5. So, a king and a mage walk into a cell
SO, A KING AND A MAGE WALK INTO A CELL
ENORA
Even though I didn’t remember falling asleep, the echoing thunk of my cell being unlocked jolted me awake. It must have been during my thorough examination of my scarred flesh after my jailer left, based on how I was upright and cross-legged, my pant leg bunched up around my thigh.
Another dark fae man was entering my cell, a little taller than my first jailer.
A little opposite in all other ways too.
His skin was a much paler shade of gray that reminded me of pewter, with his hair long, half-pulled back, and dark as night.
Two ridged horns curled back from behind his hairline, both black and glossy and glinting with metal rings.
And his eyes? Fuck me. They were a vibrant shade of amber, set against black pools and framed by dark lashes. I’d barely registered every hair on my body standing on end when he said, “Enora Wynn.” Not a question, but an annoyed statement.
I swallowed. “The one and only.”
His sigh was palpable, but he said nothing, gesturing behind him instead, where my other jailer reemerged with a couple of objects, including a small stool.
Tall, Dark, and Terrifying set it near the foot of my cot, and I pressed myself into the corner as he lowered himself onto it, elbows braced on his knees and a cloth bundle in his hands.
He gave me a stare I was sure could have melted stone before he glanced back over his shoulder.
“Leave us,” he said to my hovering jailer. “And keep an eye out for Jasper. He wasn’t in his crypt, so Eilir’s gone to Embervale for him.”
“Of course, my liege.”
Footsteps crunched on gritty floors before the screech and thunk of a heavy metal door echoed, and my new captor turned his startling amber gaze back to me.
I fought against a lump in my throat and didn’t dare reach for the mostly empty mug beside my cot.
Instead, I wrapped the awful, scratchy blanket as tightly as I could around me while he watched in predatory silence.
This was a routine I knew well from our various prisons in Odessa.
I’d just gotten the friendly soldier, whose sole purpose was to whittle my defenses down—to make me feel an ounce of comfort—and now, I was dealing with the bastard who was going to break me for fun.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re the warden here?”
He smirked. “In a way, yes. And I have a plethora of questions for you, Miss Wynn, but I’ll start with one I could not fathom your answer to.”
“Okay,” I intoned.
Given the state of my memory, I hoped this man was prepared to be disappointed.
“These are the most banal crown forgeries I’ve ever seen. Weather. Sightseeing. Clothing.” He scoffed as he unfolded the cloth parcel and tossed a stack of letters onto my cot. “Why were they found in your belongings?”
“Forgeries?” I stared at him before I snatched the pile and thumbed through them. As I thought, they were the letters I had packed from King Callum, my dreadfully betrothed, which begged the question of where the rest of my belongings were. “They were sent to me in Odessa, from Callum.”
The man cocked his head at me before he huffed, “When?”
“Over the last few months. My brother, the King of Odessa, arranged for my…” Goddess, I felt sick trying to say it, “betrothal, to…to your—”
He held up a hand. “It didn’t take a genius to decipher what pretense was driving their contents.”
I nodded slowly, because what the fuck else was I supposed to do?
With every passing second, I was growing more and more confused, and I wasn’t confident this wasn’t just the depths of some messed-up dream. It didn’t help that my head still ached, especially when I tried to recall much of anything, and this warden was looking increasingly amused with me.
“And this…betrothal,” he said slowly, like he was rolling the word around on his tongue. “Is that why you were found farther away from Odessa than any of your god-touched people should ever be?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes, it was…”
He tutted as he leaned back on his meager stool, working his shoulders as if they were bothering him. “And she speaks of her trespassing with such nonchalance.”
He was officially out of his fucking mind.
“Trespassing? We were doing nothing of the sort.” Despite how my stomach had churned again, I sat up a little straighter. “The Wastes are unruled.”
A patronizing smile spread across his face. “Yes, they are, Miss Wynn. A fair argument, if the remnants of your camp hadn’t been spread across a lovely little intersection of the Wastes, Lastlight, and Grimmoria.”
“That’s not right,” I muttered, more to myself than anything, as I pressed my palms to my eyes. “No…we never…”
While my memory didn’t feel reliable, I did not have a single recollection of spending any substantial time in the Wastes, never mind nearing Grimmoria or the fucking woods. I knew for a fact any route we mapped would have been clear around that terrifying expanse.
When I dropped my hands, he was watching me, his dark, angular brows raised in expectation.
“We didn’t cross the Wastes. I’m sure of it.”
He huffed, but it rolled into a half-hearted chuckle as he shrugged.
“I’m not sure how else I can spell it out for you.
The sprites found you—still smoldering, I might add—crawling through the roots of the ashclaws on the edge of the woods in Grimmorian territory without an escort.
Conveniently, you were at one of the only sections our border wall does not extend through, which makes you a trespasser, Miss Wynn. ”
Flickers of knotted and warped black boughs lit up in my mind, but I had more pressing concerns. “Where is the rest of my party being held? They’ll tell you the same thing I am.”
I felt uneasy asking about the fate of my travel companions, especially after how my first jailer dodged that question as if I’d come at him like a bat from a mountain cave. But if anyone could corroborate my recount or shed more light on my struggling memory, it would be them, especially Streja.
“Well…” He clearly hesitated, all but validating fears I had not yet fully defined, but he didn’t get to elaborate. The steel door from earlier gave another grinding protest only a breath before noise echoed off the stone walls.
It garnered all my warden’s attention.
“Oh, no. No. Absolutely not,” came a masculine and incredibly annoyed rumble.
Something came next that barely sounded like words, just a high-pitched jumble I didn’t catch, but it made my warden huff a laugh, and the low richness of that noise echoed off a strange place in my chest.
“Eilir,” the male voice bemoaned. “I say this with all the care in Irica, but please, fuck off for a bit?”
Another squeak of noise.
“Ow!” came the same male voice again before it sounded like a struggle broke out, and I finally heard that suffering metal door slam shut.
Footsteps crunching over the gritty stone floors traveled closer and closer, until a figure eclipsed the flickering blue light reflecting in the hall. Had I not known better, I could’ve sworn my warden’s shoulders lost a bit of the tension they were so carefully strung back with.
I couldn’t tell if the man who’d entered the cell block was a warrior or a mage, not with his heavy black and gray garb, a mixture of leather plate and draped cloth, that seemed equally suited for both lines of work.
It was of little help that he wore a hood dripping with unnatural shadows, leaving only the hard line of his stubbled jaw and thin-drawn lips in clear view. Even when he reached for my cell door to nudge it open the rest of the way, his hands were gloved. A cloaked executioner, maybe. What a joy.
“Apologies, my liege,” he muttered as he tucked himself into the darkest corner, hands clasped behind his back. “Got tied up in Embervale.”
“Don’t worry. You’re in the nick of time.” My warden turned his unsettling amber attention back to me and grinned.
“I was just about to explain to Miss Wynn here that the king she thought she was betrothed to has been dead for years.”
It took a long moment for those words to wash over me.
“Dead? That’s…impossible.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I saw the contract myself. The signatures, the seals. I…”
“All forgeries, I’m afraid. And good ones, I’ll give you that much.
But, fortunately for me, and less so for you, I suppose, King Callum is dead.
” He retrieved a dagger from a sheath strapped to his thigh and tossed it at my feet.
“By that blade, actually. I had a hell of a time separating the vertebrae of his neck once I’d stabbed him through the heart, but it did the job. ”
My attention bounced between him and the dagger for longer than I’d care to admit before I rasped, “You…?”
His horns shone a little in the dim light of my cell as he straightened and said, “Killed my father? Yes, I did.”
The awful, feverish flush from earlier came back in a nauseating rush, turning my skin tacky, as what this man was setting out in front of me clicked together like pieces of the sharpest, most uncomfortable puzzle cutting away at my fingers.
I swallowed. “And that makes you…?”
“The King of Grimmoria? It does.” He pressed his right hand to his chest, and his lopsided grin came as a flash of white teeth against pale pewter skin. “Maksym Blackspire, at your service.”
Fuck me. I stared at this Maksym as he observed me with unnatural stillness, betraying the way I was sure he was ready to strike if I even hinted at making a move he did not approve of.
Dark fae of all varieties, after all, were known for their martial prowess—for being just a little faster and a lot more brutal than the other races on the continent, plus their infamous abilities with magic, especially compared to a lowly Odessan like myself.
I was hard-pressed to believe a young king of such brutal people wouldn’t be as fit as his soldiers, especially if he was the one responsible for taking his father’s head. I was screwed in so many ways.