Chapter Forty-Three
ABBY
THERE’S NOTHING BUT more white walls, white flooring, and white ceiling when I emerge inside the new room Mason led us to. The only difference is that I’m in a short hallway instead of a tiny room with a black portal underneath me.
There’s no door here, either.
This is creepy, and I press my lips together as I look around the bare hallway. Something about this doesn’t feel right, and I’m pretty sure we’ve just walked into a trap.
“Where is everybody?” I ask.
Kie walks down the hallway, his eyes flickering every which way. He looks puzzled, which isn’t inspiring much faith. I’ve gathered that this is his first time meeting with Zaha, but given how much he seems to know about the gods, I expected him not to look so fucking confused.
I cross my arms over my chest, unimpressed as Kie spins at the end of the short hallway and returns to me. I hope Zaha turns down his request for help. If I—a lowly, useless human—am unimpressed with him, I can’t even begin to imagine how the gods will feel. I hope Zaha chooses to punish Kie for bothering her. I hope she burns him alive.
I also hope she and her brothers decide they don’t want me.
“The experience here is different for everybody,” Mason says.
I spare him a quick glance. He’s returned to his usual staring, but now his annoyance is directed at me. I don’t understand it at first, but then I realize it’s because he saw how I was looking at Kie. He saw how I was snarling at the faerie prince.
He’s offended on Kie’s behalf. How forked-mate romantic.
Kie does another lap of the room, this time dragging his hand along the wall in search of another hidden doorway. My heart lurches when he glides over the secret one we just walked through, his hand not sinking in as it did before. Are we trapped here?
My feet move of their own accord, bringing me to the doorway. I try to walk back through it, but I’m met with a solid wall. We’re stuck in this room.
An immediate bout of claustrophobia works down my spine, making me shiver. Kie says the gods love to play with people, but I wasn’t anticipating it would be like this.
“Is this some sort of puzzle or something?” I ask.
I’ve participated in a few escape rooms, and it’s safe to say I’m not the best at them. I went once with coworkers who, for reasons beyond me, fully expected me to solve the entire thing by myself. It’s probably because I work with numbers and they assumed that means puzzles are my thing, but they were sorely mistaken.
We solved only a few of the puzzles before our hour ran out, and the front-desk woman did a poor job holding back her laughter as she explained what we had done wrong and what we were supposed to have done instead.
I’ve vowed never to participate in another, but I’d be willing to do a thousand escape rooms alone if it meant I could go home.
“I don’t know,” Kie admits. “The gods don’t particularly enjoy when we visit them, so getting time with them can be tricky.”
Is he kidding me? Kie should’ve left me behind, tied me to a tree or something so I couldn’t escape. Maybe a shifter would have wandered past and helped me. I don’t know, but it’s a better option than this. Zaha’s going to kill us, and Kie’s selfishly dragging me down with him and Mason.
I shrug off my backpack and sit on the white tile floor. This is Kie and Mason’s thing, and I’ll be damned if I help them figure out how to reach the gods and offer me up.
“What happens if we can’t get out of this room?” I ask. “We can’t return to the portal, so do we just die here?”
Kie shrugs. It’s not the response I’m looking for.
I don’t have much food left, and my nut container is officially empty. Kie and Mason are currently in better shape than me, so I’ll most definitely be the one who dies first. Will they eat my body once I’m gone?
I wouldn’t put it past Mason to shift into his animal form and munch on me. He’d probably play with my femur like a dog with a bone.
“It’s not uncommon for people to come here and not return.” Kie clears his throat before continuing. “But we don’t have any insight into what happened to them. It’s possible they died before meeting the gods, but I like to think they made the gods mad and were killed.”
Wonderful.
Mason doesn’t attempt to find an exit like Kie does. He stands in the center of the hallway and peers around instead, his cold gaze calculating. Kie continues to make laps of the hallway with his hand pressed against the wall. If he hasn’t found a hidden door yet, I doubt he will.
“You see anything?” Kie eventually asks Mason.
The shifter licks his lips. “No.”
Kie stops walking, his head hanging. He still looks like shit, similar to how Lill looks before she drinks her tea. Opening that portal must have taken a lot out of him. I’m sure it’s intentional.
If the gods don’t enjoy being bothered, as Kie said, then it makes sense that they’d make their portal hard to open. Only the strongest are welcome to visit. Only the strongest are welcome to die in this sterile fucking room.
I uncross my legs and lean back onto my hands, getting comfortable. I have the feeling we’re going to be here for a while.
“I think this is a sitting room,” Mason decides. Kie cocks his head to the side, which Mason takes as his cue to continue. “When people come to speak with you, they aren’t given an immediate escort to your office. They’re made to sit around waiting until you’re ready to see them.”
Kie sucks his cheeks into his mouth, and I hold back a laugh. The fancy, pompous prince is being made to wait like a sad, unimportant little rat. It’s fitting, and I love that I get to be here to witness his humbling.
“Zaha likely just stuck us here to keep us out of the way until she’s ready to meet,” Mason says.
This is beautiful. It’s the best parting gift I could’ve ever asked for, and I’m thankful to be given a small something to bring me joy before I’m sold like cattle and forced into a life of servitude. I should probably get used to these small pleasures.
For all I know, they might be the only ones I ever experience again.
Kie frowns as he contemplates Mason’s suggestion, and after a minute, he lets out a loud huff and sits on the ground. I’ve never been in a waiting room that doesn’t include seating and magazines, but I guess comfort isn’t a priority for the gods.
That’s not a good sign for me.
Things grow unnervingly quiet as we wait. There’s always life in the forest, always something . Usually, it’s the quiet crunch of our footsteps or the chirping of the animals nearby. This room is dead silent.
It makes me more aware of my quickly beating heart and shaky breathing than I’d care to be, which brings about a sense of panic. Outside noise brings distraction, and I need that. I need to do anything other than hear my thoughts.
My head isn’t a happy place. Especially not lately.
I glance at the bare wall to my left. What would happen if I smashed my head against the white plaster? The room could use some color, and red is one of my favorites. I could paint it with my blood, and if I’m lucky, I could give myself enough brain damage that I’m no longer aware of what’s happening around me.
I wouldn’t care about being sold to a god. I wouldn’t care about leaving my family behind. I wouldn’t care about Lill dying. That sounds blissful.
If I still had my knife, I could attempt a DIY lobotomy.
It’s risky, but the worst outcome is I die. At this point, that doesn’t seem so bad. I highly doubt Kie and Mason will let me kill myself, though. They’re too quick, and they’d stop me before I could inflict any real damage.
My death would ruin their precious plans.
“How long is this going to take?” I ask.
Nobody answers me—not even Kie, who’s almost always desperate for conversation. The pretty prince must be stressed. How unfortunate.
I lie flat on my back and stare at the ceiling. It’s incredible how well-lit the room is despite no visible bulbs or windows, and I find myself squinting as I search for a light source. I don’t see any, though, and I quickly grow bored and give up.
It’s silly to search for similarities between here and the human realm. They’re gods, for fuck’s sake—of course their way of living is going to seem foreign. Even the most intelligent humans would probably have trouble adapting to a place like this.
There’s no way of knowing how much time has passed, but it feels like a lot. Hours, maybe.
I run my fingers through my hair, trying and failing to think about anything other than my current predicament. Other than the god we’re waiting to meet. My sanity is slipping.
Kie taps his fingers against the ground, sending a quiet thudding resonance around the room. Every noise is amplified here, even the sound of my thighs brushing together or Mason scratching the top of his head.
It’s enough to drive anybody insane.
I can’t take this for much longer.
“I have to pee,” Mason eventually says.
Kie’s tapping fingers pause. “Hold it.”
If Mason pees anywhere in this room, I will scream. Judging by Kie’s scowl, the faerie will be doing something similar. The room smells like crisp nothing, and I’m going to lose my mind if Mason ruins that with his urine.
He probably has excessively smelly pee, too. I bet all the noble ladies laugh about it behind his back. I know I would if I were one of them.
“Can you open another portal?” I ask, turning toward Kie. “In case Zaha decides to let us rot in here.”
Kie sucks his lips into his mouth, looking like he’s debating whether or not he wants to answer me, before shaking his head. I let out a dramatic sigh and turn back toward the ceiling. Kie’s useless.
Time stretches. My hope of ever getting out of this room gradually dwindles, continuing until I’m convinced I’m going to die in here. That’s just my fucking luck, and it tracks with how these last few days have gone.
At least Kie and Mason will die, too. It’s a small blessing.
I dig through my backpack and eat my last few pieces of food. It tastes nowhere near as delicious as it did my first day in the faerie realm, and I practically have to choke it down, but it kills a few minutes.
I chew with my mouth open to annoy Kie and Mason. They don’t say anything about it, but I can practically feel their anger pulsating around us. Good .
Something crackles through the air, and I lurch upward to see what it is. Kie and Mason do the same, their reactions annoyingly quicker than mine. We all turn toward the far end of the narrow hallway where the noise comes from.
The plain, white wall now has an archway in the center of it. It’s opaque, with nothing to see beyond it but darkness. So fucking ominous.
Kie’s on his feet in a heartbeat, ready to keep moving. I linger where I am, dread rendering me motionless. I can’t do it. I can’t walk through there.
They can’t make me.
Large, gloved fingers curl around my bicep. Mason’s hand.
“Come on.”
He pulls me up, and I flinch as I stumble to my feet.
“Fuck you.” I rip my arm out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me.”
Mason releases me, and I take a giant step away from him. Kie doesn’t say anything about my interaction with the shifter, but he looks like he disapproves. It’s all I need to see, and I hurry closer to Kie in the hopes it keeps Mason and his unwanted touching at bay.
I’m tired of this, and I wrap my arms around myself as Mason walks up alongside us and stares at the new doorway. I guess Zaha’s ready to see us.