Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Joy
Pain—unbearable, soul-crushing pain—pumped through me, blinding me to everything else. My vision went white at the edges, my ears ringing with the echo of my own screams. My legs quivered like broken branches in a storm, and the last bit of strength abandoned me completely.
I collapsed hard, my knees hitting the stone floor with a sickening crack. My arms stretched out, trembling as they bore what little weight I had left. Every breath felt like swallowing glass.
“Damn it, Alanna!” Darius’s voice cut through the haze of agony, hoarse with rage. “Leave her alone! Can’t you see? She’s spent! There’s nothing left!”
I lay my head on my arm, my whole body shaking as I panted like a dying animal. Tears mixed with sweat, creating salty rivers down my face that dripped onto the cold stone beneath me.
“She does look rather...fragile,” Queen Alanna mused. “Perhaps we should give her a moment to recover. We wouldn’t want her to break completely. Not yet.”
Rough hands grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. Through the curtain of sweat and tears that blinded my eyes, I couldn’t make out Ari’s features clearly—but I could feel his presence, could sense the sick satisfaction radiating from him like heat from a flame.
“I quite agree.” Ari’s eyes glowed with satisfaction. His complete lack of empathy crushed the last flickering ember of my defiance. “I don’t think she’ll give us any more trouble unless she wants a repeat of what just happened.”
The threat was like a sword piercing my heart. My body screamed in protest at even the thought of enduring that torture again, every nerve ending still on fire from what they’d already done to me. But deep in my battered soul, a stubborn spark of rebellion still burned.
I wouldn’t do what they wanted me to do.
The thought was a lifeline in the darkness, something to cling to when everything else had been stripped away.
But I refused to say anything or beg for mercy—that would only give them more satisfaction.
Let them think they had broken me completely. Let them think they had won.
“Hang her up next to Darius,” Queen Alanna commanded with casual indifference, as if ordering tea.
She moved to place the blood-soaked whip among a collection of other instruments of torture mounted on the wall—a horrifying gallery I hadn’t noticed before through my pain-hazed vision.
Some were stained dark with old blood, others gleamed with cruel newness.
The sight made everything worse. But even as despair threatened to swallow me whole, I held onto one precious truth: they might control my body, but my spirit—battered and bleeding though it was—remained my own.
Ari undid my manacles with rough, impatient hands and half-dragged me across the stone floor to where Darius was still chained to the wall.
My shoes scraped against the cold stone as I struggled to keep up, leaving scuff marks in my wake.
Darius glared at Ari with pure hatred, his silver eyes blazing even as Ari ignored him completely, focusing on securing new shackles around my raw wrists just below the binding bracelets I still wore.
My battered body slumped downward, my arms screaming as they bore my full weight. Every muscle fiber felt torn, every bone ached with a deep, throbbing pain that seemed to echo in my very soul.
Darius suddenly spat at Ari, the glob of saliva hitting him square in the face with a wet splat.
Fury exploded across Ari’s features like a wildfire, his face twisting into something monstrous.
He wiped the saliva off with the back of his hand, his movements slow and deliberate—a predator savoring the moment before the kill.
Then his hand cracked across Darius’s face with bone-crushing force, splitting his lip wide open.
Blood splattered against the stone wall. “You’ll get far worse if you ever try that pathetic stunt again,” Ari snarled through clenched teeth.
But Darius just smiled through the crimson rivulets streaming down his chin, his grin wide and unsettling—almost gleeful despite the pain. “Ah, but it would be so worth it for another performance like that.”
Queen Alanna sighed with the weary patience of a mother dealing with an incorrigible child. “Darius, won’t you ever learn?”
He tilted his head back and forth like a curious bird, then flashed her a blood-stained, maniacal grin that belonged in nightmares. “Learn? Oh no, Your Majesty. I’m afraid I’m a little mad, you see. Mad as a hatter, one might say. And mad people? Well, we never learn the proper lessons.”
The queen put her palm on his broad naked chest. “Oh, darling. If you would just say yes—”
“Never,” he said as he lifted his head higher.
She curled her palm into a fist. “So be it. You’ll stay here and rot.”
He winked. “You’re such a romantic diplomat.”
Her face curled into an angry sneer. She slapped him across the face—hard enough that his head snapped to the side and blood welled at the corner of his mouth—then turned on her heels. “Come, Ari. We leave at dawn.”
Ari pinched my cheeks tightly. “Be ready, Joy. Or you just might lose your head.”
He followed the queen out of the dungeon, and the heavy door slammed shut with a bone-jarring clang that echoed off the stone walls. The sound of their footsteps faded, leaving us in suffocating silence broken only by the occasional drip of water somewhere in the darkness.
Pain overwhelmed me like a crushing wave, stealing my breath and my vision. My knees buckled, and I collapsed to the cold marble floor, darkness swallowing the anguish whole. Sweet oblivion wrapped around me like a blanket, mercifully pulling me away from the horror of what I'd just learned.
"Joy? Joy, can you hear me?"
The voice seemed to come from miles away, pulling me back from the void.
My eyes fluttered open reluctantly, and immediately the crushing weight of reality crashed back down.
The pain wasn't just physical anymore—it was the agony of knowing my father and brother were alive, in danger, and going to die because of me.
"I'm here," I whispered. My throat was raw, as if I'd been screaming. "I just passed out. How long was I unconscious?"
"A couple of hours at least."
I stared at the stairwell. Hours. I'd lost hours—unconscious, vulnerable, with no idea what the queen or Ari had done while I was out. Had they changed their plans? How much time did I have left before the invasion? Before they used me to open the portal?
“They’ll be coming soon.”
Darius shifted as close to me as his chains would allow, the metal links scraping against stone with a harsh, grating sound that echoed in the dungeon. “Joy, I swear on my brother’s life—I’ll get you out of here.”
I gave him the weakest of smiles, my split lip throbbing with the effort. “You can’t, but I might be able to get you out of here.” The words came out hoarse.
He frowned, confusion flickering across his battered features. “How? You’re as weak as a newborn kitten. You can barely keep your head up.”
“Not everything is as it seems.” Please let me be right about this. The hope was as fragile as spun glass, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
Please come forth, I begged silently, reaching deep inside myself for any spark of power.
I drew on my shadows with desperate intensity, straining against the binding bracelets with everything I had left. But they were shut down tight, locked away behind magical barriers I couldn’t break. What if I was wrong? What if there was nothing left?
Fighting back tears of frustration, I began to work my wrists frantically within the manacles. The metal bit into my already raw skin. I gritted my teeth and kept going. Wiggle, twist, pull. Blood made my hands slippery, which was both helpful and terrifying.
My breathing became labored as I worked, sweat mixing with the tears I refused to let fall. Come on, come on. I twisted my hand at an impossible angle, feeling bones grind against each other, ligaments stretching to their breaking point.
Finally—finally—my pinky finger slipped free of both the manacle and the cursed bracelet. The small victory sent a jolt of hope through my battered body.
He frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Watch,” I whispered.
A wispy shadow hovered around my pinky. Darius stared as if mesmerized. The shadow then swirled toward his manacles. It dipped into the lock. Beads of sweat leaked down my forehead as I tried to unlock it.
Nothing happened.
I was certain my thumping heart would burst right through my chest. The silence stretched on, mocking my desperation.
Pleasepleaseplease, I begged whatever power might be listening.
Then—click.
The sound was tiny, almost insignificant, but it seemed to echo off the dungeon walls like thunder. Hope exploded in my chest.
Darius twisted his arm experimentally, and his wrist slipped free of the manacle with startling ease. He examined his liberated hand as if it were a venomous snake that might bite him. “Damn,” he breathed. “How did you do that?”
I panted heavily and rested against the cold stone wall, my body drained from using the powers. “You might say a witch woke up my dormant power.” The words came out bitter, laced with exhaustion.
His mouth fell open slightly, his eyes wide with wonder as he looked at me. “That’s one hell of a power.”
My chest tightened with dread. “Alanna told me my supposed father—Morden Grimshaw—possessed that power. Have you ever heard of him?”
“Sorry, no.” He studied my face with growing concern. “You act like you don’t know him.”
“I don’t. My father was Louis DuPont, or at least I thought he was. He was human.” A tear slid down my cheek, hot against my cold skin. “He was a good man. This place…”
“Makes you mad. Believe me, I know. Nothing seems real,” Darius said gently. “Alanna may or may not be telling you the truth.”
“She has a magic mirror and showed me my supposed father and brother.”
His face fell, sympathy flooding his features. “The talking mirror doesn’t lie. It can’t. It’s compelled to show whatever the owner orders it to show.”
“But the queen said she could make it lie.”
“You think the queen is trustworthy?”
“No.” I swallowed hard, my throat constricting. “Then they were my father and… my half brother?”
“I’m sorry, but yes.”
I took several deep breaths, thinking of the images in my mirror. All those years, Mom and Louis had let me believe he was my father. And all along, my biological father had been an Unseelie deserter who'd abandoned his own people. Had he even known about me?
But I couldn’t worry about that now. I had to get Darius out of here before it was too late.
I sighed shakily and forced myself to concentrate on his other restraint, my tiny shadow already moving.
It slipped around his remaining manacle with fluid grace and once again disappeared into the lock mechanism.
The seconds crawled by like hours. One heartbeat...two heartbeats…my lungs burned as I held my breath.
Another soft click shattered the silence.
Darius burst free completely, his chains clattering to the stone floor. “I’ll get you out of here,” he said fiercely, immediately moving to my restraints. He wrapped his hands around my manacles and yanked with all his supernatural strength, muscles straining.
The metal didn’t budge. If anything, the binding bracelets seemed to glow brighter, as if feeding off his efforts.
“You can’t, Darius.” Exhaustion weighed down every word. “I barely managed to get my pinky out of this bracelet. The magic is too strong—it’s designed specifically for me. There’s no way you can get me free.” I met his desperate eyes. “Leave while you still can.”
“No.” His jaw set stubbornly. “I’ll come back for you, I promise. My men—”
“Your men?” Hope flickered again, fragile but growing.
“Yeah.” His silver eyes blazed with sudden fire. “There’s a small group of us that have banded together against the queen. We’ve been planning a rebellion for a while. I just have to get word to them, tell them where you are.”
The massive door creaked open with the groan of ancient hinges.
Panic exploded inside me like a bomb. “Go!” I whispered urgently. “Now!”