Chapter 5 #2
On the ground, the faint line of runes remains, but the prisoner stands directly behind it at my back, pressing as close as the marks allow.
“You’re a curious little human, wandering this far.”
I try to turn and look at him, but I can’t. My feet are frozen to the ground, and my neck won’t move. Every muscle is stiff, as if I’ve been turned to stone. “How are you doing that?”
“I’m not.”
The air thickens as it fills, then thins as it drains, as if the prison itself is breathing.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” The prisoner’s voice is cracked and weak.
“I had no other choice.”
“There is always a choice.” He clicks his tongue.
“I think I’d rather take my advice from someone whose choices didn’t land them in here, if you don’t mind.”
He chuckles. It’s a smooth melody that swims through the air. I’m aching to turn and look at him, but the prison doesn’t want me to.
How can a prison want anything?
“I don’t have the answers you’re looking for,” the prisoner says.
Something sharp shoots up my side, and I wince.
“You’re hurt.” There’s no sympathy in the prisoner’s tone.
“You’re observant.”
He hums, and I swear I feel the vibrations through the thin magical wall that sits between us.
Footsteps rustle from somewhere in the darkness, and I feel him stiffen behind me. “You’re being followed.”
I try to nod but can’t. The prison is leading the rebels straight to me.
Maybe it’s decided this is where I’ll meet my fate.
Ahead, I watch as the darkness shifts. Tunnels change, and stairs twist, bending to guide them to us.
Somehow, they’ve managed to stay right on my heels no matter how deep I’ve gone.
“How did they find me?” The question is more to myself, but the prisoner answers.
“How would they not? I smelled your blood the moment you stepped inside these walls. It’s a beacon for them.”
That’s an unsettling realization. How many others stir knowing I’m here?
“Many.”
“Over here.” A rebel’s voice cuts through, breaking the hold the prison has on me and allowing me to move.
I step back just once, realizing my mistake the second I do because my back strikes a bare chest. The prisoner’s deep inhale buzzes against my neck now that I’ve stepped into his cell. If the Fae who followed me in aren’t going to kill me, he certainly will.
Glancing down, I see my foot isn’t fully past the markings, but I’ve smudged one, breaking the barrier.
“Gods, the trouble you’ve awoken,” the prisoner whispers in my ear, and I shiver.
His voice should set me on edge. And while it does, it’s also calming.
Familiar.
A figure steps out of the darkness ahead of us. Two rebels dressed in blood-soaked white cloaks set their gazes on me before letting their attention drift over my shoulder.
“You’re not—”
“Dead?” The prisoner finishes the rebel’s sentence. “Not yet.”
A rebel charges. His movements too quick for me to decide how to defend myself. Especially when I left my mother’s sword in the street, and I don’t have anything to fight back. I stay unmoving, certain he is going to kill me.
Until the prisoner moves faster than the rebel.
He spins me around until he’s between us.
And for the first time, I’m looking into his eyes.
They’re golden, glowing like lightning against a black sky.
They spear through strands of his messy golden-brown hair, stealing my breath.
A deep scar cuts across his right eyebrow, trailing over the ridge of his nose and down his left cheek, where it webs out like a forked river at the end.
Fae can’t have scars. They heal too quickly for anything to permanently mark them. But this male does.
Could it be the lack of magic on Alyssium?
The Beating turning him mortal?
If that’s the case, how have none of the other prisoners had marks like him?
The prisoner moves, smelling like a storm about to unleash. Like the first drop of rain before the sky starts to pour. Like the wind clacking its teeth. I shiver as he towers over me.
And then he’s gone.
The prisoner turns just as more rebels step out of the split in the shadow.
He moves like death and war. Unforgiving.
In a blink, he’s stolen the blade from one rebel’s hands and planted it in another’s throat.
One of the rebels makes a move for me, and the prisoner spins around, fighting like he hasn’t been weakened by centuries spent locked in a cell.
He slices the hand that reaches for me clean off, his teeth gritting.
The rebel’s eyes widen as he looks up at the prisoner. “You can’t. She’s—”
The prisoner drives the blade through the rebel’s chest. “She isn’t yours.”
He moves like lightning strikes. At one end of the space, then the other. Moving in blinks. Taking down one rebel after another. Heads roll, blood sprays. And I’m frozen, watching the battle unfold, confused as to why the prisoner is fighting for me.
My head swims, either from the gruesome sight or blood loss, and I stumble back, deeper into the cell.
Another rebel slips from the shadows, directly behind the prisoner. I barely open my mouth with a squeak of a warning before the prisoner turns and shoves a dagger up through the rebel’s throat.
“I appreciate the heads-up.” He smirks, glancing over his shoulder at me.
My eyes narrow. “That’s not what I was doing.”
“Liar.”
There’s no time for a sassy comeback as more rebels flood in.
But the prisoner takes each one. Bones snapping and bodies piling.
One rebel loses his head before I have the time to blink.
Through blurry eyes, I watch the hazy figures fall.
Until the last one crumples on the ground, and the prisoner turns to face me.
Golden eyes gleaming in the darkness.
“Thank you.” My heart races, and I probably shouldn’t thank him until I know he doesn’t just plan on killing me next, but either way, he saved me from them.
The prisoner opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t get the chance.
Something shifts in the darkness behind him, and before I can warn him, a blade slices through the center of his heart.