golden sash tied loosely around her waist. She looked like one of his people in those clothes. He saw her hands, white with pain and red with blood, and her eyes, her oh so mortal eyes, wet with grief, and flecked with gold. The bright red face, shadowed with darkness and bruises, flared like a beacon. Nuada stared at Dylan, and saw the world through a crimson haze. Her words struck him like blows. The betrayal in her voice and the hatred boiling in his blood were knife blades in his belly.

Nuada's eyes burned like fire, but Dylan did not back down.

"They beat me!" The mortal shouted. Her lips were wet with blood. A stream of red trickled unheeded down her chin from where she'd bitten her lip. Those words, like a hammer, smashed through to the blond warrior's memory –

– Pain
Fists that struck because he would not surrender
Could not Nuala could not had to save her
Kicking punching fighting
Mother! Mother!
Screaming blood tears blood
Nuala!
Cracking pain taste blood copper fear pain
Can't breathe can't see can't move
Mother screaming begging
"Not my children!"
Nuala... –

"They locked me away in the dark!" Dylan wailed, the fear surging forward into her voice again, twisting it until she was sobbing with the old terror. Shaking violently, she wrapped her arms around herself and bit the inside of her cheek. Fire flared, blue and wicked hot. Pain rocked her. She fell like a sleepy child into its arms, allowing it to sweep over her. It fed the fire, and anchored her as the storm swept through her mind –

– Alone
Darkness choking
Heart thumping alone alone dark fear
No time no space no sound
Timelessness and terror
Scratching at the walls
Worse when the straitjacket holds her prisoner
So dark
This empty room full of nightmares
Alone
Screaming
"Let me out! Let me out! I'm scared!"
Weeping but no one comes...
Alone! –

"They starved me!" The human wailed this at him. There was staggering pain in the words, swirling in the room. It scorched the air. Knifed through him like a blade of burning cold ice. And Nuada remembered, couldn't not remember –

- Days in a cell no bigger than a large box
Heat blistering sweat dripping
Thirsty so thirsty
Tongue like sand in his parchment mouth
"Where will the next strike occur?"
Hunger
Belly aching crying out
Bread please a crust of bread
"Tell us what we want to know, Elf..."
A sip of water please
Fresh, clean, sweet water
Thirsty so very thirsty
"Tell us what we want to know..."
Water please
"Tell us..."
Water...
"Tell us..."
Please give me some water... –

"They forced me to take medication!" This. Dylan shuddered as memory called to her. Shivered. This was what was nearly the worst. Not quite the worst but nearly, so nearly. The medicine. Thorazine. Lithium. Succinylcholine. Diazepam. Vesprin. Navane. So much poison pumped into her body over and over again, for years. If she didn't take the pills, they drugged her food. Ashes in her mouth. If she didn't eat, they tried to force feed her. Drowning in poison slop. If she fought them, they strapped her to a bed. Trapped, trapped like a rat. They strapped her down and stabbed her with needles full of hypodermic lies –

– Prick
Opium whispers in the blood
Smothering her can't breathe can't think
Thorazine poison in the vein
Lost in the mist
Running running can't think
Where's the music the memory?
John, John, can't remember
Where is John?
Who is John?
The fairies, the fairies, they...
No fairies
But I know the
No fairies no fairies no fairies
John
I do believe in fairies
Help me, John! Help me!
Who is John?
No fairies
John, where are you? Where am I?
Who am I? –

"They r-" She began, but swallowed the words blistering her throat and spat out others before memory she couldn't bear, memory she refused to let sink into her brain, tried to return and bring the old nightmares back. "My parents betrayed me! They locked me up and shut me away because I kept insisting that there were faeries in our yard and in the creek behind our house who needed help because there was trash and stuff in our yard that was killing the plants and polluting the water and no one would listen to me!"

She screamed that last, rushing it together so that it sounded like, "Nonud lissenamee!" But Nuada, stunned by her revelation, by the pain in her face, the pain that gave truth to her words, understood her perfectly. He found his voice as she sank trembling to the ground, unable to stand any longer.

"You..."

Dylan hid her face in her trembling hands. Her body tried desperately to shake apart. The room pulsed with the psychic tendrils of ice-cold soul pain. Only one of royal blood could have tasted that pain on the air... but he could. It sickened him because something in him recognized that soul pain for what it was, almost seemed to resonate with it. Something that he'd kept banked for more than three thousand years.

"Your parents..." The Elf prince breathed, and had to reign in his rage and the sudden sickness roiling in his stomach with an iron grip. Had to force down the brutal memories he could not allow to surface right now. "They imprisoned you, tortured you, because... you told them..."

Nuada trailed off, staring at her hunched, shivering form. He realized suddenly that it was freezing in the chamber.

Almost as if the shouting match had never happened, he moved to the fireplace and began building up the fire again. He could not look at her. It was not that he felt ashamed. Never that, never because of a human. Nuada did not feel shame or awkwardness now. He was... pole-axed. Completely pole-axed. The human had totally and completely confused him. What mortal would weather the things she had suffered for his kind? It made no sense. Dylan owed him nothing. She owed none of them anything and yet he knew she was not lying; he could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Feel it in the air. This was a woman who braved death to save an Elf, who fought a warrior in order to force him to care for himself, and had suffered eleven years of imprisonment and torture for a people not her own. She was mortal, human, but such loyalty, such honor...

She made absolutely no sense! She was driving him mad! Somewhere in all of this was a trick, he knew it. There was something, there had to be. No human did these things simply out of the goodness of their heart! Perhaps she was a changeling. Or maybe brown-blooded, with the old earth magic of the brownies and hobs in her veins from long ago. But this woman could not be a human. Her blood could not be poisoned by mortal filth. There was no possible way.

"I do believe in faeries," she half-chanted, tears streaming down her face. She pulled away from him when he shifted closer, hid her face from his sight. She trembled so hard Nuada thought that at any moment she might shake apart. "I do, I do. I do believe in faeries, I do, I do."

She struggled for breath, trying not to remember. Her chest burned. Like a leaf in a gale, she trembled, hiding her face behind the wall of her hands. Pretend, that's what Dylan had to do. Pretend that there was nothing there, nothing but the wall of her hands and the smell of her own breath. Nothing, except the sound of her heart and the heat of her body. Taste the air. Feel the flames. No pain, no memory. Hold onto the moment like a lifeline. Hold on. Hold on. Stay hidden. Don't fall into the past. Hold on.

Dylan shifted so that her hair hung in her face, and she pulled her hands against her heart. The breath in her lungs rattled like death. Nuada shuddered at the sound. The sight of that curtain of brown curls vexed him. He wanted a clear view of her face, wanted to see the emotions etching themselves there for everyone to see. In a moment, he was kneeling in front of her, one hand extended towards her. She was still rocking, still blind to her surroundings, still whispering her chant, the soft, droning croon that had sustained her for the eleven years they had kept her locked up in that hellish place. "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do..."

The Elf caught a single lock of hair between index and middle finger, a strand that hung just in front of one closed, darkly shadowed eye. Blue eyes flew open. The mortal sucked in a breath and froze. Her absolute fear screamed at him. Nauseated him. Nuada made rash promises to the Fates and the stars to keep from being sick. If he so much as twitched the wrong way, he knew she would attack him, not as a human against one of the fey, but simply as a woman against a man she thought would hurt her.

This close to her skin, her hair, the scent of his own blood and the putrid scorching stink of iron no longer clouding the air, he smelled her humanity, her mortal blood. The stench of it almost burned his nostrils. His fury flared like white fire, tempered only by his confusion and the way her pain resonated within him.

The Elf prince could not reconcile the child he imagined in his mind, fighting the only way she knew how to protect a race not her own, with his image of human beings. No human would do these things for his kind. Mortals, monstrous and cruel and evil, did not do such things. The hearts of the Children of Mud were black pits filled with nothing but rot and greed, incapable of honor, valor, compassion, kindness. No mortal would suffer for his kind.

And yet... yet Dylan still bore the scars. Both on her body (he'd seen flashes of them the night he'd barged into the bathing chamber) and in her mind, on her heart - on her soul. The soul she should not have possessed. He could feel anguish pouring off of her body in waves. Trembling, weeping, keening, rocking... her grief tasted to him like ashes.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, her voice strangely empty, and she took a shuddering breath, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes. A soft sound, like a whimper, touched her lips, but that was all. He could practically see her building up her walls, fighting back her pain, ignoring her wounds. She was afraid, he realized. Afraid to allow herself to feel pain, grief, the hurt of her family's betrayal, the horror of whatever torments had been inflicted on her as a child. Nuada watched her as she slowly regained her composure. That strange sense of her emotions, the taste of her pain, slowly dissipated, leaving him with nothing but a pervading uneasiness.

"I'm sorry, Your Highness," Dylan repeated dully. Her eyes were almost glassy, her face oddly blank. "It was just... the bed was thin - not that I mind," she added hastily. "It just reminded me of... and the fire began to die and I... I... I'm afraid of the dark."

At that point, her voice cracked.

This was a fear he knew very well. Nuala had always been terrified of the darkness as a child. How many nights had she stolen into his room when they were children, frightened of the shadows, to curl up in his arms and sleep, knowing he protected her? The comparison between this dark-haired, blue-eyed mortal and his flaxen-haired, amber-eyed sister made him feel strangely, distantly protective. But his twin had never been a victim of such depraved brutality. The Elf had no idea how Dylan would react if he tried to hold her as he had held his sister in her fear.

Not that he would. Some things were simply too vile to contemplate.

Yet he had never felt like such a monster than at that moment as Dylan looked around almost helplessly, trying not to catch his eye. She was not merely afraid of the dark. Empty now of at least her anger, she was shaking with what he could only assume was fear of him. She had, after all, just screamed like a harpy at an Elf prince who loathed her entire race and wished her dead. An Elf prince whose only reason for leaving her alive was so intangible a thing as a debt of honor.

Seeing the obvious terror in her eyes, smelling it on the air, Nuada felt like a beast.

"You... need not be afraid," he muttered falteringly. Now the Elf regretted his harshness, his claim that she had no feelings, the things he'd shouted at her. He could have said worse things. Far worse things. The prince knew that. But what had passed his lips was bad enough. And now that he saw her grief over his people and her fear of him... now that he knew her... he was almost ashamed. Almost, but not quite. Still... it was enough to make him attempt gentility.

"Come. Sit at the table," he said, trying to be gentle, and held out his hand to her. She flinched away. Silently, the prince cursed. This was all he could think to do to make amends. Like trying to coax a skittish horse, he waited patiently for her to accept him.

Dylan took the proffered hand with no little hesitation. Her face, blank as a doll's, looked as if it might crack. She rose slowly. The room was having an effect on her injuries as well. The last few nights of broken half-sleep had given her enough energy to speed the healing from the room. Perhaps a full two month, maybe two and a half, in this room, and she would be - physically, at least - as good as new.

As for her heart... he knew not. He could only be kind - an art long lost to him in his years of exile, and hard to relearn in a mortal's presence. But he led her carefully to the table. Dredging up ancient court manners from years ago, he pulled a chair out for her and helped her to scoot in. She thanked him quietly. Her voice trembled.

So did he. Nuada's entire body, drained by his rage, shook with fatigue, but he could not sleep with her so frightened of him. His honor demanded he make reparations. After all, she had done nothing but give him aid. Look at what he had done to her in return for her kindness. The Elf prince stared at her across the table. She huddled in the chair, hiding behind her curls. Clenching his fists, the Elf cast around for something to do, something to say.

Your honor is a flimsy thing, Prince Nuada, his inner voice snarled at him. It allows you to take pride and pleasure in battle, and prevents you from anything other than slaying your enemies outright. No unnecessary torture. No rapine. Yet that same honor does not prevent you from terrorizing a brutalized young woman. Her breeding makes her an acceptable target for your rage, does it not? A filthy human, a mortal, a proud and hollow nothing-creature –

Be silent! He snarled at himself. The voice fell quiet. The Elf warrior sighed imperceptibly and returned to looking at the mortal woman.

They sat in interminable silence until he could bear it no longer.

"Are you hungry?" He asked softly. "Thirsty?"

She shook her head.

"Tired, perhaps?" Another negation. "You do not wish to return to bed?"

At this, Dylan's face blanched and she glanced at him fearfully before looking hastily away. He bit back a sigh of frustration. What did the Elf Prince of Bethmoora know about making polite small talk? With a human of all creatures? What could he say to break the brittle tension between them? Why would this blasted, gods-cursed, frustrating mortal not aid him in trying to be kind to her?

"No, thank you. You should go to bed, Your Highness," the mortal murmured listlessly, staring into the flames. "You need your rest."

And she laid her head down on her arms upon the table and closed her eyes, shifting to hide her face behind her hair. Despite the seemingly casual pose, Nuada could see the tension knotting her shoulders. Was she waiting for him to hurt her? He wanted to feel furious with her at the idea, but it only served to prick his conscience.

Nuada tried to stay awake until he was certain that Dylan slept, so that he could lay her in the more comfortable bed again as chivalry (unfortunately) demanded, but his body and mind shuddered with exhaustion, and he unwillingly succumbed to sleep.