- SIX #2
Then I heard it, the sound unmistakable- metal chain moving across the floor.
I wasn't alone after all.
--
Jasper
I couldn't fucking breathe. Part of it was the run, my own fear, but the lion's share of the sensation was the terror overtaking Cece's body as she realized we were in trouble and she was alone. I stepped out and saw her across the field, crouched down by the barn.
And then the oddest fucking thing happened.
She projected a message to me. While, sure, people unintentionally sent me messages, thoughts, fears all the time, it was something new to feel one forced upon me deliberately.
But that was what she had done. She had taken a breath and screamed the words through her brain and they filled my own, loud as my own demons I was trying to ignore.
I didn't want to leave her. I wanted to run across the field, grab her, and get the fuck off the land before it was too late.
But I couldn't do that. She knew that and I knew that.
So I had to respect her wishes. I slunk back into the shadows and, in my head, saw her find the latch, find the door.
I felt her sigh of relief. I felt her confusion and felt my own grow as I saw nothing in the barn that I had known as a child.
Then I saw as she saw, the chain moving across the floor.
A tight fist wedged itself firmly in my throat.
I threw a shield up over my mind, blocking her out. And I had never hated myself more. I should have known what was happening to her, I should have felt it all. Because it was my fault. Whatever she might go through was all my fucking doing.
But I had to find Jade. I had to get her away from our parents. Then I had to find Doyle and Cece and get the fuck out of there.
She would be okay. It was just a couple more minutes. She would be fine.
But even as I told myself that, I knew it was a lie.
I ran past the doors to the dungeon and found the back entrance to the house. Just inside, up a flight, and three doors down. That was it. I could do it. I took a breath and then I did.
I skidded to a stop outside her door.
The hall was as dark and empty as the last time I remembered it, holding Jade's hand, both of us with knapsacks full of essentials on our backs, hoping never to return again.
I turned the knob and slipped inside, a small sliver of moonlight streaming through a window, giving me a view of the exact same room I had pulled Jade out of half a lifetime before.
It was exactly how she had left it, bed unmade, clothes piled beside the hamper, books and gemstones on the nightstand.
But no Jade.
I ran a hand down my face, feeling frustration that was stronger than any I had ever known before.
I had been so sure. I hadn't even stopped to consider any other options.
I thought it was the only explanation for her absence.
Jade and I never stepped foot in The Green after we left.
She never would have gone in willingly. It made sense that our parents were involved.
And now I had wasted days on a fool's mission. I had put everyone at risk for nothing.
"Fuck," I growled savagely.
The second the sound was out of my lips, a light flicked on behind me, bright, making my night-accustomed eyes hurt. The horror sank down in my belly immediately, burning like acid. I straightened my shoulders and turned slowly, already knowing who I would find.
There in the corner, sitting in Jade's old pink-cushioned rocking chair, was my father... looking just as cruel and intimidating as I remembered him.
Declan Winters was tall, even taller than me by an inch or two, all legs stretched out in front of him in black pants.
Even after the years, he was still fit, lean and strong under his white top.
And given that time elapsed differently in The Green than the human realm, he barely showed the missing time between us seeing each other at all.
He was a perfect example of what I would look like in a few years.
He was all sharp features and a shocking lack of smile lines.
To my adult eyes, there were changes. There were fine creases next to his eyes, from squinting or scowling, not from laughing.
His light blond hair had the smallest hint of silver at the temples, giving him an even more severe appearance.
"Your mother and I were about to have your face put on milk cartons," his voice cracked, sharp as a whip slicing the air.
"A couple years too late, don't you think?" I asked, keeping my tone calm, trying not to betray any of the tidal waves of dread inside me.
His brow raised condescendingly and I realized that was a gesture I had inherited from him and it made me hate myself a little. "Did you really think you could step foot on this land without my knowing?"
"Some things are worth risking my life for," I snapped, then took a deep breath, trying to keep it in check. "Where is she?"
I watched as a flash of confusion went over my father's face and I was sure she wasn't there. Not in her room, not trapped down in the dungeon. Our parents hadn't seen her since we both ran off.
Fuck.
"You lost your sister?"
Then, in a moment of devastated weakness, I admitted, "I thought you had her."
Then he stood up, unfolding his body like a cat, slow, intimidating, almost making me feel like a child again. It was strange how parents had that ability to make you feel small.
"I don't," he said casually, moving toward the door and snapping his fingers into the hall. And, well, I knew what was coming. I also knew it would be useless to try to fight. "But I will find her. And then the two of you can have a nice little reunion. In the dungeons."
With that threat that was really more of a promise, two hulking guards came charging into the room, each grabbing one of my arms and lifting me off my feet.
And I knew with a soul-deep kind of understanding that my father was never going to let me leave.
--
Cece
I wasn't going to freak out. Granted, the sweat was making my hair stick to the back of my neck and my heart was slamming so hard, I was sure it was going to burst out of my ribcage, but I totally wasn't going to freak out.
Not everything in The Green wanted to kill me.
Heck, some just wanted to make me a sex slave and steal from me.
No.
Okay. I needed to think of Onyx and the sprites. They were good. They didn't want to hurt me at all. Maybe whatever was chained up in the barn was completely and utterly harmless.
But then, why would it be chained up?
As if on cue, the chains slipped ominously across the floor, giving me flashbacks to every godawful horror movie Corbin The Cheating Bastard made me watch.
The line of metal contorted, twisted, half folded in on itself, then turned. Toward me. Of freaking course. Because I could never catch a freaking break. I scrambled backward until my back hit the wall.
A light flicked on, something small like a battery-powered camping lantern with an LED bulb that somehow managed to be startlingly bright in one spot and cast the rest of the room in shadow.
And then I saw it.
Him.
He was tall, taller than Jasper and Doyle even standing slightly hunched forward. His hair was a dirty blond, cut short. His face was a V-shape, sharp of chin and wide of cheekbones with wide, thin lips and stern brows over eyes that I couldn't make out the color of.
He wore a pair of tan hemp pants, slung low on his hips, exposing a strong, toned stomach, chest, arms, and shoulders. Firm. Solid. Unbelievably strong.
The chain snaked up the back of his body, criss-crossing over his chest like a crude vest. It was tight, the skin underneath raw and bloody. I felt an almost overwhelming rush of empathy. He wasn't a threat to me. He was a prisoner and he was being tortured.
But then he turned slightly, his body angling to the side and I saw something I had missed before.
He definitely wasn't human. While he looked like a man for the most part, he was definitely fae.
Poking out of the skin on his back, straight down the middle like a spine, were giant triangular plates like that of a lizard or dragon.
There were bruises along the side of each plate in various shades of healing: blue, purple, greenish, yellow.
So he was being chained and beaten and kept in a cold barn.
The indignation welled up inside, the basic human need to fight injustice where one found it. But, I reminded myself with an inhale, he must have been chained up for a reason. Maybe he was violent. Maybe he had powers.
"Be quiet," a voice pierced the quiet, deep and gravely even though it was a whisper, almost as if it was rusty from misuse.
I felt myself nodding, not wanting to upset him, and watched as he moved toward me, squatting down beside me, and putting his ear to the crack in the door.
He listened for a long minute as I tried not to gawk at him.
Then his eyes found mine and I realized they were brown, but with reddish flecks leading away from the pupils like little starbursts.
So unnatural and, as such, so mesmerizing.
"He went to check the tree line," he told me.
I sucked in a breath and nodded. "I'm Drake. "
"Cece," I heard myself saying, basic manners overpowering my justified urge to not speak to the half-human, half-beast.
He smiled then, the motion a little tight, a little strained, like it had been so long that the muscles required to do so had atrophied.
"Nice to meet you," he said a little sheepishly.
Then he stood and moved away from me a bit, gave me space.
"You can stay here until he goes back inside then make a run for the woods.
Once you cross the threshold, you'll be safe. "
"Thanks," I said, meaning it, as I pulled my legs to my chest and hugged them with my arms.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, his tone completely confused like he couldn't wrap his head around anyone stepping onto Winters land.
"We're looking for someone."
"Who?"
"Jade. She is..."