TWENTY-FOUR
A silver spider crawled across a wooden rafter in the soil ceiling.
I’d never dared to look at the dungeon during the weeks I’d spent at Cloud Castle. Now, it was all I’d seen for hours. Perhaps days. Time was absent here. Souls, too.
The six cells surrounding me were empty. Just like the dream I’d had of Atakan and his prisoner, the seventh stood in the center of the underground tomb. Reserved for prized prisoners like me, it seemed.
Three torches between the other cells lit a walkway encircling it.
Aged footsteps imprinted the soil. Some bare feet, most boots. I’d attempted to use an incessant drip coming from the shadowed corner of the dungeon to mark time in the dirt.
After counting two hours, I’d given up.
Atakan had vanished again right after delivering me. Not a word more had been said as he’d snatched my hand, nor when the dark void had spat us out onto the hard-packed earth of the dungeon. I could only assume he’d taken Meadow with him, and I hoped he knew that harming her would be extremely unwise.
Though gaining any sort of advantage while locked within a cage of iron would be difficult.
I stepped close to the bars, trying to peer into the slim hall between the two cells across from me. Stairs leading to the castle above would undoubtedly be found through there. No one lurked in that darkness. No guards. No sinister princes.
Some dungeon , I inwardly scoffed.
Eventually, I stopped caring about protecting the black gown I’d been wearing since Vane’s breakfast meeting. I sat on the hard dirt, wondering if he’d been made aware of my disappearance and what he’d make of it.
I’d yet to decide what to make of it myself. Only that I would make something of it.
Maybe the Seelie kingdom was far more dangerous for me than that of the Unseelie. But I’d escaped the king who’d manipulated my heart while plotting my father’s demise, so I welcomed the danger.
Something within me awakened and uncoiled, as if finally free, although I was very much trapped.
The iron bars didn’t burn my skin from my flesh as they would a full-blooded faerie. It still burned as if boiled water splashed my fingertips when they tapped the bars.
Reclined across the ground, I touched them again to remain awake. The jolt of pain did the trick. As did footsteps, measured and crunching, approaching from that dark hall.
I returned to drawing in the dirt. “Finally.”
“Have you missed me, dread?”
Lazily, I drawled, “So much that torture won’t be necessary, monster.”
Atakan’s steps ceased. “Pity. I was looking forward to hearing you moan again.”
That earned him a slight smile. But I continued creating patterns in the dirt, unsure I was ready to look at him. To meet those luminously cruel eyes. “Where’s Meadow?”
“The felynx he forced upon you?” That crisp amusement had left his voice. “I’ll tell you when I know.”
It worked just as he’d intended. I sat up, pushing hair from my face and glaring.
He tucked his hands into the pockets of his long black coat, the collar standing high at his bladed jaw. His lips parted, curving into a devious half smile that hitched my heartbeat.
But those emerald-flecked bronze eyes…
They were almost completely green by the time he spoke. “Aren’t you a riveting sight.” His near-white hair had been combed back, unable to soften the displeasure hardening his menacing features. “Did you wear that dress for him?” His head tilted. “Or for me?”
“Had I known you’d come to collect me to liven up this dank place…” I gestured to the cells around me and grinned. “I’d have worn something far brighter.” I added, “And warmer.”
“For him, then,” he determined. “And after you’d discovered his treachery.”
I said nothing. Not only because I didn’t want to speak about Vane, but because there was no need.
Atakan had already figured it out. “Still so bold.” He began to walk the perimeter of my cage. “So daring.” His hands clasped behind his back. “Did you think you could seduce him into taking you back home to dear Bernadette?”
My teeth gritted.
He hummed a laugh. “Your cooperation is required if you wish to leave this dank place.”
“I don’t see how these questions are of any use to you.”
He continued circling. “They are more useful than you could possibly know.”
It became difficult to hold his gaze, and I found I couldn’t when I whispered, “I tried to convince him to take me on a scouting journey. I couldn’t just do nothing. I had to try to leave.”
“Then how fortunate you are that I came to your rescue.”
I made a show of peering around. “I’m afraid I’ve yet to see anything fortunate about it.”
He ignored that. “I would have vanished into that ghastly castle, of course, were it not for the wards seeping from the stone.” He feigned a shiver. “Alas, I spent hours hiding in a fucking tree with your felynx until you finally came to find her.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why bring me back here?”
“Many reasons,” he said. “The primary one being that you are my betrothed, and your disappearance has created some rather nasty consequences.”
“The alliance between our kingdoms is broken, Atakan.”
“Maybe.”
My eyes narrowed, seeking his.
He smirked. “Now…” Crouching in front of me, he hissed as he dragged a finger down an iron bar. “Tell me how the Unseelie king managed to snatch you.”
I looked at his melted flesh, the skin stuck to the iron bar. Then I met his eyes. “A featherbone.”
He blinked. Bronze darkened his gaze, and his lips parted ever so slightly before he asked, “And just how did you come across an item so rare?”
“It belonged to my mother,” I supplied easily. “My father gave it to me when I left Nephryn.”
He stared for seconds that slowed my heartbeat, as if weighing the truth of my words.
But I had nothing to hide. I didn’t care about anything except surviving what had happened and what would come. To do that, I needed to get out of this dungeon.
I needed him to trust me—as much as a creature like Atakan was willing to trust anyone.
He seemed to take great pleasure in saying, “Your mother was Unseelie.”
“No.” I frowned. “My father told me she was Seelie.”
He tutted, rising to stand. “Likely because it suited his endeavors. Seelie cannot use featherbones, dread. They’re heirlooms of a sort.”
My heart sank.
Though it didn’t matter which kingdom my mother hailed from, it mattered now. It mattered because I’d been given to the Seelie royals as a half-Seelie faerie to wed their prince.
“Oh no.” Atakan exhaled heavily. “It seems I’ve unearthed a little secret.”
I hissed, “I didn’t know.”
“Evidently,” he drawled. Again, he walked around my cell. “Secrets are dangerous things, Princess. Luckily for you, I like to collect and tuck them away for safekeeping.”
I didn’t doubt that, and I loathed to think of all the secrets he’d collected to use against people.
“So the featherbone took you to the mighty King Vane.”
“Yes.” Just hearing his name made my chest constrict. “Which is why he instantly believed I was who he needed. It delivered me straight to him.” I fought against the invasion of the memory. “Straight to his chambers.”
At that, Atakan laughed.
A delicious yet chilling cadence that transformed his ethereal features into something deceptively captivating. “You ended up in that castle because featherbones harbor ancient and powerful magic, but due to the wards, even it had its limits. Without his aid, no one could vanish in and out of Vane’s lands, so the featherbone appeased the magic of the wards it bested by taking you to him.”
My chest hollowed.
Now, courtesy of the gaps in the wards, anyone could vanish to and beyond The Bonelands.
Anger pushed the bubble of guilt until it popped, and searing resentment surged through me.
“Yet he sold it to you as some great feat of fate.” Atakan sighed, smiling up at the cobweb-dusted rafters as he walked, slow and almost merrily. “And you bought it.”
I gave that no attention and said, “Then the wards would have ruined the featherbone.”
“Just as they destroyed those who tried to use their magic to break through them,” he confirmed silkily. “The featherbone collects morsels of soul from each generation it’s passed on to, strengthening its magic, and those fragments protected you.”
He’d known. Vane had known why the featherbone had been rendered useless.
“It’s another way of vanishing, if you will.” Atakan lifted a long finger before him. “Except it will take you to one place only.”
I stared at that finger and failed to ignore the memories of it touching intimate places.
“Home.” He stopped walking. “Why did you seek to go home, dreaded Mildred?” His next question grazed like a sharpened blade. “Did you finally grow tired of sparring with me?”
I tried to recall how I’d felt at that moment. On the night I’d donned my sister’s coat and discovered the forgotten featherbone within the pocket. A coat I’d left behind in Ashbone Castle. “Honestly, I cannot really say.”
Perhaps Atakan believed me. Perhaps he was merely waiting for me to further indulge him.
Frowning at his knee-high boots, I gathered my ruined braid over my shoulder. “I’d just overheard a conversation you’d had with your father about the wedding, and I put on a coat in your rooms to stand on the balcony. The featherbone was in the pocket, where I’d kept it since leaving home.”
“You were sulking and didn’t know what it could do,” he surmised.
Though he was right, I glared up at him. “What use is keeping me down here when I’m willing to talk?”
“Maybe I simply enjoy seeing you caged.” His smile was wolfish. “Wholly at my mercy.” But then emerald reclaimed his eyes, that smile fell, and his jaw clenched. “You fractured the wards, dread.”
That constant dripping became the only sound. The weight of what that meant seemed to snuff all the air from the damp dungeon. It became hard to breathe.
But I wasn’t in love.
I could have been. It was undeniable that Vane had indeed stolen some part of my heart. Just enough to ruin the wards. Not enough to get rid of them.
Regardless, love wasn’t anywhere near what I felt now.
All I felt was patient fury.
So Atakan could stare at me with something shockingly close to condemnation and betrayal. He could even loathe me more. I had no qualms about sparring with him. In fact, doing so forced me to realize how much I relished it.
I tipped my head back and smiled. “They might be damaged, but they haven’t fallen, Prince.”
He didn’t return my smile.
He slipped his hands into his coat pockets, and continued to stare down at me. A stare so bright yet so dark. His clenched jaw shifted, the only fracture in his veneer.
Then he stalked back to the shadowed hall, his long coat sailing behind him.