Fern Thornvale

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Song of Vengeance

Gileas’s hands trembled before his mind could even comprehend what was in front of him, before Iris’s words finally found meaning.
Galatea sat on the bed, her knees pulled to her chest, so tight the skin on her knuckles thinned, showing the tendons bulging under her white skin. A mixture of dried blood and dust clung to her eyebrow and broken lip, while red bruises covered her arms and neck, down to her collarbone in a gruesome mosaic.
But none of those injuries tore his heart apart like her gaze.
Her eyes were a white, wet void, so lost in the blanket texture that they didn’t move from it, not even when Gileas sat at her side and the chair squeaked under his weight.
He reached for her, his hand raised to check the cut on forehead, but the moment his fingers brushed over her hair, she screamed.
“No!” She jolted away from him, tears flowing down her eyes as her fingers flexed in search of a dagger that wasn’t there.
“Sunshine,” he murmured, words swelling his throat. “It’s me, Gileas. Your brother.” He turned back to his changeling form, to the face that shared so much of her own, hoping she could recognise him even under the terror blurring her sight.
“Gil?” Her voice was shaking just as much as the rest of her body, making the dark green shawl fall over her shoulders and showing her shirt, now dirty and torn beyond repair.
He nodded and offered her his hand, waiting for her to take it. He held his breath and forced himself not to succumb to the need to hold her and dry her cheeks despite the images of her alone and hurt, lying in her own blood in a dark alley crowding his mind.
The last thing she needed now was for someone else to force themselves on her, again.
Galatea reached for him, hesitant at first. More than once, her scratched fingers curled and her nails sank into her palm, but then she took his hand and the moment he surrounded her with her warmth, she threw herself into his arms.
“I’m here,” he whispered, holding her as she cried every tear she had left.
He lost count of how many times she called his name and asked for forgiveness, as if what had happened to her was her fault.
“I tried to fight,” she sobbed.
“I know.”
Dirt had gathered under her broken nails; blood stained the back of her head, and her usual braid was now an entangled mess.
“I called for help.” Her shoulder shook. “But—”
They didn’t stop.
He held her tighter. She didn’t need to say it, to tell him how they hit her to shut her up, nor how hard she had kicked trying to escape. He could feel it in his skin and bones, just like when they were children, and she hid from Morfir under her bed, waiting with tears in her eyes for their parents.
And because he knew his little sister was a fighter.
“Everything’s gonna be alright,” Gileas murmured against her hair, his eyes burning.
I’ll make them pay.

Gileas helped Galatea bathe, but despite her tears had stopped, she was far from being fine, as if anyone could ever be after that.
Not a moment passed without her trembling—not from the cold, he had assured the water was hot enough when Iris brought it, but for the same cause that made her rub her skin until it became red from the broken capillaries. The same that made him clench his jaw while brushing the alley filth away from her hair.
They stayed silent the whole time, only the burning candles and splashing water filling the unfamiliar brothel room.
That wasn’t his first time at the Velvet Inn, and yet Gileas had never visited the last room on the right, not that it seemed appropriate for the business. It was messy, with books scattered on a wonky desk and a simple bed on the opposite wall, way too small and visibly uncomfortable to have two people spend the night in it. Its decorations had nothing to do with the turquoise tapestry in the one he usually visited with Iris, nor with the delicate shade of rose in Magnolia’s.
Here everything seemed functional and…warm.
Once the last knot untied under his brush, Gileas helped Galatea get out of the bathtub, holding her by the elbow every time her ankles yielded. He made her lie in bed and held her hand as she fell asleep until her breathing became regular and her fingers fell softly on the pillow.
He turned back to his half-elf appearance and left the room to go downstairs; to a silent brothel and ten curious eyes.
“How’s she?” asked Iris, her tail low.
“She’s asleep.” He ran a hand through his hair and rested it to the back of his neck. “Thank you for helping her. I don’t know what would have happened if—”
“Don’t even say it,” she interrupted him. “We’re lucky Lawrence found her.”
“Lawrence?”
Iris nodded and turned, pointing to a young man who sat on the edge of his chair. “He was the one who brought her inside.”
Gileas glanced at him, his eyes lingering on the blood on his collar, her blood. “Did you see who did this to her?” he asked, his voice colder than he wanted.
Lawrence shook his head and lowered his gaze. “They were already fleeing when I arrived.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Did you see where they went?”
“I didn’t look.” He pressed his lips into a thin line, his fists clenched. “I just ran to Galatea. She was bleeding, and…her eyes…”
Gileas’s heart ached.
Iris, Magnolia, none of the girls were a problem. Not even Violet, the Velvet owner. But him? Could he be trusted with their secret? With the white skin hiding under their illusion?
“I thought I was too late.”
Oh.
Gileas took another look at him, at his messy hair and blood-stained clothes, but more importantly, at the worry in his sea-blue eyes.
“You weren’t. We changelings don’t turn back only on the verge of death,” he said, sitting in front of him and reaching for his glass.
Lawrence’s fist relaxed. “I didn’t know.”
Gileas shrugged, letting his half-elf form slip away, like an itchy blanket too annoying to keep on. “It’s not something we shout from the rooftops.”
“I see…” He lowered his head and twisted his fingers. “Will she be fine?”
Gileas took a sip of his, well, Lawrence’s drink.
There wasn’t a simple answer. Galatea was strong, always had been, but…that was more she had ever had to endure, and despite his efforts, Gileas couldn’t stop thinking about how she jolted away from him.
Something had broken inside her, he knew it had. Her light had dimmed, but…Lawrence didn’t need to know.
He took another sip and finally answered, “She will.”

Five days, that’s how much it took Gileas to find the men who had attacked Galatea, and less than an hour to lure them into the grotto at the limit of the harbour.
They weren’t from Grelzia, but sailors from a merchant ship that docked less than a week ago. They had already built a reputation among fishers and maids as randy men who didn’t know how to keep their hands to themselves, with oily skin and rotten teeth, but more importantly, men who died to tell everyone how fierce a changeling could be when dragged on her knees.
Screams filled the grotto as Gileas dagger thrust into the first man’s thigh, their sick, drunken babbles still echoing in his ears. He could have killed them in an alley as the rats they were, but they deserved to suffer—they had to—and the grotto was the only place no one would ever come, not in the middle of the night.
“What’s happening?” the second man screamed, his gaze darting over the rocky walls.
“Nothing.” Gileas turned to him as the disguise he had used to lure them slipped away, revealing his skin, white as sea foam. “I’m just giving you the fun I promised.” He dashed over him, forcing him to the ground.
He pulled him by the hair and took a better look at him. Deep scratches marked his right side, from beneath the bandage covering his eye to his cheekbone.
Galatea’s nails came back to Gileas’s mind, broken and bloody.
The urge to gouge his healthy eye from its socket ran over his skin as he moved the blade over the scum’s face. He had been the one holding her, the one who laughed about her fighting in front of a beer—
No, he wouldn’t do it, not yet.
Gileas’s dagger moved down his neck, lingering on it as fear built in the man’s face, before piercing his flesh, tearing his shoulders’ and calves’ tendons.
He wouldn’t give him the possibility to run, just as they hadn’t given her.
He turned, blood running down his blade, and searched for the last animal that had hurt his sister in the grotto’s darkness.
There was something eerie in it, in the way the sea reflected the moonlight over the walls, and how it curved around every stalactite. Something peaceful, if it hadn’t been for the cries of the men he had already incapacitated.
Nor for the laboured breath of the one trying to escape.
Gileas followed it deeper into the grotto, where the rock was wet and water dripped from the ceiling. Where not even the bravest kids ventured, and it was there that he found him, cowering inside a niche with hands over his head.
“There you are.”
After that, there was only blood, slick and warm around his fingers, bones cracking against the rock, and limbs wilting under his palms.
He didn’t listen to their pleas as his dagger thrust and turned in their flesh. The only thing that mattered was the terror in their eyes, and even then, it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t quench his thirst for justice, not when it was nothing more than a mere fraction of the fear he had seen in Galatea’s eyes as she jolted away from him.
Not when he could still feel her trembling in his arms.
Only when their remains sank into the sea did Gileas feel the tension leave his body. The image of his sister’s blood covering the alley’s pebbles was still there, along with her skin reddened by the sponge and her hollow eyes, but for the first time in days, he genuinely believed it would fade with time.
And maybe the same would happen to her suffering, leaving behind only a small scar on her eyebrow.
Tears found their way through his lashes, a weight he had tried so hard to ignore crushing his chest with renewed strength.
He hadn’t kept his promise to their father.

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