33. Keira #3
The other fae stalks toward me with an elated swagger to his step.
“Hold out your arms, little girl. We both know you are nothing without your magic, so don’t try to fight me.
” The chains clink in his hands with every step.
Still, he underestimates me. The moment he nears, I pull my legs up to my chest and kick him as hard as I can in the gut.
I throw all my weight into the blow so his form flies through the air and crashes into the barred wall of the cell.
Good girl. You fucking fight them tooth and nail, Aldrin growls.
Torin is on me in a heartbeat, a scalpel in his hand, the blade pressing into my cheek. Only the tip of it pierces my skin. “Should I take your eyes first?” His hand shakes violently against my face and I have no idea why.
“I will not tell you a damned thing! I will kill you with my teeth and bare hands before I betray my people,” I snarl.
“What do you think is going to happen here? That you are somehow going to break free, then win the throne from my mother?”
“Something like that.”
Torin throws back his head and laughs. “Even if you win the throne, you will be defeated shortly after. I began to set up my contingency plan the moment Aldrin returned to the City of Vertical Gardens the first time, and made his pitiful attempt to win over the Senate before we had the Assassins of Belladonna chase him out. I have webs set up across the realm, connections in every court, and all I have to do is snap my fingers to get the wheels in motion.”
I lean forward and spit the blood pooling in my mouth in his face. “You talk a lot of bullshit, Torin. If you had such power, you would use it now.”
He calmly pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and cleans himself.
“One does not use a bludgeon when a scalpel is needed.” He glances at Zedrick and curls his lips as he finds his friend unconscious on the ground, then catches the eye of the watching orcs.
“I think I will slice up her pretty face first.”
He is suddenly on top of me, pinning me down by the throat and pressing me into the bed with a knee on my chest, the full weight of his body behind it. I stop flailing as the tip of the blade meets my cheek, so damned close to my eye.
“I will reveal no plans or secrets to you.” I grit my teeth. “You’re wasting your time.”
“This kind of sport is never a waste of time.” A sick smile grows on his face.
“I can cut up your cheeks again and again, suppressing your magic so they scar horrendously. Take your eyes, your nose, your ears and eventually your tongue, permanently.” His breath curls against my skin as he moves the blade in strangely jerky motions to hover over each part of my face as he speaks of it.
“I wonder if your dear mate will still want you when you are hideous. You will tell me what I want to know, as I cut you piece by piece.”
Distantly, I register Aldrin throw something across the room to shatter against a wall, swearing profusely.
“No you fucking won’t,” one of the orcs calls out almost casually, and we both glance over at him. “I can see the golden light from here. The bargain won’t allow it. You can barely keep a knife against her face.”
I think back to all the times Torin has harmed me.
He tried to toss me down a flight of stairs, but I already had wields in place to ensure it wouldn’t happen.
He has pulled my hair and slapped my face, but it has mostly been threats of worse.
Torture, it seems, is too far for this fickle bargain that ensures Titania’s protection of me in her court.
He grabs me by the throat to hold me in place, and rears around to the orc. “Then I will find another noble to torture first, to cancel out the clause in the bargain that she can’t be harmed in this court.”
The orc shrugs. “I doubt that would work. She is under your mother’s protection, so your mother needs to torture both a noble guest and your queen to activate the contradiction. We both know Titania has no stomach for messes.”
Torin looks at me with disgust, twisting his lips, then drops me. “The Winter ambassador is a guest in this court. Perhaps it is time I paid Sasha another visit. I wonder what she sounds like when she screams.”
He strides out of the room without even a glance at Zedrick crumpled on the floor. The guards enter, pack up his instruments, then carry the unconscious noble out on a stretcher crafted from air and vines.
The second the door of my cell slams shut, a sob escapes from my lips.
I bury my head in my hands, my chest heaving silently with my suppressed tears as so much turmoil churns through me.
All I can see is Sasha’s face, slashed-up and bloody, eyes lost in even more trauma.
Her small body crumpled and broken, fingers snapped the wrong way.
She has endured far too much in this court, and I am sure in her own as well.
Tears stream down my face as violent shakes overtake me. I am just so cold. So tired, but I cannot sleep. Torin will come for me next, and I must kill him before he has a chance to stick me with more poison.
You are safe, Keira. You are safe, Aldrin repeats again and again.
“He is bluffing,” an orc calls out, clawed fingers wrapping around the bars of the cell. “He won’t hurt Sasha. Torin has always had a sick fascination with her. Besides, we are sending her a message to hide.”
My eyes flick to the puka that brought in the cookies earlier. Its long ears twitch as another orc places a note inside its vest, then it is off, climbing the wall.
I let out a long, ragged breath as relief floods me. Sasha has always been kind, even when she hasn’t had to be.
“Was that true, what you said about the bargain?” I ask. “That he can’t torture me? That Titania won’t?”
“He has no fucking clue,” the quiet one answers.
“I didn’t want to have to watch you get torn apart. The important thing is that Torin believed it.” The orc standing nearest runs a hand down his face. “There is an enchantment on these bars. Magic can be used on either side of them, but cannot cross the barrier. I couldn’t help you any other way.”
A heavy silence falls over us. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare out the window of their cell as the sliver of sky turns silver, then indigo, then black.
Not a single thought rolls through my head as I dissociate, body still shivering.
Every muscle aches from being held so taut and pain claws across my temples.
I can see no way out of this.
We threw everything we had at Titania and lost.
The element of surprise was ours . The Spring Court army followed us . The majority of the people were on our side.
And we lost.
Aldrin’s presence remains with me. I focus on the ghost of his large, warm hand rubbing up and down my back as he whispers soothing words in my ear.
He is deep within the layers of my consciousness again, taking control of my magic and slowly picking off the remnants of poison in my blood until it is all gone. I don’t have the energy to help him.
All hope is lost tonight.
Tomorrow, I may pick myself up and fight again, but not right now.
Lean into me, dear heart, Aldrin rumbles. Stay here with me.
I become more aware of his physical body than my own, leaving my thoughts behind.
He lies in a soft bed with a blanket pulled up to his hips, coating us both in warmth.
A full moon peers in through the sheer curtains of his room, illuminating the hard muscle of his chest and the sparse curls of hair that reach from the V of his belly to his hips and beneath.
Gods, what I would do to be there with him, to run the tips of my fingers down the grooves and divots of hard abdominal muscles. I want to hold his face in my hands and kiss his lips. To never be separated from him again.
Aldrin’s heart swells as his essence reaches out for mine and our souls entwine and dance in a way that our bodies cannot.
His longing for my touch is as strong as mine for his, and a soft groan escapes his lips.
The pull he has on me is far too intense and I allow myself to be swept up by it. I relish that need.
A numbing, fuzzy feeling starts at my fingers and toes, creeping up my arms and legs until I can barely feel them.
I hold a hand before my eyes and hardly believe what I am seeing.
Red cracks run all across my flesh with the light of fire burning beneath them.
Ash floats away in rapid channels, disappearing in the air, until my fingers are gone.
Then my hand dissipates, followed by half my arm.
It looks exactly like when I killed Finan and turned his body to ash and dust, but I know I am not dying. This feels too right. Too warm. And it is somehow bringing me closer to Aldrin.
He calls my name urgently. Tells me to stop whatever it is that I am doing, but my mind is lost in an oblivion of love. A simple thing like panic cannot seem to break through it.
I fall apart into a cloud of ash. When I rematerialize a moment later, I am no longer in the dungeons. I am in Aldrin’s bed.
All that soot doesn’t even stain the sheets. No, it funnels back into my body, recreating me whole and still wearing the same clothing, the thin stretchy fabric I had on beneath my armor, which they took away from me.
Aldrin doesn’t give me a chance to recover from my daze.
He rolls on top of me, covering my entire body with his as he kisses me deeply.
I thread my fingers into his hair, pulled back in a loose bun, then down the rippling muscles of his back, as he takes my lower lip in his teeth.
My hands reach the waistband of his sleep trousers and dip beneath them to grab his ass, while his own roam over my body.
He pulls back from me, holding himself up on arms that shake, gazing at me with glazed eyes. “I have never been so afraid in my life. Especially when your body began to fall apart. I thought I was losing you.” His voice breaks.
I lean up and kiss his soft lips again, relishing the way his stubble brushes my skin. I loop an arm around his neck and pull him down on me. “I’m here now. With this ability, I can keep coming back to you.” I lean in again, slipping my tongue into his mouth.
“You can teleport?” He pulls away for only a heartbeat before clashing with me again.
“I guess I can.” I am far too numb to be shocked by the fact, though I should be. I wrap my legs around his waist, hating the layers of fabric between us. Gods, he is already hard. “I can teleport to you because of the bond. The gods know what else I can do.”
Aldrin pins me to the bed beneath him, grabbing my wrists in one hand and holding them above my head as his amber eyes become hooded and focused.
He lines us up and drags his huge cock across the apex of my core through our clothes.
I let out a whimper as pleasure burns through me and my body shudders beneath him.
He does it a second time and my eyes roll back into my head.
I need more.
I loosen one hand from his grasp and loop it into the waistband of his pants, attempting to drag them down over his hips, while he garbles something low and incomprehensible.
“One day, dear heart, you are going to fall asleep in my bed every night and wake there every morning. No one, no fucking one, is going to keep us apart.” He clumsily pulls at the laces at my neckline while angling his hips to help me undress him.
I don’t even get to pull out his cock before that golden light swirls in angry tendrils around me.
Aldrin clutches me tighter, desperation filling his eyes. “Keira! No, Keira! Stay with me.”
It is too late. I fall to ash a second time.
When I reassemble on the pallet within the dungeon, it is with three orcs staring at me in shock through the bars, and Titania’s angry voice yelling down the corridor as the distant gates are opened for her.
“Just wait, Florian, until I see his fucking queen! I will get answers from her,” Titania roars. “She thinks she can defy me ! Threaten me with dragons and my own army!”
My only reassurance is that the High Chancellor doesn’t know I escaped my cell, even for a handful of minutes, and didn’t realize she called me back with the bargain. I frantically fix the half-undone lacing at my neckline and stand. I will meet her on my feet.