Chapter 1: A Rest Interrupted
The air in the fae forest didn’t just move, it sang. It carried the scent of crushed silverleaf and damp, black earth, a perfume that was nothing like the pine and frost of Aldric’s own mountains. He’d been walking for hours, maybe days—time bled here, the light never shifting from that perpetual, misty gold. His plate armor was a mountain’s weight abandoned leagues back, and now even the chainmail over his gambeson felt like a cage fashioned by a sadistic blacksmith.
Every muscle in his powerful frame hummed with a fatigue that was more than physical. It was a weariness of the mind, of constantly trying to parse the logic of a place that had none. Trees with bark that shimmered like opal, flowers that chimed softly in a breeze he couldn’t feel.
“Enough,” he grunted, the word a rough stone in the melodic air.
He found a stream, its water clear and pulsing with a faint, blue light. A moss-covered stone, softer than any chair, beckoned. With a groan that came from his bones, Sir Aldric of Thornwood sat. He leaned his head back against the stone, the cool moss a balm. The mail links glittered, alien and clumsy in this place of subtle magic.
His feet were the worst of it. Throbbing, hot, packed into leather that felt like it had fused to his skin. With thick, calloused fingers, he began to work at the laces of his boots. The task was mundane, human, a tiny act of reclamation. He got the first boot off, then the second, sighing as he wiggled his toes. The air was cool on his sweat-damp skin.
He scooted forward, dipping his feet into the stream. The water wasn’t cold; it was a shocking, vibrant coolness that seemed to leach the ache directly from his marrow. He closed his gray eyes for just a moment.
It was the silence that warned him.
The forest’s ambient song cut out, all at once, like a held breath.
His eyes flew open. He saw them then, shadows detaching from the deeper shadows of the iridescent trees. Four of them. Five. Sleek and moving with a silence that made his own heart sound like a war drum. Fae.
He roared, surging up from the stone, water flying from his feet. He was a massive man, all warrior’s instinct, his hands already forming fists. But he was barefoot, off-balance, and they were fast.
The silken ropes shot from the undergrowth not like thrown lines, but like living vines. One wrapped around his right wrist with a hissss, then yanked taut with impossible strength. Another snared his left ankle. He staggered, his colossal strength useless against the perfect, coordinated leverage. Two more ropes found purchase. A grunt of pure shock was punched from his lungs as the ropes went tight and he was hauled, abruptly and completely, into the air.
He hung there, a trussed giant, suspended between two oak branches. The silken bonds bit into his wrists and ankles, holding his limbs apart. His mail shirt hung heavily, pulling at his shoulders, outlining the sheer bulk of his chest and the defined ridges of his abdomen. He twisted, muscles cording in his neck, his powerful back and legs straining against the give-less bonds. It was a spectacle of captured strength, and he knew it.
“Easy, storm-cloud. You’ll tire yourself out.”
The voice was a smooth, deep rumble, touched with amusement. The fae stepped into view, looking up at him with a frank, appreciative gaze. Thorne. He was tall for his kind, broad in the shoulder but still holding that fae sleekness, like a river stone worn smooth. His pale skin seemed to glow, and his dark hair was tied simply back. A mischievous grin played on his lips.
“You’re a long way from any forge-fire, little knight,” Thorne said, circling slowly. His eyes were everywhere: the scar crossing Aldric’s ribcage, the thickness of his trapped thighs, the formidable swell of his arms. “What brings a creature of iron and sweat to the singing woods?”
“I took a wrong turn,” Aldric spat, still pulling against the ropes. They didn’t chafe; they held, cool and unyielding. “Let me down. This is no way to treat a knight.”
“A knight?” Thorne laughed, the sound warm and rich. “I see a man. A spectacularly made one, granted. But we have different rules here. You are a fascinating prize. Look at this,” he said, not to Aldric, but to the other warriors who melted from the trees. He gestured up at Aldric’s suspended form. “The sheer volume of him. The texture.”
Aldric felt a hot flush of something that was not entirely anger. It was exposure. Under this creature’s gaze, he wasn’t Sir Aldric the Unbroken; he was a specimen. A curiosity. His legendary endowment, a source of whispered awe and bawdy songs in taverns back home, was now plainly outlined against his linen breeches under the intense scrutiny. Thorne’s gaze lingered there, and the fae’s grin widened.
“The stories of your kind lack imagination,” Thorne murmured.
“What do you want?” Aldric demanded, trying and failing to muster his usual commanding tone. Hanging upside-down was ruining his blood flow and his dignity.
“The Court will want to see you,” Thorne said, as if it were obvious. “A thing of mortal muscle and passion, stumbled into our realm. You are a walking parable. A theorem written in flesh.” He reached out and casually, brazenly, pressed a palm against the hard plane of Aldric’s stomach. The touch was electric, a shock of sensation that had nothing to do with combat. Aldric jerked in his bonds.
“Don’t—”
“Or what?” Thorne asked, his dark eyes sparkling. “You’ll challenge me to honorable combat? Concepts are fluid here, little knight. Now, be still. The journey will be more pleasant if you don’t fight.”
Thorne nodded to his companions. Two of them produced slender poles from the foliage, sliding them through the bindings at Aldric’s wrists and ankles with efficient grace. In an instant, he was transformed from a suspended captive to a carried one, hoisted on their shoulders like a slain stag from a hunt.
The world tilted. The glowing forest canopy swam above him. He was being carried, helpless, into the heart of the shimmering unknown. The strength in his limbs was just weight now. The respect his title commanded was meaningless.
All he had left was the hot, confusing pride that even here, bound and paraded, Thorne’s appreciative glance kept returning to him. And a deeper, more unsettling thrill that he refused to name, coiling in his gut as they carried him deeper into the song.