Screams pick up from the outside. More of my people caught. Maybe the dark fae have started setting fire to the village, or maybe they are dragging us out one by one to torture.
Still, the screams are masking the noise I’m making. But it’s not enough. I hear a tangle of words—a strange-sounding language I’ve never heard—coming from outside the kitchen. The foreign tongue is nearing the window to the café. I know this because, within seconds, the chatter stops and is replaced by the shatter of glass. The dark fae break the window.
I hear them jump inside, the heavy slam of their boots on the floor.
I move fast, feeling along the wall for any way out of here, a door, a window, a fucking portal for all I care. If I don’t find one, I’m trapped in here with monsters. If I don’t find a way out of this café, I’m dead.
My heart jumps up into my throat when my hands find the cool touch of a doorknob. The strange language has picked back up in the café behind me, a rough garbled sound that’s spoken in soft murmurs. They are coming.
I twist the doorknob and slowly open the door. My heart punches against my chest, threatening to burst out from between my breasts any moment.
I slip through the doorway and gently close the door behind me. The less noise I make now, the harder it will be for them to track me.
Without any light, I can’t see where I am. Not even windows let in the orange glow of the fire-torches outside. I’m entombed by walls.
I throw my back against the wall, then side-step along it. My palms are flat, spread-out, feeling for another escape. On the other side of that door, dark fae talk louder.
I can hear their foreign language, and it brings to mind broken glass slicing through flesh. It’s cutting, sharp and brutal. The fierce sound of it shivers my spine with pure, cold fear, like the tips of icicles dragging along my bones.
Something solid knocks the edge of my boot, and I stagger to balance myself. I almost fell flat on my side. Once I’m steady, I crouch down and reach out to feel along the solid object. In the complete dark, it takes me a few seconds to figure out what it is—a step. The first in an ascending staircase.
For a beat, I hesitate.
The voices are drawing nearer, and I’m starting to hear the crackle of fire. They have fire-torches. Enough light to illuminate me the moment they step through that door. My end is within sight. But I can’t run up the staircase. Not if I want to live. Going up means not coming back down when they set fire to the building. And that, they will.
But I can’t stay down here out in the open either.
An idea strikes me like lightning out of nowhere, and I pray to god it works. It propels me forward and I run into the wall opposite me.
Before the door can swing open, I rush down the side of the staircase and feel along its edge. There’s no gap under the staircase—I find the rusty handle of a cupboard instead. My heart skips with a beat of relief, and I throw myself into the cupboard under the stairs.
Just as I gently close the door, I hear the other door crash open as if kicked. It slams, hard, against the wall and I cringe back into the dusty darkness enveloping me.
Bounding bootfalls shudder the floor. I hear them separate—one of the dark fae runs up the stairs, his heavy boots slamming just above my head. The other charges around the hall—and I learn that there are doors down here. He boots them open, one by one. Then, there’s the fading sound of his steps as he investigates and searches each room he’s found.
I’m careful not to move. Not even an inch. All around me is total darkness, but in it there could be all sorts of things hidden. Brooms propped up against the wall, coat-racks balanced on top of buckets, precarious cleaning supplies on a rotten shelf that’s ready to fall over at any breath aimed its way. I need utter silence if I’m to survive this.
My breath doesn’t want to come out. My whole body is seized up with quiet. Only my heart wants to scream noise as it hammers against my chest.
But eventually, the dark fae downstairs will open this door, my hidden place will be betrayed by his fire-torch, and I’ll be dismembered. I know it. He won’t leave a door unchecked. So I wait until I hear his bootfalls soften again, and I’m certain he’s searching one of the rooms.
Slowly, I twist the doorknob. It’s as silent as when I first took refuge behind it. A saving grace—a small detail that might just spare my life.
I sneak out from the cupboard. I’m sure to close the door behind me. Don’t want to leave any clues about my being here.
I wait only a heartbeat before I creep away from the cupboard.
From the fire-torch in a room that’s off the corridor, I can faintly make out that I’m inside the hall of a home. There are picture frames, caked in dust, hanging on the walls. Some vases dot along the floor, cracked in places where flower
