Chapter 31
Ihit the dining room floor with a thud that reverberates through my skull. The ceiling swims overhead, and my heartbeat pounds in my temples, making the chandeliers above pulse with sickening light.
My stomach roils with nausea, and my chest is tight. I can’t breathe. My consciousness ebbs and flows, darkness creeping in, but never quite pulling me under. I blink rapidly, my eyes watering, as I try to force them to stay open.
Something moves on the edge of my darkening vision, and I struggle to focus on it—to focus on anything but the pounding in my head and my churning stomach. My eyes adjust, and finally I can make out Aurelia slumped forward in her chair at the table.
A fresh wave of panic hits me, and it’s a shock to my system. My brain finally catches up, and I remember where I am.
I try to sit up, to reach for Aurelia, but I can’t. My body is too heavy, and I still can’t breathe. I grapple for the front of my jacket and tear it open with shaking fingers. The seams split, and I pant out a series of ragged breaths.
I try to sit up again, but it’s too late. Someone—a servant, maybe—is lifting Aurelia’s limp body out of her chair and carrying her away. Blue silk drags across the floor beside me as Silvia chases after them.
No, wait! Anger surges through me, mixing with something like fear. They can’t take her away from me.
For the third time, I try to sit up. This time, I manage to pull myself upright, but the movement is too much.
My stomach heaves, acid burns up my throat, and I double over, vomiting a deluge of bitter wine across the white marble floor.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my trembling hand, then double over again, vomiting up the rest until there’s nothing left in my stomach but bile. That’s better.
With my head still pounding, I stagger to my feet, catching myself on the edge of the dining table.
The only clear thought in my head is Aurelia. Where the fuck are they taking her? I have to find her.
My knees buckling twice before they hold and I lurch forward, then sideways, my shoulder slamming into the wall as I stumble out of the dining room.
I find myself in a bright white hallway, but Aurelia is gone.
I stagger down the corridor, swaying back and forth, without any sense of where I’m going.
The gilded sconces that line the walls dance wildly as I pass, sending shadows spinning across the white stone.
The light burns my eyes and sends another wave of nausea crashing over me.
I need to find Aurelia.
I can’t see clearly, but I can hear everything. It’s as if the volume of the world has increased, becoming too loud and too clear all at once.
Voices drift down the corridor from somewhere up ahead. I don’t recognize any of them, but I follow the sound anyway, my palm sliding along the cool stone wall to keep me upright.
I need to find Aurelia.
As if I summoned her with my thoughts, a flash of a blue silk gown suddenly swims before my streaming eyes. I blink rapidly, struggling to focus. “Aurelia!”
Somehow, impossibly, Aurelia is standing at the end of the corridor, pulling a heavy door shut behind her.
I call out to her again, but my tongue feels thick. I hear my own voice coming out slurred and strange, but my brain is moving sluggishly and I can’t piece together why I sound like that.
“Had to find you,” I mumble, shambling down the hallway. “Somethingsss wrong.”
My knees nearly buckle with relief when I finally reach her. I stumble the last few steps, my trembling fingers outstretched toward the blue silk. How can she be standing here when I saw her collapse? It doesn’t matter, she’s here now. Everything’s going to be fine.
I reach Aurelia, and grip her shoulders tightly, trying to hold her gaze even as my vision sways. I can’t seem to meet her eyes, they’re falling in and out of focus.
Aurelia doesn’t say anything for a moment. Her silence sends a spark of panic shooting through me.
“The wine—” My words slur together, but I need her to understand. “I told you…sword…need to leave.”
Aurelia stares back with an unnatural stillness. Then, finally she relaxes. “You’re confused,” she murmurs. “Come here, let me help.”
“Let’s go home,” I whine, again barely able to recognize my own voice.
“We will,” she promises. “Give me your sword, I’ll take care of everything.”
I frown. No, she doesn’t need my sword. I’m the one supposed to protect her. “No.”
“Give me the sword,” she repeats, more firmly. “Now.”
I shake my head, and the movement feels as if my brain is sloshing against the inside of my skull.
Aurelia reaches her small arms out to steady me, wrapping around my waist. She melts against me, and I fall forward, burying my face in the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, and inhaling deeply. She smells like almond and vanilla.
The sickly sweet scent coats my tongue and claws at the back of my throat. The wrongness of it overpowers me and my body jerks backward before my mind can catch up.
Panic and disgust hits me in waves. I force myself to focus, blinking over and over again, willing my vision to clear. Dark eyes bore into me, familiar and somehow wrong.
“You’re not—”
The words barely leave my mouth when her fingers twitch, and something invisible slams into my chest, shoving me hard against the wall.
My head jerks back, connecting with the stone with a sickening crack, and darkness swallows me whole.
Iwake up with a gasp, sitting up straight, as if someone just shouted in my ear.
It’s not unusual for me to wake up suddenly with no idea where I am, but it is unusual that even after a few seconds, I still don’t recognize my surroundings.
Where am I? What the fuck happened?
I’m sitting on a filthy stone floor, legs stretched out in front of me. It’s dark, and for a moment I think I’m back in prison, but that can’t be right. This can’t be Dyaspora because it’s not cold enough…but it still feels like a prison.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, becoming aware of a faint pain in the back of my head.
All at once, everything comes rushing back; the dinner, the poison, Aurelia—fuck, Aurelia!
My memory is hazy, but I can still see the servants carrying her unconscious body out of the room. I remember searching for her, then finding Silvia instead. Disgust creeps over my skin at the memory of her cold eyes and strange scent.
I knew I would be able to tell them apart, and I would have realized it sooner, if I hadn’t been poisoned. It all happened so fast.
Why the fuck would Silvia go to the trouble of poisoning me?
Why poison Aurelia? If she wanted us dead, she could have killed us from a distance as we approached the castle.
And, aside from that, poison is possibly the worst way to murder a shifter.
We process toxins so quickly, we’re almost entirely resistant to most poisons.
The vomiting, the headache, the confusion was only due to my Fae blood.
If I were a full shifter, I probably wouldn’t have felt anything beyond a mild headache and some nausea.
But if Aurelia, being full fae, received the same dose I did...
Cold terror washes over me, and I nearly double over with a wave of nausea stronger than any the poison could have caused. I need to find her—save her. The alternative is unthinkable—I refuse to accept even the possibility that I’m already too late.
Fighting my roiling stomach, I jump to my feet, my head still spinning as I frantically scan my surroundings.
It’s a prison, alright, just not one I’ve been in before.
I’m in a cell, smaller even than the one I shared with my friends in Dyaspora.
It’s dark, but from the light of a tiny window near the ceiling I can make out the cold stone walls, iron bars, and a dim corridor beyond.
There seem to be other cells lining the wall across from mine, but they’re completely dark, without a hint of movement.
“Anyone there?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
I’m not surprised when only silence answers me. I’m entirely alone.
I rush to the window and peer outside. I’m slightly surprised when I see nothing but wide blue-gray sky. That tells me two things: First, it looks to be morning, which must mean that I’ve been passed out for longer than I thought—six, perhaps eight hours? Longer?
Second, wherever I am, it’s not an underground dungeon. A tower, perhaps? Not that it matters much where I am if I can’t get out of this cell.
My first thought is that I could shift and try to slip between the bars as a wolf. My wolf form is still large, but at least I might stand a chance of getting my shoulders through.
That idea turns out to be useless, because when I try to shift, nothing happens. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I try to force my wings out, just to see if I can. Again, nothing happens.
Just to be absolutely certain, I focus on the feeling of when the poison was coursing through me. I try to imagine that I’m about to die, and let my wings out again, but nothing happens.
I picture Aurelia slumping forward on the table, and imagine that she’s dying. That makes my heart race with real terror and my skin feels cold and clammy. If I could let my wings out, I’m sure they would have appeared by now, but it’s no use. Like Dyaspora, this prison must block all magic.
That’s fine, I’ll just have to get out of here myself.
I cross the small cell again, and wrap my fingers around the iron bars, shaking them with all my strength until my shoulders burn. That does nothing, so I find the heavy iron lock and try shaking that instead, roaring with the effort. Nothing.
Wiping sweat from my brow, I stagger back, now scanning the floor for anything—a loose stone, a forgotten tool—something to break this damn lock.
I don’t immediately see anything, but I get on my knees, crawling along the ground and feeling into the corners of the dark cell. For several long minutes I don’t find anything, then finally, my fingers scrape over a crumbling bit of wall. My heart leaps.