A Cage of Crimson (Deliciously Dark Fairytales Book 5), page 1
A Cage of Crimson
A Cage of Crimson
K.F. BREENE
Copyright © 2024 by K.F. Breene
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Don’t tell my family that this series exists.
They might be concerned with how dirty I like my fairytales…
Contents
1. Aurelia
2. Aurelia
3. Weston
4. Aurelia
5. Aurelia
6. Aurelia
7. Weston
8. Weston
9. Aurelia
10. Aurelia
11. Weston
12. Aurelia
13. Weston
14. Aurelia
15. Aurelia
16. Weston
17. Aurelia
18. Aurelia
19. Aurelia
20. Weston
21. Weston
22. Aurelia
23. Aurelia
24. Aurelia
25. Weston
26. Aurelia
27. Hadriel
28. Weston
29. Aurelia
30. Hadriel
31. Aurelia
32. Aurelia
33. Aurelia
34. Aurelia
35. Aurelia
Also by K.F. Breene
About the Author
Chapter 1
Aurelia
“Once upon a time, in a land far away . . .”
Fairy tales. What bullshit.
I’d heard it all in my youth. Handsome princes and thrones made of gold. Dresses and balls and animals that talked.
Sure, why not.
And yeah, maybe I’d believed it as a kid. I’d sit with my mom, reading until the small hours of the morning even though I should’ve been in bed hours before, lulled by her soft tone, held tightly in her arms. I’d dream of one day flying like the dragons. Of leading a hunt with the wolves. She’d said I could be anything, live anywhere. It wouldn’t matter where I started because my prince would find me. He’d save me. He and I would eventually lead the kingdom wearing gemmed crowns and creating a safe space for everyone to co-exist, even those who couldn’t quite feel the magic they were supposed to be blessed with.
Turned out, there were no princes for the magically inept. No friends, either. Most of the time, especially in my youth, there was not even kindness. We were the outcasts. The unwanted. If I wanted to be saved, I’d have to do it myself. There was a freedom in that which I valued, an empowerment to claim my future. Though I will admit . . . it would’ve been nice for a prince to sweep me off my feet.
I inhaled the slightly stale air of the work shed where I spent the majority of my time. Two windows let in the light and a few desks acted as work stations, positioned around the single room space. My fingers moved quickly from years of experience, twisting a particular vine around the Nimfire leaf. After this batch was done, I’d take to my rigged-up contraptions to add pressure and heat, turning the contents into a powerful hallucinogen.
A drug, in other words. The fun kind. The kind that was against the law and would get us all brought in by the royal guards and put to death if anyone should find out we created it.
My life was anything but a fairy tale.
I yanked the vine into a knot. A thorn sliced my calloused finger and little spots of crimson welled up along the cut. The sting of it barely registered.
Another knot, and I dropped that piece into a basin of warm water before picking up another vine.
“You about done?” Razorfang asked. His name was one he’d chosen for himself after taking too much of the particular product I was making. A scratch ran down his cheek and frown lines etched into his ruddy face. The grizzled older man had a slight hunch from many years of tending the village gardens, a necessary element to our operations.
He stopped a few paces away from my workstation, a rickety little desk tucked into a corner with a slight lean to the right. He never dared get too close, which was fine by me. He didn’t bathe as much as he really needed to.
I leaned back a little and reached for my tea perched on the edge of my desk. “Yeah. A dozen more or so. Why? Is it date-night with your mate?”
He swayed toward me a little, his eyes a little too wide, a touch manic.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, his tone accusatory. “You plottin’ on me, girl? Tryin’ to get me out of here so that you can rig up a trap on my desk?” He stuck out a hammy finger, stained purple. “I know what you’re up to. No dud is going to catch me unawares. I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.” He half-turned to point. “I know all your tricks. Don’t think for one”—he squeezed his eyes shut with the force of the next word—“moment you can catch me with my hands tied!”
I let loose an annoyed breath, re-focusing on my task. Clearly, he’d sampled the product again. He was unreasonable when he was like this, paranoid I’d try to harm or kill him. It wasn’t him who needed eyes in the back of his head, though; it was me. I’d gotten very good at sensing when he was sneaking up on me with a knife or some other sharp object, trying to do the village a “favor” by getting rid of the dud, a slur for a shifter without magic.
“I’m not the one you should be worried about,” I warned. “Granny is in town. You can’t be sampling the product when she’s here. You know that.”
“Let me worry about her. I know what I’m about. You just mind your manners, filthy dud.”
I shook my head as he stared down at me. After a few moments of getting no response, he finally shuffled away.
As a rule, I didn’t create chemically addictive products. My life afforded me very few moral principles, so I stood by those I had carved out. The product could be habit-forming, though, if a person wasn’t careful. Raz wasn’t careful, not in the slightest. He hated his job, he hated his dependency on Granny, our benefactor, and most of all, he hated working with what he correctly suspected was a violent dud.
I didn’t know why he was so concerned. Without access to my animal, I didn’t have a shifter’s enhanced strength and speed. I couldn’t heal quickly. He had the advantage over me in every way. I’d gotten quick with a lot of practice, but that’s about all I had going for me. Well, practice, and honing my sixth sense regarding danger so I could anticipate when he would strike. The guy was delusional in all ways but one: the village definitely wanted the filthy dud gone. They’d all, at one time or another, made that quite clear.
Thank the gods for Granny’s protection. She wasn’t blood—everyone called her that—but she was my fairy godmother. She’d taken me in as a kid when I was on the brink of starvation, chased by dud-hating hordes, having no coin and nowhere to go. She gave me a home, found me this job, created connections with sketchy shadow markets and forced this village to (mostly) leave me be. She was my guardian angel. My divine intervention. I owed her everything.
I dropped the vine-wrapped leaf into the water before stopping for a quick sip of my lukewarm tea. Cup returned, I proceeded to wrap the next vine. Then the next. My mind drifted, conjuring up images that I might try to draw in charcoal. Before I knew it, I stared down at an empty desk with two more slices in my thumb.
I pulled a little jar from the top of my station, by the wall. The few petals within started its slow, mournful throb, glowing a pale, pastel pink. Or maybe ‘mournful’ was just my reaction to having picked the whole flower, thus condemning it to death. I should’ve taken a few petals and memorized the location so I could go back and pick more another time. The flowers were supposed to bloom all through spring and summer.
After unscrewing the jar, I delicately removed one of the petals and paused, holding it in my palm and watching the pretty glow intensify.
“That the Moonfire Lily?” Raz once again approached. He forgot to maintain his distance this time, his head cocked as he stared at the flower.
“Yeah. Pretty, isn’t it?”
He grunted, not tearing his eyes away.
I placed the flower onto a sturdy dish and headed to the hearth with its dainty flame.
“What are you going to—“ Raz cut off with a violent scream.
I jolted, nearly dropping the dish.
“What?!” I looked around in confusion, seeing the simple and well-organized interior of our work shed, save the chaos of his desk. “What’s the matter?”
“No! No, no, no, no!” He rushed toward me. I barely moved the dish in time to avoid his strike, cupping my hand over the petal so that it didn’t flutter to the ground. “You’ll kill the glow! You can’t kill the glow, it’ll destroy the world!”
He screamed again and spun in a circle, his face contorted in anguish and his pupils blown wide. Terror lined every inch of his body as he contemplated the fate of the flower.
“Great heavens, bub, you took too much.” I set the dish down on the nearest table. What a pain. When he got like this, he slowed everything down.
I held up my hands to show him they were now empty. By rule—another of my few principles—I didn’t make the product too extreme. To get to this level, he’d had to take two or more doses. He was starting to get out of hand.
“Okay, buddy
He leaned to the right, his head tilted, his eyes definitely manic.
“Let’s just take a breath and think about the emberflies . . .”
He leaned the other way, almost looking at me sideways. Great gods, the product had really gotten on top of him. His journey on this product had taken a sharp left turn and landed him into a field of nightmares. I might not be able to bring him out.
“Let’s drift like the emberflies—“
He balled up his fists and shook them at the heavens, leaning back as he did so. “Who cares about the fucking emberflies! You’re trying to kill the glow!” he shouted, spittle flying. He tilted forward, stumbled, and barreled my way. One big fist swung out as he fell.
I dodged easily. His momentum carried him forward, his legs left behind. He hit the back wall headfirst and then fell to the ground. A moment later he scrambled up, howling like some enraged beast.
No, I would not be able to talk him around. Damn it.
“Good point,” I agreed in a soothing tone, moving fast toward the entrance. “The glow is the most important thing. Let’s focus on that glow. It’s outside. There’s more of the glow outside. Let’s go look at it, okay? I won’t touch it. We’ll just—“
“I know your dirty tricks, you pig-faced monkey man!” He levelled a finger at me. His red face was screwed up in rage. “Your bag is out there, isn’t it? Isn’t it? You have your weapons stored just outside.”
My “weapons” consisted of everyday items, some so dangerous as a nail file. If he got in this state when the pack was inside, he’d empty it on the floor and hold up each item in turn, asking how I planned to kill him with it.
I’d just started leaving the thing outside, because yes, I could probably lodge a nail file in his eye or maybe even reach his kidney, but would I? No. I was only violent if I had no other options—principle number three.
“I don’t have a pack.” I kept my hands high. “See? No pack. I just want to say hi to the moon man. Want to say hi to the moon man with me?”
“I don’t trust you for one second. You’re trying to kill me like all the others. Oh yes, by the gods’ hammer stone, they’ve tried. They’ll never take me alive!“
Fantastic, I thought sarcastically. He’d turned nonsensical. This was when he got the most violent.
Plan B.
“Here’s the glow, here it is,” I said, moving toward the supply closet at the back. “It’s right here.”
He paused in his tirade, his head tilted to the side again, a little drool dribbling out of his mouth.
“Here, here’s the glow.” I motioned him over. “Right here.” I lifted the lid on a wicker basket where the rest of the petals had been stored. Their glow was in its zenith, pale in the room but enough to grab his attention.
“Yes,” he whispered, seeing them and homing in. Louder now. “Yes!”
I acted quickly as he neared. I hooked my foot on his right ankle and grabbed his meaty shoulders. He tripped and I guided his fall toward the supply closet where I kept my contraptions, the transformed apothecary mechanisms. Those on the lower shelves could be fixed by other villagers if he broke them. They’d had practice.
The shove I gave him sent him flailing through the opening. He crashed into a shelf, screaming again. I grabbed the door handle and pulled it shut before he could get his bearings and turn. I latched the door from my side, knowing there was a door at the back of the closet that led outside. It wasn’t locked. All he’d have to do was find it and free himself.
I doubted he’d figure out how for a few hours. He hadn’t in the past.
This was another of my principles: a way out. All products that induced a journey, whether it was good or bad in the moment, had an “off” switch. If a person hunkered down into a small, dark place, the drug’s effects on the brain would greatly recede. The drug would go dormant, in a way. The product didn’t leave the system, but it gave the brain a way to handle things a little better.
This was great for a person in Raz’s situation. Not so great if a person was having a lovely time and was just trying to get cozy. Couldn’t be helped.
Discovering that trick had been an accident, but once I realized its usefulness—to me first, and then to others—I baked the “off” switch into any product that might need it. Like this one.
He howled again, beating at the wood.
“Go to sleep,” I called through the door. “Settle down now and go to sleep. You can’t let Granny see you like this or she’ll punish you something awful.”
“You filthy dud!” he roared. “You dud-whore, locking me in here. You won’t take me alive!”
Sometimes the product made him all kinds of awful. Then again, some people were like this to me stone sober. It was something the magicless just had to get used to, like how the fair of skin dealt with sunburns. It was part of life. There was no sense in letting it get to you.
I took a deep breath, letting the adrenaline from the sudden episode level out before turning back to the Moonfire Lily. After grabbing a large stick from the hearth and ensuring the end had a flame, I took the dish outside and set it on the ground. The moon glowed weakly above, barely a sliver. Stars speckled the vast night sky. When I got home, I might open a bottle of port and sit out for a while, taking it all in. I loved these tranquil early spring nights; the air was still crisp with winter’s chill but held the promise of warmer days to come. Flowers bloomed for the first time since the fall, and it felt like the world was getting a fresh start.
Emberflies hovered and drifted, little glowing insects that looked like fairy dust softly swaying in the air. They weren’t spooked by anyone in our village. They only scattered when strangers or danger came around, which was often one and the same.
It would’ve been better to treat the petal at the full moon, but Granny wouldn’t want to wait. She didn’t have a lot of patience where the product was concerned. There was an increasing demand, and it was my duty to keep up.
A slight breeze rustled the petal. I held it down for a moment until all was calm again. As I hunched over the dish, I applied the flame.
The petal crackled. Its glow intensified, shimmering like the stars. The color changed from pale pink to vibrant magenta and then to blazing red. The fire on the end of the stick grew, a cue to pull it away. The petal continued to burn for a moment, the middle of it pulsing like an ember in a smoldering fire. Its perfume had changed, now verdant and earthy and wild; all things that teased the senses of a wolf on the hunt, or so I’d overheard. After a moment the flame and smell died away, leaving the color and continuing the ember-like soft glow.
I picked it up; the petal felt cool against my skin. The fire never seemed to heat it, just change it.
A strange tickle started between my shoulder blades. A slight pressure fanned out, over my shoulders and then crawling down my spine. It felt like someone was watching me.
Wary, I glanced back at the work shed, wondering if Raz had found his way out and was coming for me. No thrashing of limbs, howls, or stomping— all things he’d be doing if he’d escaped—accompanied the feeling, though. Couldn’t be him.
With the Moonfire Lily petal tucked into my cupped palms, I looked out at the darkness.
Trees stood sentry beyond the field next to the shed, hiding the creek that gurgled within their depths. An old fence with awkwardly leaning posts and a gate in the middle divided the land for no discernible reason. My various tubs were placed in an organized fashion, some against the shed and others out in the night, against the fence. They were set to catch the moonlight or the sunlight, or both. I’d learned those things had an effect on the end product.
I’d learned young to pay attention to my sixth sense, keeping it fresh in my life here. The feeling of being watched grew, as though a predator were focusing hard.
The night lay quiet. Nothing made a sound. The soft breeze hardly worried my hair.
Still, it felt like someone was out there, a foreign density within the shadows. The emberflies didn’t seem troubled, though. They would scatter if a threat was within their midst; I’d seen it happen when Granny brought in a new person for the perimeter patrol.
