Being soulbound – soulbonds existing in the first place – explained so much.
I was about to stumble through an explanation when I heard the first scream.
My head whipped toward the sound and I placed myself in front of Freya and Caspian instinctively, knowing I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t exist here. Not really.
In the far corner of the room, a fae woman in a glimmering golden dress was screaming over the body of a man with blood dripping from every part of his face. His eyes, nose, mouth, and ears streamed blood down to mar the immaculately shined white floor. He was convulsing, every inch of him from head to toe.
Then, the second person dropped across the ballroom from the first.
A third followed shortly after. A fourth, a fifth, and then…
“Forest!” I shouted, lunging for my mate as he fell to the ground.
Catching him, I laid him down and tried to hold him still so he didn’t injure himself. He stared up at me with glazed over eyes, blood dripping from them. I shouted his name again and he didn’t respond. All of us shouted it to no avail.
Freya dropped first, out of the rest of us, but by then I was beginning to feel the effects. There was some kind of poison in the air, set to harm us so badly we wouldn’t wake up. Well, we wouldn’t wake up before they managed to kill us with a blade through the heart or severing our necks.
This had all come to pass already, and I knew it, but somehow knowing the outcome made me more distressed than I’d ever been with Sigrid. “Forest, listen to my voice,” I said desperately as Caspian’s eyelids fluttered.
I reached out my hand for Freya’s and grasped it in as tight a grip as I could manage. Blood dripped onto the pale fabric of the clothing my mate was wearing. It was watered down with tears. “Fayette. I need you to grab my hand.”
She didn’t squeeze. The screams in the ballroom had lessened to soft sobs of the few fae who were still conscious. None of us would be for long. I slipped away, my body unable to sit upright and toppling over onto the unmoving bodies of my mates.
It’s OK,I thought as I faded.This isn’t the end. We find each other again.
* * *
At first, I thought the gentle sob meant I’d woken back up in the fae memory.
No one sobbed down here. Caspian had been gone, and Iris was quiet as a mouse, but for the occasional question. She’d cried out all her tears years ago.
Blinking open my crusty eyes, I registered the cold stone ground and the irritating shackles and knew I wasn’t in the past reality. This was real life. Not some past reincarnation where we’d had different names and faces and a life we could never go back to.
And here, in real life, Caspian was being shoved through the door of the cage.
I surged forward, grunting when my bindings grew taut. Grey wasn’t with the man who’d transported Cas. Man, not men. There was only one which seemed ill-advised when dealing with a prisoner. I strained toward my mate, who was crumpled on the ground and sobbing. In the dim light, I saw dark splotches on his body in shapes reminiscent of blood splatter. Mentally grabbing at our bond, I was relieved when I felt him on the other side. The real him, not the beast who’d marked me.
My relief was short-lived. His emotions crashed into me, and there was nothing positive there. Only grief and pain and regret and guilt. There was no physical pain in his body, from what I could see and feel. But his mental distress? It was the worst he’d ever experienced.
The door clanged shut and was locked again. Boots retreated down the hallway, the exit door opening and closing. Caspian continued to sob in front of me, unmoving.
“Love, come here. Please,” I begged. “I can’t reach you.”
“You shouldn’t comfort me,” he hiccuped.
His face raised so he could look me in the eye. The pupils of his were enlarged, but his eyes weren’t solid black as they tended to be when he was hungry. Something had fed him.
From the amount of blood, I imagined it had been a killing spree.
Why had he been gone so long for that, though? Had they kept him locked away, seeing how long he could take it before he broke down? His beast was already out when they took him.
“Come here,” I demanded more firmly.
He responded to the order as I’d known he would, crawling across the ground on his hands and knees. The clothes he was wearing were different from what we’d been brought in wearing. A tunic and linen pants, typical of Zemterran clothing.
When Caspian was leaning against the wall beside me, I wrapped myself around him as best I could. He leaned his head against me, tentatively at first, and then curled around me to bury his face to my chest. His sobs grew louder, echoing through the prisons. Iris poked her head toward the bars, looking concerned, but I shook my head. Whatever questions the woman had, Caspian couldn’t handle them.
“They made me…”
