CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Astaroth
Weapon at the ready to maim whoever dared cross into my private quarters, I spun around to find Calista sprawled on the floor by the bed. Blood oozed down her raised arm as she pointed behind me.
“Pearce!” Mergle shouted and ran past me toward the door.
I followed, leaping over Mergle, and came to a stop at Pearce’s prone form in the hall. His singed shirt rose and fell with his chest, but he was unconscious. My nostrils flared. His deception was as rank as his scent.
“Are they gone?” Calista gripped the frame with a trembling hand covered in blood and peered around hesitantly.
She averted her gaze when I gently pinched her chin and tried to raise it. I didn’t have time for this. I needed to know she was okay. “Look at me.”
Her pain-laced eyes flicked to mine when she tilted her head back. A faint pink hue lined her throat. The sign a redcap had marked their next kill.
I cupped the back of her neck, my thumb brushing over the promise Pearce left behind. Her necklace was missing. Again. “There were others?”
“Several.” She stared at Pearce and rubbed her back with a wince. “None like him, though.”
I pulled the back of her shirt up to find a bruise forming. Another round of healing was in order. “Did they abscond with the pendant?”
She shook her head, tugged down her shirt, and hugged her middle to keep me from doing it again. We would discuss it when I returned.
“Stay with her.” I snatched Pearce off the ground by his throat and stepped through the shadow that formed with little effort. It grated me to the bone that he resided in the same building where Calista slept. I would’ve killed him now if I didn’t need him.
The catacombs beneath the castle were my least favorite place to visit. If I was here, it was because one of my brethren forced my hand. Spaced out through the labyrinthine halls were barely lit isolated cells. I chose the nearest one and went inside, dropping Pearce onto the dirt floor. He groaned and rolled onto his side. The moment he realized where he was, he sat up, frantically looking around before his gaze settled on me.
I squatted in front of him, the scowl on my face deepening, and he gulped. “I didn’t want to believe it, yet there you were.”
“Your Highness—”
“Silence!” The walls reverberated my command, threatening to bring the entire castle down on our heads. I reined in my slipping anger before I exploded. “Do not cower to me when you had the courage to commit treason against us all.”
Pearce dropped his facade. Resentment through and through emanated from every pore. How did I never see it festering before now?
“What is treason for you is freedom for another. There are many of us who feel the same.”
“As I have learned.” I gritted my teeth. “What freedom did you expect to claim by killing my betrothed and stealing from me?”
“Your betrothed,” he mocked me. “We suffer while you worry about getting your prick wet.”
“Suffer? Do tell how you suffer more than the rest of us.”
His face turned red, and his jowls shook. “While you play king, enslaving the rest of us to wait on you hand and foot.”
“I didn’t ask for this. You put me in this position, even as I fought against it.”
“You were supposed to return us to where we came from. Instead, you played games and gave your power to a human girl. You put us all at risk, including our home. We have watched it decay, watched all of us wither again, and still, we are no closer to leaving. None of us asked for this existence. We want out, one way or another.”
How did he know about that? “And you thought you, a redcap, could harness my magic and do what I haven’t been able to do? What of the pixie? What were your plans with that?”
He glared at me, bitterness growing.
I bit my cheek to keep from lashing out. Some of his grievances were valid, and many of them would soon be rectified. Calista’s presence with the stone was already reverting things back to right. Once I stitched our life source together, I would take back my power. That needed to happen soon, with the newly discovered threats against her, and with the influx of pixies. It wasn’t a coincidence they appeared after her arrival. Her being here is the catalyst for us finding our way out. I knew it. Unfortunately, Pearce would never see it.
I pushed to my feet and backed out of the cell. Pearce scrambled forward, meeting the bars as I closed his cell. He gripped them with his blood-crusted fingers and pressed his face between them.
“Your Highness, don’t leave me here!”
