37. Keira #3
Titania grabs a glass flute from a platter on a delicate table and throws it at the bars of Drake’s cage. I jolt as it shatters, covering him in white wine and glass shards. He doesn’t even flinch, but his eyes flick to her momentarily.
“Where. Is. Florian?” she yells at him.
He rises to his full, imposing height, menace rolling off him as he cracks his thick neck from side to side, the muscles within it bulging.
“I did to Florian what I promised I would do years ago when the Winter Wars ended. He has been fertilizer for trees for months now.” Drake grins wide, revealing a split lip and blood on his teeth.
“Mother. Let me drag him out of that cage and beat him within an inch of his life for speaking to you like that,” Torin growls, the tip of his blade scratching my neck in his distraction.
Titania flicks her long black nails, still stained with my blood.
“He is far too powerful and unpredictable.” She stalks right up to the cage, staying far enough away that he can’t grab her when he tries.
“Florian might be feeding trees, but I wonder which vermin you’ll be feeding after we hang your cage from the palace walls?
How long will it take you to die while they nibble on your body? ”
My throat tightens as I finally piece together what she has planned for us.
“Torin.” Titania snaps her fingers at him. “Toss the little girl into her cage. I tire of this.”
He doesn’t move. “Don’t you want to get answers out of her? I can be creative and work around the bargain. Torture one of the other two, perhaps. That will make her speak.”
“Who cares what Aldrin has planned?” She rolls her eyes. “He will be dead before sunrise. Into the cage with her.”
I fall forward, losing my footing as Torin drags me along and pulls me back upright by my hair. “Don’t fall if you don’t want to slash open your own throat with my blade,” he growls in my ear. “Though that would be a better fate than what we have planned for you.”
The moment he pushes me into the cage and slams the door shut behind me, my power winks out and my connection to Aldrin is completely gone.
I can’t breathe without the mate bond, no matter how I suck in air.
Some vital piece I need to survive is gone, deprived, and I will surely die in seconds like this.
I didn’t realize how much I had grown to need the constant warmth of his presence within my mind. My body shakes from the loss of it, like an addict suddenly cut off from the drug they depend on. Panic rises within me in the tiny enclosed space of the cage, the golden bars suffocating me.
Torin’s voice distantly floats to me. “And what about Rainier?”
“Toss him in the dungeons. He is no use to us right now.” Titania dismisses both men.
“I could kill him now and save us all the effort,” Torin snaps.
His mother lets out a long-suffering sigh and speaks as though to an idiot.
“Rainier has been useful. I intend to keep using him. I will not kill him because he doesn’t have the stomach for torture and got in the way when you suggested as much.
Who knows, maybe he has a little crush on one of these two pretty, pathetic women.
Maybe you should be less heavy-handed next time and try to use your words while he is still able to speak. ”
“It was more than that,” Torin grumbles softly. “You only care when you are defied, not me.” He grabs Rainier by the feet and drags him away. Sasha screeches, and the sound is heartbreaking. It melds so perfectly with my own torment. I don’t dare look at Drake’s face.
In all the drama, I don’t immediately notice the guards approaching our cages with huge, curling spikes in hand that match the golden bars.
Others circle around them with spears, converging on each of us.
I try to scurry away from them, heart racing frantically, but there is nowhere to go. They approach from all directions.
I throw up my hands in surrender.
I pull on my magic to fight back, but nothing works.
Four guards thrust their spears between the bars and skewer me from each direction, the sharp tips sliding across my armor until they find gaps between the plates. The screech of metal on metal is horrendous. From the screams beside me, I know they do the same to Drake and Sasha.
My vision blacks in and out.
Agony shoots through me from wounds that are expertly placed to penetrate flesh and muscle, but not organs. Those spearheads twist a little as they hold me in place, refusing to release me from this torment.
Confusion floods me until the guards holding the spikes sweep in, slotting them into place within the cage. They work with frantic energy, rushing to get away from me as quickly as possible, like I am a dangerous, unpredictable creature, and not a powerless, caged beast.
Those spearheads are finally pulled from my flesh, and blood gushes from the wounds, spilling down my body and all over the floor of my cage.
I cry out. My head spins, but I cannot collapse.
Not with those spikes in place around the edges of the cage.
If I fall, I will be impaled upon them. They are tall enough to reach the middle of my chest and each as thick as an arm, coming to an incredibly sharp point.
The guards do not leave me in peace. No, they use longswords to slice away the straps of my armor, expertly removing my chest plate and arm guards, leaving cuts all over my body.
Titania stalks right up to my cage, but stops a foot short, her lips curling into a self-satisfied smirk. “Try not to die too quickly, Queen of Nothing .”