Page 13 of Escape from the Green

I had no idea if she was functioning, if she had found her way out of the darkness, if Doyle had been there to prove to her that men - some men - could be trusted.

I knew that Cece's arrival at the Light court had - somehow, the details weren't given to me - led to the Princess coming out of whatever insanity had claimed her for as long as any could remember.

I longed to go there.

To see Jasper, to ask about Jade.

But those were selfish yearnings.

"My mother has made a deal with the Dark Prince," I reminded Drake. "Seeking asylum in the Light might test the shaky alliance between both courts. It may prove safe, but at what cost? Another war? Generations of carnage? Over me? I would rather take my chances in the human realm. I understand how things work there. Perhaps better than I understand how they work here."

"They will come for you. Prince Jet, your mother. Hate the realm as much as they might, they would come. To save their pride, to get what was promised."

"I realize that," I agreed, nodding. "But there are areas of the human realm. Places where not a tree can be found, let alone the veil to The Green. Places where the humans crush so tightly together that there isn't a whisper of air between them in the streets, where someone could disappear if they needed to."

"Around all that metal," Drake mused, brows drawing low. "It doesn't bother you?"

"I've never lived in one of the human cities. My parents kept an estate for me on a large piece of land. It had human servants - changelings cast aside mostly - to tend to me. There wasn't much exposure to it. I had been in a town only once, cars and trains around," I went on, wondering if those words were lost on him as well, if he had ever seen the giant metal beasts hurtling through the world at unnatural speeds, carrying countless humans to the buildings where they worked. "It made me achy," I admitted, remembering the way I had gone to bed bone tired afterward, soreness like growing pangs in my limbs. "But I could learn to live with it. I'd have to. Jasper and Jade did alright," I added in an attempt to bolster my own certainty that I could do it.

"The body can almost get used to a certain amount of pain," Drake commented, voice guarded.

When I turned, I saw a veil over his eyes as well.

He would know.

Pain.

He would know it better than most.

His entire life since my father came upon him had been torment.

Slave labor meant to break his resolve, his spirit.

Then there had been the beatings.

For fun.

For entertainment.

To try to bring about the Change.

I'd never seen it.

Him Changed.

I doubted my father's guards had ever managed to make him break enough to bring it about. Or else I doubt he would have been living in a barn doing manual labor anymore.

My father would have been selling tickets, creating fights to put his Draca up against someone else's poor, enslaved creature.

They got it the worst, it appeared, the fae who Changed, who became other things.

Treated like lower beasts, taken as slaves, killed for fun like hunters in the human realm with the large-eyed deer who did nothing to deserve death.

A Draca would bring in the biggest betters, the worst of the worst, wanting to see a creature of myth in all its glory, fire billowing from its mouth, setting all the other animals ablaze.

I'd seen him losing his control before, had seen the plates erupting from his skin, bloodied and fierce.

But try as they might, they could never fully break his spirit, never make him become a plaything for the rich, the powerful.