Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
The echo from the kick with steel toed fucking boots reverberated through me the second I woke. It spread from my skull along my vertebrae until my teeth chattered and the pain left a chill behind.
But I woke up to an empty room. And I wasn’t sure if I appreciated it or not.
Twin windows let in sickly puce-colored light, slants of it marking a track across the floor. Four plain stone walls stretched to a tall ceiling devoid of decoration.
Calling it a bedroom would be generous.
Everything of worth had been removed except for the bed itself. A twin mattress draped in black cotton sheets cradled me and when I sat up, I immediately went back down.
Had I been drugged?
My face pulsated and the interior of my head became a soccer stadium full of kicking and yelling and drama.
Left leg throbbing in a ghost of memory of its wound, I swung it over the bed. And instantly slapped a hand to my chest at the tear of agony.
“Holy sh—” Pain stole my voice.
The ache in my ribs kept them pulled tight. Fingertips probed the area. My chest was healed, the bullet wound gone. I breathed again until air no longer struggled to reach the bottom of my lungs.
So someone had healed me, more than likely Dorian Jade himself, but the gunshot wound had been serious enough to leave lingering effects.
Iron bars on the windows let in enough natural light, but the bars prevented the windows from being a viable escape route.
I kept a hand pressed to the wall and limped over to stare at the gardens outside.
From this vantage point, the wings of a U-shaped manor house bracketed an ornate design of paths and primrose hedges below.
Beyond were trees and fields swaying sideways with wind, none of them with the same careful manicure as the grounds around the house.
The trek from mattress to window threatened to bring me to my knees. Suffocating on nothing, I sat heavily on the bare window seat.
Things I knew so far: Someone had brought me to a manor house or mansion of some kind.
My lungs weren’t doing well and hadn’t healed properly or entirely.
I wore no magic-damping cuffs, but the runes etched into the bars on the window were the same as on the manacles the king used.
Tracing a finger across their pattern, I reached for my power and came up with a blank space.
Where the hell had Jade brought me?
Outside, a cloudless sky waited for dawn. The sun had not risen yet, and the woods beyond the gardens were still, primed but not quite ready, like the sketch before the artist started painting.
It lacked any kind of life. Nature here lay dormant despite the season as though someone leached the energy from limb and vine.
They’ve brought me back to the human realm.
A gasp sent me off balance and I grabbed a bar for support.
“You bastards.” The hissed curse helped.
Heart stalling, I leaned my forehead against a cool windowpane.
When I’d first arrived in Faerie, everything had an inherent energy of its own, vibrant and detailed. Magic imbued everything with a rich sense of vitality the mortal world lacked, and I never knew the difference until I experienced it.
The lack seeped everything in dullness.
I pulled hard on the bars to jar them loose. A brush of power lingered in my veins, something even the magic-damping runes couldn’t erase. I had to get out of here. My rebels were fighting. They needed me. They didn’t have enough power to overtake the Unseelie camp based on numbers alone.
A single door nestled in an alcove led out of the room. I limped over and threw everything I had at the brass knob and got a tiny wiggle for my efforts.
Both the windows and the door boasted an extra layer of enchantment on them. My magic couldn’t penetrate the glass or wood. Whatever protections had been placed on this room, they held.
The weakness in my body, the struggle to heal, and the damping runes proved a potent combination. It took a toll on my power and my wolf.
Foggy and aching, I crawled my way back to bed, exhaustion setting in from my meager efforts.
Sleep refused to hold me for long. I drifted in and out of murky dreams, as sunlight crept across the walls like hungry vines.
At some point a stranger opened the door. No sooner had I sat upright than they tossed a tray of food down on the floor and bolted, latching the door shut behind them.
Only food, no utensils.
“Like I’d shank someone with a plastic fork,” I grumbled.
I absolutely would try, so they were right to be cautious.
I shoveled porridge down my throat for sustenance rather than taste. The bland oatmeal was easy enough to slurp but the bread roll they’d dropped on the tray fell somewhere between the texture of crackers and charcoal. Not hard enough to do any actual damage except to my teeth.
Sleep found me after the meal, my body’s demand for rest making it impossible to ignore the call. When I opened my eyes again, shadows stretched instead of sunlight and full night had arrived.
Still, Kendrick hadn’t come.
That was why they put me here, wasn’t it? Dorian Jade wouldn’t be caught dead in the mortal realm with his war going on.
I was here for Kendrick, and the pull of his soul against mine scratched no matter what kind of spells they’d employed. I rubbed the scar across my throat.
Staring at the door didn’t make it open.
Still exhausted, I curled on my side, dragging my knees up to my chest against the chill in the room.
I couldn’t remember my dreams. They were a rapid-fire set of images, disjointed, haunting. Running and hiding, fighting and losing. Killing and dying.
The emotional charge made sense even if the scenes didn’t.
Tonight when sleep took hold, the tenor of my dreams changed. I ran through a cloying darkness growing thicker with every slow sprint. I had to get somewhere. Just ahead…
Someone waited for me.
Mike’s face swam out of the gloam with disproportionate and strange features. The knowledge of him clicked immediately. I’d know him no matter what face he wore.
“Mike!” His name echoed back to me in a voice like mine but an octave too low.
I waved my hands to get him to come closer, a desperate plea for him to notice me even though he stared straight through me. I had to get out of the darkness before it caught me. Bad things happened when shadows took on sentience. Bleak terror urged me to run faster—
His features solidified and his mouth opened. Words garbled together in a close enough approximation of speech but entirely incoherent.
I stretched, as if reaching harder for him would solve the problem, as if it would connect us somehow.
His features cleared then warped again, his words a melody out of tune.
The stillness of the astral plane stretched around us as the darkness receded.
Instead of comfort, the quiet brought unease.
Colors flashed and phantom smells drifted.
Music played from somewhere but instead of hearing it, I felt it in my chest, the bullet wound pulsating.
“Tavi?” Mike said my name and the sound was clear as a bell. “Where—”
He was alive, then. Alive and connecting with his soul to find me, astral walking to the mortal realm.
I redoubled my frantic efforts to reach him, to get his attention. “I’m here, Mike!” The world stretched, taffy-like and malleable, separating us instead of bringing us closer together, robbing me of relief.
I woke up drenched in sweat and still reaching for Mike. My arms shook and my fingers slowly curled in on themselves. Nails dug crescent grooves against my palms.
“You can’t find me here.” The thread of my voice held, barely.
He’d been looking, but something about the enchantment on this room, or maybe the fact that I was in the human realm.
Whatever it was, it kept him from fully getting through.
I was completely on my own. At least I knew Poppy had healed his wound and the shadows hadn’t destroyed Mike, too.
I pushed my palm against the shuddering cadence of my heart until it eased. Finally I breathed easier and pushed my legs over the side of the bed.
What was there to do if not try to escape?
My footsteps cut the room in half, then in quarters, moving from wall to wall, window to door.
The bars minced the first light of dawn into pieces. A harsh rattle from the hall prompted breakfast’s arrival, only it didn’t come alone this time.
Kendrick delivered it with a blood-curdling smile that stopped me mid-pace. “It’s good to see you on your feet again, mate. Oh, how I worried.”
He made the label barbaric, the way he curled it around his tongue and bent it to his will.
“We can skip the pleasantries.” And there was no way I’d eat anything he touched no matter how my stomach growled.
Today Kendrick disguised his cruelty in a skin-tight black shirt designed to show off the cut of muscles and inked lines of tattoos. He wore enough earrings in his ears to weigh him down if I were to push him underwater.
If only I had a lake.
He set the tray down carefully at the foot of the bed and edged closer. I refused to budge even when every instinct screamed at me to keep distance between us.
“You’ll show me the proper respect, Tavi,” he murmured, gaze drifting down to my breasts.
Don’t move. Don’t cover up. “What have you done to earn it?”
“I’ve been faithful to my mate.” He lifted a meaty hand to the place where his heart should be.
If he had one. “Which is more than I can say for you. Been screwing around with the monarchy? I never anticipated you would be literal about it, but I suppose a golden-boy prince can entice any bitch to open her legs.”
“Well, then we match, all things considered. How long have you been in bed with King Tywin?” I threw back.
Kendrick scowled, the lines of his face twisting into an abomination of anger. “Careful. I have your friend. You’re aware of that, aren’t you? Or do you find people to be so expendable that you just don’t care?”
“What?”
“Your friend, the one Dorian tortured for information? He sliced her open well, but when that didn’t work, I stepped in. She didn’t make it out of camp before I took her.”
I blanched. Lying sociopath.
Then again…lying sociopath. I couldn’t tell if he was actually speaking the truth or not.
“Melia Haversham.” Kendrick tested her name. “Gifted with intelligence. She’s useful to me. And I’ll keep your precious Melia alive and safe as long as you comply. I won’t break her.”
Yet.
“How fucking dare you.”
Kendrick held his arms wide, inviting me to strike. I had nothing to throw at him, nothing to use to bash his brow into his brain. Kendrick stood between me and the tray as though he’d already read my intentions.
“Why can’t you leave me alone? What do you possibly have to gain for making my life a living hell? You slit my throat. You kidnapped me. You are the worst dregs of humanity and it’s a shame to call you a wolf. Especially when your son was one of the best people I ever met.”
The thought of Onyx sent another wave of grief through me.
I cared about my friends too much. I’d lost more of them than Kendrick would understand.
“I don’t use people the way you do,” I added. “You’re an abomination. You shouldn’t even be alive. Your son had to walk through the Abyss to escape you.”
I threw it at Kendrick, a well-aimed axe, only for him to show no remorse. Not a flicker of emotion made it onto his features.
“Which son? I have so many of them.”
I shuddered and didn’t miss the way his lip curled higher with satisfaction.
The sneer implied I’d be the next sacrifice in his attempt to breed his way into absolute domination.
“Dorian did heal you, but at my request he didn’t quite finish. You aren’t completely healed.” He tsked, a rough rasp of sound as he marked my struggle. “This way you stay weak. Controllable.”
“I’ll never be under your control.”
Kendrick shrugged. “Then I’ll kill your friend. She’s slight enough to make her easy prey, infinitely breakable. And then I’ll move on to the crown prince next.”
How could I believe him?
How could I take a chance not to?
I wasn’t willing to risk Mike or Melia to this monster.
I gripped the wall, the tips of my fingers finding the grooves and clinging until I caught my breath again.
“Fine. You want compliance? I’ll give it to you if you leave them alone.” I stared at my feet so I didn’t have to see the vicious smile of triumph slashing his face. “Your word on it.”
“Good. Get some rest. We’ll marry tomorrow. The priest is already on his way,” Kendrick replied.
“What? Marriage! No. No way. Why…why do we need to be married when we’re already mated?”
Kendrick winked and the bottom dropped out from under me. He slid his hands into the pockets of his too-tight pants, swaggering toward the door and closing it with a snick of sound.
Leaving me alone and even more miserable than before.
I was no stranger to sacrificing myself to save the people I loved. So why did the idea of marrying this man—this man who had slit my fucking throat—somehow make death seem like a better option?