Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Air escapes my lungs in a huff as I’m thrown through an iron door and into a prison cell, hitting the stone floor hard. Rolling over on my back, I drag in a deep breath while Grey and Hana are shoved inside as well. Both of them are now wearing iron collars too.
Beside me on the floor, Isera and Orion are just lying there, staring up into the dark stone ceiling. Neither of them has recovered enough strength to sit up yet. Grey drops to his knees next to Orion while Hana slides down the wall to my right and draws her knees up to her chest.
“My king,” Grey begins, his hand hovering uncertainly above Orion’s arm.
“Don’t,” Orion rasps. His voice is worryingly flat and completely devoid of emotion.
“Haldia will be able to fix it. As long as we get back to the Unseelie Court before the wounds have fully healed, she will be able to fix it.” His right eye is still locked on the dark stone ceiling as he once again repeats, “She will be able to fix it.”
My heart clenches. Even if we are able to get back to the Unseelie Court while the wound is still fresh, I worry that Haldia still won’t be able to heal his eye.
If Jessina had only cut through it, sure.
That would definitely be fixable. But is it even possible to grow an eye back when it has been carved out fully and destroyed?
I’m not sure if even Rin Tanaka with her powerful healing magic from the Orange Clan would be able to accomplish such a feat.
But then again, I’m not an expert on healing magic, so there might still be hope.
Another stab of pain hits my heart as I glance at Orion’s face again.
There has to be hope.
There has to.
“It’s high time you experience what being held captive is really like,” Jessina declares as she strides into the room, her silver skirts swishing around her.
Anger crackles through me, and I snap my gaze to her. “What it’s really like? We already know. We’ve been captives all our lives!”
“And then, we treated you well. We showed you kindness and mercy that your race does not deserve.” Her pale gray eyes flash as she grabs me by the collar and yanks me up from the floor before shoving me down so that I’m sitting with my back against the cold stone wall instead.
“But when you held my mate captive, you tortured him.”
Steel glints in the dim light of the cell as she raises her knife again.
“Like this,” she snarls.
And then she drives her knife right down into my thigh and twists.
A scream shatters from my throat as pain crackles through me.
“And this,” Jessina growls.
Agony spikes through my shoulder as she rams the blade through it.
Black spots dance before my eyes, and my vision swims when she twists the knife before yanking it out again.
She’s shockingly strong. I’m wearing my black fighting leathers, and she just shoved the blade straight through the thick fabric.
“Over and over again you stabbed him,” Jessina continues. “I know. Because I could feel it through our mate bond.”
On the floor, Isera snaps her gaze to us and opens her mouth. But only wheezing sounds make it out of her throat since it still hasn’t healed after her furious screaming. I meet her eyes for a second before simply shifting my gaze back up to Jessina.
Isera and I both know that she was the one who stabbed Bane like this when we held him captive. Not me. But she can’t tell Jessina that since her voice is still broken. And I don’t want to tell her that, so I keep my mouth shut as the vengeful empress raises her knife again.
Pain pulses from the wounds in my thigh and shoulder, but I just grit my teeth and glare back at Jessina while she positions the blade over my other leg.
“My love,” Bane suddenly says as he strides in through the door.
Jessina stops right before she can drive the knife into my thigh and instead turns towards him. It takes all of my willpower to suppress a breath of relief.
“We still need her to be able to walk, remember?” Emperor Bane continues, his voice casual.
Annoyance flits across Jessina’s face, and she clicks her tongue, but she does stand up straight away and leaves me sitting there by the wall without inflicting any new injuries.
Coming to a halt in the middle of the cell, Bane sweeps his gaze over all five of us broken and exhausted fae on the floor before he meets Jessina’s eyes again.
“I’m starting to get tired of always having fae around,” he says. “After we win this war and kill all of these insubordinate fae responsible for it, why don’t we just leave the rest of them trapped there in the Seelie Court to fend for themselves?”
Jessina frowns. “What?”
“We started all of this because we wanted to get away from the fae. And now, we have spent our entire lives surrounded by them. I’m sick of it.”
“I hate them too. But without life slaves, we will no longer be immortal.”
“If that’s the trade-off, perhaps it’s worth it.”
Hope flutters in my chest. First, Bane hesitated when they were attacking us with ice flames earlier. Then he looked conflicted after Jessina cut out Orion’s eye. And now…
I stare at Bane, trying to read the expression on his face.
Maybe those memories that Orion showed him earlier, Bane’s own memories mixed in with ours, had some kind of effect on him.
“What has gotten into you?” Jessina demands, staring at him as if she doesn’t even recognize him.
And that tiny flicker of hope in my chest is crushed into oblivion as Bane’s demeanor immediately changes. His shoulders straighten and that ruthless glint returns to his black eyes as he flicks a look full of disgust down at us before meeting his mate’s gaze again.
“Nothing. I just…” He shakes his head. “I’m just so sick of breathing the same air as these people. So let’s finish this.”
“Of course.” That annoyance has cleared from Jessina’s features now that Bane is back to normal. “Did you bring it?”
He nods.
My pulse thrums as Bane holds up a small piece of metal, shaped kind of like a bracelet with a small piece missing so that it can be wedged onto someone’s wrist.
Dragon steel.
Even though all of us are wearing iron collars, and therefore can’t channel our magic through it, he still holds it in a thick piece of leather so that it won’t touch his skin.
I stare at that crude dragon steel bracelet. I would recognize it anywhere. It’s the one that Draven was wearing when we did the prisoner exchange. The one that Jessina took back right before she killed my—
Grief and regret crash over me without warning as that awful and excruciatingly vivid memory that I was forced to watch hundreds of times last night flashes before my eyes again.
The ice blades. The blood that spurts from their necks.
The thuds as their bodies hit the floor.
The pools of red spreading out and soaking my mom’s silver hair.
Those looks of shock and fear on their faces as the light died in their eyes.
Eyes that used to only be filled with resentment. Except for those final few moments.
Does that mean that the hatred in their eyes was in fact only caused by my magic since it disappeared in those final moments right before they died? Or were their shock and fear just so strong when Jessina slit their throats that it only temporarily masked their hatred for me?
If I had gone to see my parents as soon as we left the Unseelie Court, I would know. I would know if they only hated me because I had accidentally created flames of hatred in their chests when I was young. I would know if my parents loved me.
But I didn’t go to check on them.
Because I was too busy.
Too busy doing everything except the one thing that really mattered to me.
And now, I will never know.
Regret strangles my chest like steel bands. It seeps through my body like ice, poisoning everything. I can’t breathe. I feel like someone is sitting on my chest and squeezing my throat with merciless force.
A vicious laugh suddenly cuts through the clanging in my head. “Oh, that’s right. The last time you saw this was right before I killed your parents.”
I suck in a panicked breath and try to blink my eyes back into focus, but everything is blurry. It’s only then that I realize that I’m crying. Dread joins the panic in my chest, and I desperately try to pull myself together.
My entire soul is screaming at me to use my magic to create an emotion so that I can feel that comforting pleasure again. But there is an iron collar around my neck, so I can’t even reach my magic right now.
Blinking furiously, I try to clear the tears from my eyes and force my mind back to the present.
At last, the dark stone cell becomes visible before me again. So do Bane and Jessina. And my friends.
But the aching in my chest doesn’t stop. And neither does the desperate need for that soothing pleasure that only my magic can bring. My soul is practically vibrating with the pent-up urge for it.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Bane begins.
In a feat of pure desperation, I finally manage to shove the pain and regret back behind the walls where they belong. That desperate need for the comforting feeling of my magic doesn’t go away, though. But I try to ignore it as best as I can.
My chest heaves, and tears still stain my cheeks, but I force myself to focus on Bane’s words. This is important. I need to know what they’re going to do to us. Otherwise, we will never be able to figure out how to escape.
“You,” Bane says, pointing at Hana. “What’s your name?”
Still sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up to her chest, she looks up at him with wide green and blue eyes. Her soft voice trembles slightly when she replies, “Hana.”
“After Hana has gotten the pocket reality open, you three,” Bane continues, and motions to me, Isera, and Orion, “are going to go inside and put this dragon steel bracelet on the leader of the Gold Clan.”
“Is that right?” I flash both him and Jessina a mocking smile full of challenge. “And who is going to control it for you now that Lavendera is on our side?”
Annoyance flits across Jessina’s face, and she narrows her eyes at me. “Yes, how did you manage that?”
Since I’m not about to blow Nysara’s cover and share how she glamoured us to look like the Icehearts so that we could get Lavendera out of the Ice Palace, I just continue smirking up at her in silence.
Pain still pulses through my thigh and shoulder from the stab wounds, but I try not to let anything show on my face.
“That won’t be an issue,” Bane says. He sweeps his gaze over me, Isera, Orion, and Grey. “You four might be tough. But little Hana here…” He smirks as he shifts his black eyes to her cowering form. “We will have her broken and obedient in no time.”
By the wall, Hana tightens her arms around her knees and stares back at him with those wide eyes of hers. Short and skinny, and with that expression on her face, she looks like a child.
“So, you,” Bane locks eyes with Grey, “are going to open a portal to where the Gold Clan’s pocket reality really is.
Then, she is going to open it. And then you three,” he looks to me, Orion, and Isera again, “are going to go in there, put the dragon steel bracelet on their clan leader, and then come back out with that person.”
“Or what?” I spit back at him.
“Oh, it’s very simple,” Jessina picks up. “If you don’t, we will kill all three of you and then have little Hana here destroy the pocket reality. Then we will kill the Gold Clan as well. If they don’t join us, they die.”
“They have shield magic.”
“Fine. If they don’t join us, you will die. That should be motivation enough for you.”
My mind churns as I turn their words over while also sorting through half formed plans and memories and snippets of information. Without access to our magic, putting up any sort of fight is going to be difficult. But they haven’t won yet.
We might still be able to use this to our advantage.
So for now, I lower my chin as if in defeat and speak the words they’re waiting for.
“Fine, we’ll do what you want.”