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“N-no.”
Fool!
“I am not a fool. I have memorized every spell you ever taught me. My mind is not lame, my magic is.”
What’s the difference? You’re still a waste.
“Stop it!”
Pathetic, absolutely—
“By the Goddess of good and old,” Calliope keened over the voice that tormented her, “magic do as you’re told. Liberate me in my time of need, ease this heart and set me free.”
A sudden wind swept through the cell, the first breeze she’d felt in the weeks she’d been confined, and Calliope knew the spell had been cast.
What consequences it would bring, however…
No matter how well spoken or intentioned, her magic had a way of doing as it would, not as it was told.
Some spell…doesn’t even…of the…
Her mother’s voice was weaker now. Calliope easily pushed it away as she rolled back to the ground.
She was exhausted, half starved and as miserable as she had been in those dark days before her mother’s death, when Heliotrope’s bitterness had been at its greatest, poisoning her as surely as the disease that ravaged her body.
“Goddess, protect me,” Calliope murmured as she closed her eyes.
She was too tired to stay awake and unwilling to part with the last bit of bread she’d tucked into the pocket of her nightdress to set other bait for the rats. She would just have to trust the Goddess to keep her safe while she slept and pray the spell would achieve her goal, without anyone getting hurt in the process.
CHAPTER TWO
Aaron
Aaron, King of Outer Kartolia, was royally pissed.
He’d only been in Kingdom City for two months and this was what he returned to find.
Johann was lost to the enchanted castle north of their lands—his journey a stunt to punish Aaron for missing his younger brother’s sixteenth birthday, no doubt. And Henri, Aaron’s royal advisor, had taken the law into his own hands. Now, there was a pixie or a fairy or whatever she was locked in the dungeon he hadn’t used in the four years since he’d taken the throne.
“We have a perfectly serviceable jail, Henri,” Aaron snapped, quickening his pace down the stairs to the dungeon. “I can only assume you were indulging your flair for the dramatic.”
“Never, Sire. She practices the black arts, she had to be detained in stone,” Henri panted, already out of breath.
“That’s a myth, Henri.”
“I must disagree, Sire. She hasn’t cast a single spell. The stone has kept her powerless.”
“Or her own restraint has kept her from turning you into a toad. I would not have been so kind if I had been locked away in such conditions.” Aaron couldn’t look at the man who scurried along beside him or he would truly lose his temper.
How dare Henri do this? It didn’t matter that he’d been a royal advisor since before Aaron was born. Henri knew how Aaron felt about these barbaric practices. It was this kind of behavior that gave Outer Kartolia a reputation as a wild, untamed land not fit for tourists.
He’d just spent eight weeks judging a ridiculous reality show in Kingdom City to help promote a more positive image for his country. Now, as soon as word of the fairy’s time in the dungeon hit the news, that effort would be wasted.
And it would make the news. Aaron wasn’t the king that his father had been. He didn’t believe in scaring his people into silence. If the fairy wanted to tell the world she had been treated terribly, he wouldn’t lift a finger to stop her.
But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it…
“Where is she?” Aaron asked the guard at the bottom of the stairs.
