I interrupted Fagan’s light-hearted summary of children building snow monsters and smashing them. “Mylo. Is our prisoner safe in the dungeons?”
Of all the elves trapped inside the barrier with me, I trusted Mylo the most. He, Fagan, and my aunt Acantha always ate this meal at my table on the dais.
Mylo dipped his head in a strong nod. “I secured her myself. She won’t be going anywhere, but…” He dropped his voice so nobody outside of our table on the raised dais could hear. “Your Majesty, I’m not sure she has magic. At least, not the same kind as the fae who cursed us.”
Fagan pursed his lips in a worried line but said nothing. He didn’t need to. I knew his opinion tended toward sympathy.
My aunt, the only other elf at our table, leaned closer to me. Any sympathies she’d had when I’d set the prisoner in the courtyard had disappeared. “If she is fae, you cannot trust her. She might act as if she has no magic only to get you to drop your guard. There is no way to know what she has planned.”
I whispered back. “I don’t trust her. And I have a… failsafe. She won’t be able to enact any plans.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell them about the mistek bond. We had all—along with my cousins—shared disgust when we saw them being used in Terrarinmarin decades ago. But it had been the only way I could think of to safely grant her wishes of letting both her and her horrible brother live.
My thoughts drifted back to this afternoon when she’d thrown her tiny body in front of her brother. And then, instead of defending herself, she’d closed her eyes and tried to protect him like a living shield.
It was not so wrong to want to preserve that kind of goodness. But freeing both of them would only have endangered my people here, and I refused to hurt the elves who depended on me any further. It was as she said—they were both alive. Surely that was better than—
I slammed my fork down on the table. It had hit me again—that vague sense of her terror. Like a burnt undercurrent when a sauce boils over and the drippings turn to ash while the pot continues to scent the air, her fear nagged at my senses, then faded, and then came again.
I could no longer deny it, which meant I could no longer ignore it. I stood, and both Fagan and Mylo followed. I waved them back down. “Finish your meal. I need to check on her.” I caught Mylo’s eye. “Which cell?”
He remained standing to answer. “The farthest from the entrance. I didn’t think she needed to benear… the others.”
I nodded and stormed out of the dining hall.
At least I could walk on my own two feet at night. The fire-storming fae who had cursed me left me some dignity. A drekkan growl almost erupted from my elven throat. How I hated that fae. Killing both of the half-fae I’d met earlier would have been easier than dealing with one alive and in my castle. Then my one pleasant meal of the day would not have been so interrupted.
My mind refused to entertain the thought. I might be ruthless, but I didn’t kill for convenience. And the one fae I had killed—she might have deserved it, but her death still left my stomach in a twisted knot whenever I thought about her.
That distinct sense of my prisoner’s fear spiked again as I reached the bottom of the stone staircase that descended below the castle and into the dungeon. I shoved through the door. That spike lingered, and my stomach turned. She should be accustomed to the dungeon by now. Her fears should be shrinking, not growing.
I skipped three steps at a time down the next stairway, and didn’t bother stopping the final door from crashing closed behind me. Bralen, the dungeon guard for the night, stood at a desk near the front and bowed as I plowed past him. We had a small labyrinth of cells, and it would take me several more minutes to reach her at this pace.
Her fear increased again, and a sharp sense of pain punctuated it. I started running. Something was wrong.
I had never held a mistek bond before, and I had not realized it would make me aware of her fears and pain. But the longer it lasted, the more sure I was of the feelings I was trying to interpret.
Just before I rounded the final corner, her anxious voice criedout, “What is wrong with you?!”
One voice snickered in response while another started to answer, “We’re just giving you a proper welcome. If old Bralen had let us use the keys, this would have been even more fun.”
I stopped running and strode toward the two young adults with a glare that threatened death. I turned the corner just in time to see Koan throw a stone at my prisoner. Her wrists were shackled to the wall in magic-cancelling cuffs that forced her to stand. She tried to cover her head with her arms, but Koan’s stone struck her thigh. He and Jolter laughed… and then they saw me.
Smoke poured out of my palms and rose off my shoulders. I felt it, and I stopped it from bursting into flames, but I did not mind if these two krimpets believed they were inches away from death.
They dropped to the ground and pressed their foreheads against the stone floor.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” I spoke through clenched teeth, as much upset at them as at myself for not having come sooner.
They kept their heads to the floor, but Koan answered. “We wanted to meet the fae.”
I clenched my fists. How was it that they could grow up in a kingdom where I demanded discipline, justice, and honor, and still treat someone with such cowardice and cruelty?
I dropped my voice, not quite to the drekkan’s gravelly tone, but one that promised dark justice. “Then perhaps I should release her so she has the opportunity tomeetyou as well.”
Koan’s horrified face raised from the ground. “But… she’s a fae! She might use an even worse curse than—”
“Then you should have left her alone!” Ibellowed at him. He dropped his face back to the ground, and I stepped closer to them. “You attacked someone who could not fight back, could not even defend herself—”
Jolter’s face popped up this time. “Your Majesty! We didn’t really attack her! We didn’t throw any above her waist. We just wanted to…”
