Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Joy
The bathtub water turned cool and there were absolutely no bubbles to cover my nakedness. I was on full display just like I would have been on a human trafficking stage where customers could call out bids for me.
Ari released my hair abruptly. “Get up.”
No, he couldn’t possibly be serious.
Heat swelled on my cheeks, blending with my tears. I looked at the guards leering at me, waiting for me to stand. Anticipation flickered in their eyes like hungry flames. Maybe I could use my shadows to cover myself, warp darkness around my exposed skin like a cloak.
“My lord.” Brynn’s voice cut through the thick tension as she stepped forward, her head bowed in perfect deference. “Please allow me to dress her. The queen has specifically ordered her brought to her private chambers. She doesn’t like to be disappointed.”
My chest tightened. Brynn was protecting me—putting herself between me and Ari’s wrath. She didn’t know how dangerous he was, what he was capable of. I shook my head slightly, trying to catch her attention, but she kept her focus on Ari.
Don’t. Please don’t.
Ari’s icy blue eyes bore into Brynn for a long moment, the silence stretching like a taut wire. “I don’t want to disappoint the fair queen. Tend to her.”
My blood went cold. That wasn’t surrender—that was strategy. The way he looked at Brynn, the cruel curve of his smile...he was planning something. He’d let this go for now, but Brynn had just painted a target on her back. And there was nothing I could do to protect her.
Ari put his hands on the edge of the tub, his fingernails extended, and his cold eyes flickered over me, making me want to sink deeper into the tub. “Use your shadows against me again, and I’ll kill your precious vampire enforcer.”
Terror and rage warred inside me. He had me cornered—Enzo’s life as leverage. But I wouldn’t break. I’d find another way to fight back.
I stared in his eyes, my lower lip trembling. “I promise…I promise I won’t.”
A cruel smile spread across his lips, cold and predatory. “Now be a good little slave and get dressed.” The words dripped with venom as he stepped back then crossed the room to the door. He motioned for the guards to follow him out of the room.
The minute the door shut, the dam broke. Tears erupted from me like a flood—tears of rage at being deceived, tears of humiliation at being seen and manipulated, tears of bone-deep terror for Enzo. My body convulsed with sobs I couldn’t control, each one ripping through me like a stabbing wound.
“That bastard,” I choked out between gasps, my hands shaking as I pressed them to my face. “He pretended…he pretended to be you. I thought…”
My voice cracked completely. The image of those thorny vines tearing into Enzo’s flesh flashed in my eyes.
How much more could he endure before Ari’s torture broke something vital in him?
I had to get back to him, had to convince Marsha to free him—even though I knew it was hopeless.
Marsha was just as cruel as Ari. She’d enjoy hearing me beg and refuse anyway.
“How?”
I lowered my hands and sniffed. “He has the power to shift into anything or anyone he wants.”
Brynn knelt beside the tub, her hands—her real hands this time—gently rubbing my back. “This place is cruel,” she said, and I could hear something in her voice that hadn’t been there before. Understanding maybe. “Especially for the conquered. But you’re not alone anymore.”
I scrubbed my face with the back of my trembling hands, the salt of my tears mixing with the cooling bathwater. My skin was raw, both from crying and from the lingering shame of Ari’s deception burning through me like acid. “What do you mean by conquered?”
Brynn’s gray eyes studied my face, and pity flickered there. “This Ari didn’t tell you much about this world, did he?”
I shook my head, water droplets scattering from my damp hair. “No. Just the queen and that he needed her army to restore the Dark Demons back into our world.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. I had to find a way to disrupt Ari’s plans but keep the appearance up that I would go along with him.
She reached for a thick, cream-colored towel from a nearby shelf, her movements careful and deliberate, and held it out to me. “Here.”
I took it gratefully, wrapping it around myself before stepping out of the tub. The cool air hit my wet skin, sending fresh shivers racing down my spine. I dried myself quickly, turning slightly away for privacy. The towel smelled faintly of lavender—a small comfort in this nightmare.
“In my world, we have five different kingdoms,” Brynn said quietly, her voice taking on a distant quality as she busied herself gathering clothes, giving me space.
I looked at her—plain gray wool dress, rough hands, posture still noble despite years of servitude—and shivered. “What happened?”
Her shoulders tightened like a bowstring. Beyond the heavy wooden door, the faint echo of guards’ boots pulsed through the corridor like a heartbeat. Brynn’s eyes went far away, gray irises shimmering with ghosts of the past.
“We were conquered by the House of Cormac. ” Her voice was flat, emotionless—the tone of someone who told their story without breaking. “Both my parents were beheaded. My brothers and I were forced to watch while the crowd cheered the fall of our house.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh my god. How old were you?”
“Four.”
My heart shattered. Four years old. The age when children should be playing with dolls, not watching their world end in blood and steel.
She cleared her throat and forced herself back into motion, ushering me to an ornate chair before a golden mirror. “Please sit so I can do your hair.”
I sat down numbly. My mother was dead. My father had been possessed and destroyed by a demon; Angelo had been forced to kill him.
And I’d watched my brother nearly die, helpless to save him.
I knew exactly what it felt like to lose everything.
To have your family ripped apart by forces you couldn’t control.
Brynn’s parents had been murdered. Mine had been destroyed in different ways, but the pain—the grief—that was the same.
She began combing my hair with steady, practiced hands, her face smoothing into an unreadable mask. I hesitated, then forced out the question lodged in my throat. “Are your brothers here too?”
“No.” Her proud gaze met mine in the mirror. “I was eight when they escaped.”
My heart leaped. “Escaped? They left you?”
“We were separated. They couldn’t get to me. They didn’t have a choice. I was attending Queen Alanna’s bath. Well, she was a princess at the time.”
I thought about the forest Ari and I passed through and wondered if they were watching us like Robin Hood. “So they’ve been hiding all this time?”
An idea struck me. If Brynn’s brothers were organizing resistance, hiding from the queen...they’d want to know about Ari’s plans. About the army he wanted to bring to our world. They might even help me stop him—if I could find them. “Where did they go?”
She shook her head slowly, her expression troubled.
“I don’t know. No one does. They have searched for them for years, but my brothers are clever—and desperate.
They vanished into the wilds beyond these walls, even her illusions can’t reach,” Brynn said quietly.
“Some days I tell myself they’re safe. That they’re gathering strength, waiting for the moment to strike.
” Her voice wavered, the first crack in her calm facade.
“Other days, I wonder if they’re even still alive. ”
The pain in her eyes was too familiar. I’d worn that same look when my brother was missing—when I thought him dead, or worse, suffering somewhere I couldn’t reach him.
Her hands tightened briefly on the comb. “But if they are, the queen will never stop hunting them. And she will use me as bait until the day they return.”
The words hit too close. I’d been used as bait too—Ari had taken me to control Enzo, to manipulate the people I loved. Being reduced to leverage, to a tool for someone else’s agenda...I knew that violation intimately. “I’m sorry. No one should have to live like that.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Seven.”
“Seven brothers,” I murmured, stunned.
I swallowed hard. “Why did House Cormac want to conquer your family in the first place?”
Brynn set down the comb, then picked up a soft cloth and began patting my hair dry. Her soft touch reduced the tension in my muscles but her next words broke through the relaxation.
“Because my family had something they wanted.”
My brow furrowed. “Power?”
“Yes. But not the kind you can see.” Her pale eyes met mine in the mirror, sharp and unyielding. “Our magic was unique. Rare. Dangerous.” She lowered her voice, and the hair on my arms stood up. “Like yours.”
My breath caught. “Mine?”
Brynn nodded. “The shadows run in my bloodline just as your magic runs in you. House Cormac feared us because we could do what no one else could—tear through their illusions, reveal the lies they’ve built their throne on. So they came for us.”
She stepped closer. “And now they see you the same way they saw me. The queen knows what you are, Joy. She knows exactly what your power can do. And she will twist it, use it, or destroy it —whichever serves her best.”
Brynn’s lips curled in bitter rage. “That’s why you’re here. You’re not a guest. You’re a weapon. Just like I was.”
“I know.”
Brynn clasped my shoulder gently. “Listen, you have to be from the House of Whitveil. Your father or mother had to be from this house.”
The tips of my fingers tingled, then numbness slid up my arms. I flexed my hands but couldn’t feel them. “My father was from here? How could he be with my mother in my world?”
She shrugged, equally at a loss. “I don’t know. But I suspect whoever he was, he was able to open a portal and escape into your world.”
How was he able to do that? The Unseelie Mafia king! Maybe he knew who my father was.
“Do you know Keir Rankin?”
Brynn froze, her hand holding the brush in mid-air. “How do you know him?”
My pulse raced. “He’s the Unseelie Mafia King in my world.”
Brynn’s expression hardened into pure ice. “Here, he was High Chancellor—Cormac’s right hand. He orchestrated my parents’ death and the fall of my house.”
Shitshitshitshit
Keir Rankin was a dangerous man—a monster. The kind of man who would force a four-year-old to watch her parents be murdered.
That didn’t match the Keir I’d met. Dangerous, yes. Powerful, definitely. But deliberately cruel to a child? I struggled to reconcile Brynn’s story with the man who’d helped Enzo rescue me so many times.
Did Enzo know? Or worse… did Enzo know exactly who he really was dealing with?
My throat went dry. What if Keir and Ari were working together?
“Brynn,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Can the House of Cormac control plants—make them move or… change?”
Brynn’s brows furrowed as she continued to brush my hair. “Their magic is illusion-based, but…possibly. Why?”
My pulse thundered. Possibly.
Marsha’s magic had torn into Enzo before. Everyone believed she was the one twisting the vines around him now, squeezing the life out of him inch by inch.
But… what if we were wrong?
Keir had been there in the bayou, fighting Ari—or at least pretending to. What if it had all been an act?
Maybe he had been feeding Ari the magic to control those vines—the same vines that were even now coiled around Enzo, slowly torturing and killing him.
My throat closed, a sob crawling its way up.
NoNoNoNo
This couldn’t be true.
I had to get back to my world. Before Keir murdered Enzo, my brother…all of them.