Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
My heart pounds as I watch a portal form a few steps away. They shouldn’t be back this soon. Why are they back this soon?
The glittering blue rectangle rises to its full height. Then a room becomes visible on the other side.
I can barely breathe as Orion, Galen, and Grey step through the portal and back into the meeting room in Orion’s castle that I have been pacing impatiently for the past ten minutes.
After my disastrous rescue attempt in Hunter’s Marsh last night, I barely managed to make it back to the portal without being killed.
When I did, I was in such bad shape that poor Grey ended up getting blood over half of his bedroom.
Orion was so furious that I had blackmailed Grey in that way that he made me grovel for his permission to let Haldia heal me.
Which, to his complete surprise, I did without question.
I don’t give a fuck about my pride. I just needed to be in perfect health today so that I can help get Draven back.
Lyra and Alistair stand up from where they were sitting at a table by the wall when they see Galen, Orion, and Grey walk through the portal. Across the room, Isera is leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest and her sharp eyes watching our returning friends.
“What happened?” I demand as soon as they’re through the portal.
Morning sunlight streams in through the windows of the elegantly furnished meeting room, and one of them has been left open a crack.
Air smelling of morning dew and blooming summer flowers swirls in through the small opening, making some of the documents that are scattered across the tables flutter.
In the distance, the waterfalls that surround the Unseelie Court’s capital rumble steadily as the water flows down into the lakes below.
Grey closes the portal behind him and, after a nod from Orion, bows and then leaves the room.
“She left a note,” Galen at last replies to my question.
His expression is grim as he holds up a folded piece of paper. My heart starts beating faster.
“She wasn’t there?” I ask.
Galen shakes his head. “No.”
This morning, we agreed that we would sneak back into the Golden Palace in the Seelie Court.
Since Jessina no doubt despises staying in some backwater village which lacks all the comforts that she is used to, we guessed that she would return to our castle in the Seelie Court instead.
She might have been able to knock Draven out when she first captured him, but transporting him all the way back to Frostfell would no doubt be difficult.
And besides, I doubt she would ever leave Bane behind.
As unhinged and cruel as she is to everyone else, she does seem to genuinely love her mate.
But apparently, she didn’t go back to stay in the Golden Palace. Instead, she left a note in there, no doubt assuming that we would return there as well.
“What does the note say?” I ask, staring at the piece of paper in Galen’s hand while my pulse continues thrumming in my ears.
“It’s a time and a meeting place.
“For what?”
“For a hostage exchange.” His violet eyes are serious as he sweeps them over all of us. “She wants to trade Draven for Bane.”
My heart skips a beat. “Good. Let’s do it.”
By the table, Alistair draws his eyebrows down in a skeptical frown. “Can we trust her to actually do it, though?”
“We’re not doing it,” Isera growls from the wall on the other side. “We’re not giving Bane back.”
Anger spears through me as I turn to glare at her. “We need to get Draven back.”
“So we rescue him instead. That way, we get both Draven and Bane.”
“That might be difficult,” Galen interjects, glancing between the two of us.
“As reckless as Selena’s rescue attempt last night was,” he gives me a pointed look before softening slightly and continuing with, “it was actually a great way of testing their defenses. Now, we know that Draven is guarded by not only their elite soldiers, but also by Lavendera. Which means that dragon steel is no doubt in play. Since she cut off Gremar’s hand to remove the dragon steel we put on him, she now controls that piece.
And she has no doubt put it on Draven’s wrist instead. ”
“Which means that if we try to rescue him,” Orion picks up, his gaze sliding to me and Isera, “the same thing that happened when we tried to talk to Rin Tanaka will happen again. Except that this time, it will be Draven who is trying to kill us.”
“Not to mention that we would need to pull all of this off before the hostage exchange deadline she gave us, which is in three hours,” Galen finishes.
By the wall, Isera’s expression has darkened into a murderous thunderstorm. Cold fury laces her voice as she once again grinds out, “We are not letting Bane go.”
“We don’t have any other choice,” Galen replies while shaking his head at her. “If we want Draven back, we need to agree to trade.”
“Which brings us back to my question,” Alistair interrupts before Isera can retort. He shifts his gaze between all of us while raising his eyebrows pointedly. “Can we actually trust Jessina to go through with the trade? What if it’s a trap?”
“Oh, it’s most definitely a trap,” Lyra says.
We all turn to stare at her.
Outside the windows, two birds make playful loops over the manicured garden. Their cheerful chirping drift in with the warm breeze through the small gap in the window.
Lyra lifts her shoulders in a shrug in response to our questioning stares. “It’s Jessina Iceheart. All she ever does is to scheme and plot traps and try to outsmart people. Of course she is going to have something else planned for us at that hostage exchange.”
“See?” Isera stabs a hand in her direction. “Yet another reason for why we shouldn’t go through with it.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. We’re definitely going through with it. She won’t spring her trap until after she has Bane, so we need to have a plan for how to get Draven, and ourselves, out of there as soon as the exchange is done.”
Orion flicks his wrist. “Not an issue. Grey will open a portal, and as long as we have that open right behind our backs, it won’t matter what kind of trap she is planning to spring.”
“Just make sure that Grey is staying on this side of the portal,” I begin. “So that she can’t target him.”
“Of course I will order him to remain here.” He shoots me a pointed look. “As opposed to you, I actually think things through before I go around blackmailing someone else’s subjects into opening portals so that I can rush into danger without a proper plan.”
I just roll my eyes at him. For someone who is supposed to be all kingly and refined, he can be surprisingly petty.
“We’re agreed, then?” Galen picks up, pushing the conversation back on track. He looks from face to face. “We don’t risk another rescue attempt. Instead, we trade Bane for Draven.”
All of us nod. Well, everyone except Isera. Rage burns like blue flames in her eyes as she leans against the wall, glaring at us all in silence.
“Alright, good.” Galen gives us all a nod. “Then we need to start making plans for different scenarios. Depending on how she—”
Isera shoves off from the wall and stalks across the room.
We all watch in stunned silence as she storms out the door and throws it shut behind her.
I understand why she’s angry. She hates Bane more than anyone else.
But we need to get Draven back, and she probably understands that as well, which is why she didn’t argue when we made the decision.
I still wish she would’ve stayed and helped us plan out the different scenarios, though.
She’s usually levelheaded in a way that most of the rest of us aren’t always.
I keep glancing towards the door while we sit down and start planning how to handle different traps that Jessina might try to spring on us, but Isera doesn’t return.
Once we’re halfway through the first plan, pain suddenly spikes through my mate bond.
I gasp out loud.
The others whip around to stare at me, but I can barely see them because the room around me sways when another burst of pain slams into my chest through the mate bond. Panic and rage sear through me.
Pushing up from the table, I shove my chair back so hard that it topples over. Wooden clattering fills the meeting room behind me as the chair hits the floor, but I’m already running. My feet pound against the dark blue carpets as I race through the castle and towards the dungeons.
Pain stabs through the mate bond over and over again.
I throw myself down the stairs to the dungeon.
My heart leaps into my throat when I find the Unseelie fae who were supposed to be guarding Bane lying unconscious on the dark stone floor. Sprinting the final distance, I burst into Bane’s cell.
Isera doesn’t even turn to look at me. She just rams her shard of ice into Bane’s thigh again.
Bane, who is still shackled to the metal chair and drugged with a potion from Haldia so that he won’t be able to focus enough to access his magic, hisses in pain but then tilts his chin back and laughs up into Isera’s face.
“Keep going, little slave,” he taunts, his voice slightly slurred due to his drugged state. “When we win this war, I will pay you back for every stab.”
Isera just slams her ice shard into his thigh again and twists it.
A gasp of pain rips from his throat, and his eyes slide in and out of focus from the agony and the drugs.
Another spike of pain hits my chest through the mate bond.
“Stop!” I scream at Isera. “She’s taking it out on Draven.”
She just stabs him again.
He throws his head back and gasps before letting out a maniacal laugh. “Did I tell you that I made your mother crawl naked through our entire throne room while my whole court watched and laughed and kicked her as she crawled past on her hands and knees?”