Chapter 12 #3
‘Perhaps I can,' I say, looking at her.
She snorts. 'You’re cleverer than you look.’ Her caresses quicken. ‘But I’m cleverer. Bring him.’
My eyes flit to the doorway and I pale as Locke enters. They must have come for me. My spirits sink. Have they all been caught?
But then I look closer. He’s not being pulled along, nor is he in chains. He’s not sporting any injuries from a tussle with the guards, and his expression is amused.
He smiles, letting out a light chuckle as his eyes meet mine. ‘Your face. Surprised, Kismet? Did you really think I was coming to liberate you?’
I say nothing, my stomach rolling.
No. It couldn’t have been a trick…
‘Gods, I really believed you’d see through me, but I must have played my hand better than I thought. The truth is, I didn’t even need to track you,’ he laughs. ‘I knew exactly where you’d be brought when Warrior took you.’
He looks at the fae female and bows at the waist. ‘My lady Fiana.’
Tears threaten to track their way down my cheeks, but I push them back. I won’t give him that.
He was the one feeding them information all along? Was that how the slavers got through Halsford’s wards? How they knew where I would be?
‘How lovely of you to come,’ Fiana croons. ‘Take her back to the cells, Warrior. I’ll call for her later.'
'But can't I just—' he whines.
'No!’ Fiana’s eyes flash at Warrior. ‘She is mine now. If I find that you have used her for any of your little vendettas, I'll have your head.'
Warrior grabs me by my hair with a snarl and drags me from the room, past Locke, who doesn’t even look at me.
He takes me back down into the bowels of the fortress without a word, throwing me into my cell, and closing it with a loud clang.
He stomps away, and I hear the door bang when he leaves.
I go to the back of the tiny space, and slide down the wall, tuning out the sounds of the other humans here. I hear Claudia speaking, asking me something, but I ignore everyone including her.
Was Locke Fiana’s agent all along? Was anything he ever said the truth? Tears leak from my eyes and drip onto the rotten reeds covering the floor as I curl into a ball, and finally begin to realize how bad this is.
Locke has betrayed me again, and the others as well. All the humans here.
I should never have trusted him.
He took me for a fool again, and now I’m in the Dark Realms, this time, with no escape.
LOCKE
‘You’re a powerful mage,’ the fae female says low, her eyes taking me in, lingering on my broad shoulders. ‘Warrior did tell me, but even if he hadn’t, I can feel it like a river raging beneath the surface.’
I chuckle, letting my own gaze linger on her for just as long. ‘Not as powerful as you, my lady Fiana,’ I flatter her.
Her eyes narrow a bit. ‘You’ve heard of me, then.’
‘Of course. The fae lady who’s built an empire is whispered of from Merediea’s Citadel to the most outlying villages of the Eighteenth Circle. I came to find you.’
‘Did you?’ She sounds skeptical.
I smile smoothly. ‘I did.’
‘Warrior has counseled me not to trust you.’
I smile, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. ‘Of course not. I tried to kill him when he stole from me. Those scars he now wears on his face are courtesy of my hand, and then he spent weeks torturing me in the pits for it.’
I shrug.
‘Suppose he and I are square after all that. But, then, you don’t really care how we feel about each other, or why. You don’t trust him either. I’d hazard a guess that you don’t trust anyone at all, my lady Fiana.’
Her silence is telling.
I meander around the room, taking in the priceless fae artifacts that litter the surfaces, simply sitting on shelves out in the open in a casual display of power.
Some of these trinkets I recognize, having seen them in books during my schooling in Dead City.
Each one is worth my weight in gold. Some haven’t been seen in centuries, but they’re just lying around, strewn about like baubles from a peddler’s stall.
‘I am a spy for the Underhill.’ I glance at her. ‘But of course you know that already.’
Fiana glides across the room and sits daintily in the chair behind the round desk, looking at me expectantly. ‘Warrior may have mentioned something.’
I wave a flippant hand that could be read as me working a conjure, and I note that she doesn’t even tense.
Either she’s a fool who’s overconfident in her abilities, or she is a very powerful magick-worker herself.
But when I reach for her magick with mine, it’s markedly different from anything I’ve ever sensed before, and yet strangely familiar.
She doesn’t feel like a mage, but where have I felt this brand of strength before?
The Harbinger.
Her power feels like Lia’s, or at least very similar.
And a bit like Bryn’s now I come to think of it.
‘There was a time,’ I begin, ‘just after Gaila, the First, rebuilt the Underhill, that its standing as a formidable realm in its own right was practically a given. But that power has been squandered over the past two decades. The Houses squabble amongst themselves. Their intrigues and games, fears and bureaucracy, have made them weak. Every fae of the Underhill can see it, though they pretend that they cannot.’
Fiana sits back, her eyes guileless, but I’m not fooled for a moment. She’s assessing me deeply. ‘Go on.’
‘When I heard stories of what you’re building here in the Dark, I knew I had to find you. Join your court if you’d have me. The Underhill is a snake eating its own tail. It won’t last much longer. Soon, it’ll be ripe for you to take it, succeed where Varrik failed.’
Fiana regards me for a moment, and then smiles darkly. ‘What makes you think ruling the Underhill was ever my plan?’ she asks.
I’m thrown for a moment, though I hide it well.
Wasn’t this what everything has been about?
The Underhill has locked itself down in fear of this fae female for years, sure that she was going to try to find a way into the fold by any means necessary as her mentor, Varrik, did.
Countless spies like me were sent out into the Dark to thwart her over the years, many never returning.
‘Is it not?’
She makes a noise between a snort and a scoff. ‘The Underhill was Varrik’s endgame, not mine. I have much bigger plans.’
I sit down opposite her, wondering if she’ll speak freely. She’s arrogant enough, I decide, sure that she and her empire are infallible. She won’t see me as a threat despite her flattery regarding my magick.
‘Would you care for refreshment?’ she asks.
I chuckle. ‘Wasn’t your servant just blinded by Fate?’
She smiles. ‘I have many who would beg for a place at my feet, to cater to my every desire. Male and female alike.’
‘I don’t doubt it, my lady. Your court is impressive, much more so than the Underhill has ever been. Surely, it can’t get much bigger, or more powerful. It makes me wonder what your endgame is if it’s not to take the Underhill.’
She preens slightly under my praise, but I pretend I don’t notice.
‘Look out of the window,’ she says lightly. ‘Tell me what you see…Locke, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
I give her an indulgent smile as I rise and go to the window.
I gaze out over the land, trying not to look as shocked as I feel.
There are humans everywhere. Thousands. They toil in fields as far as the eye can see.
There are rows and rows of uniform buildings behind high walls where I see more of them laundering at great water-filled vats, or at outdoor looms, or spinning wheels. There’s barely a guard in sight.
‘Gods,’ I make myself chuckle. ‘I thought there was a slave scarcity in the Dark once the Breach to the Light was closed. How many do you have?’
‘Here? Three thousand. But I have farms all over the Dark, now. The humans will breed like rabbits. The key is to make the females feel safe.’
I glance back at her. ‘But they’re such timid beings. How do you ensure such a thing?’
‘Various conjures. What else? Each of those creatures down there is happy. They want to be here. They’re glad they can help their betters. I give their inane little lives meaning.’
‘Impressive. But how can you possibly work conjures that span so far, and in multiple Circles? It’s such a vast distance.’
‘True.’ I feel her come up behind me. ‘Varrik never reached such heights, not like I have.’
‘And yet you still covet the Black Lake?’ I ask.
She sucks in a short breath. ‘We are well informed, aren’t we?’
I smirk over my shoulder at her. ‘It stands to reason. That’s why you wanted the Kismet.’
She doesn’t answer for a moment. ‘The location died with Varrik. If I’d known that, I’d have made sure he lived so that I could torture it out of him, but,’ she shrugs, ‘I’ve risen well enough with what remained of his experiments along with some of my own.’
‘Then what do you believe the lake can give you?’
The look she gives me is hard. ‘The means to destroy the Light all together.’
I raise a brow. ‘Surely you don’t believe Gaila, the First, would allow such a thing.’
‘Gaila is gone, both Ceres and she fell in their battle over Kitore’s towers.
No true Gods protect the Light now. I will reap what I like from it, and then I will destroy it so completely that not one grain of sand remains of that fucking place.
I have enough humans here. It’s no longer needed anyway. ’
‘Then why steal from it even now? Why bother with Halsford.’
She moves slowly across the room and takes an apple from the table piled high with various foods.
‘Because I can.’
She laughs.
‘And because some members of my court like to deal in the ones who quail and fear. They take delight in breaking them. Who am I to deny them their pleasures?’ she asks casually.
‘Besides, taking Halsford, the village the Harbinger built, amused me. The Underhill sees now that their enemies are much closer than they imagined. They were already terrified. Now, I have little doubt that they’re running about their fold like headless chickens. ’