Again and again I was useless in the face of injustice.
And it made me want to throw things.
They pulled Mishah down the hall, and her screaming dimmed to a low hum as they carried her out of the dungeon.
The rage built inside me, turning to molten gold, and I faced the Viceroy, who looked hardly older than me, but seemed to command so much power.
Then I spit in his face.
The silver-haired man gave an audible intake of breath, and my gaze flickered to his for the briefest moment. He watched me with a blank expression, so devoid of emotion that I almost thought I’d imagined the soft sound of surprise he emitted.
“Your general deserved everything he got,” I said, low and vicious.
The Viceroy smiled that same manic grin as he had in the library and slowly reached up to wipe his face with the back of his hand.
Then he nodded to the other soldiers with him. “Leave us.”
The other soldiers disappeared wordlessly, but the man with the silver hair stayed. He still showed no sign that he’d recognized me from the woods.
“Come to torture me?” I asked, my voice braver than I felt.
“Not if I don’t have to,” the Viceroy smiled thinly. Then he turned his head toward the silver-haired fae. “Have we tried to enthrall her?”
His eyes flickered to me, then back to the Viceroy. “No. This is the first I’ve seen her.”
It was a lie, since I’d already met him at the River, but I didn’t know what game we were playing. He stepped forward, the planes of his face illuminated by the torchlight in the room. He smelled the same as he had at the River—fresh earth and pine and the rushing wind. It was as if he’d brought the outdoors inside with him.
He stared at me intently, muttering something under his breath. I stood still, unsure of what was happening, but something about his eyes made me want to look into them. Abruptly, he stepped back and shook his head, looking at the Viceroy.
“It can’t be done. Her magic must protect her from it.”
I frowned at that, since it appeared he hadn’t done anything to me at all, but the Viceroy moved toward me, and all thoughts fled from my mind.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small rust-colored book.
It was the book I’d found in the library, stamped with the jasmine flower. My heart stuttered at seeing it.
“You were searching for this book. Why?”
“I’m interested in the history of the ancient fae.”
“Lies.” He tilted his head and watched me, his eyes combing over my skin.
The silver-haired male still said nothing, instead he leaned against my prison bars, eyes trained on my face.
“You are looking for Queen Azari’s vault. You want her crown.” The Viceroy wasn’t asking a question, his words were an accusation.
I inhaled sharply, but it was too late to hide my confirmation.
“I’ve been searching for her crown for years. I’ve had soldiers scouring the other Courts for any mention of it. And yet you found the first real sign of it within seconds of being in my own library.”
He leaned forward, his face coming so close to the bars I could touch him, his eyes gleaming with a glint of obsession.
Uneasy, I looked over at the other fae, and this time I caught him when his cool mask had slipped. He looked very interested in what the Viceroy was about to say to me.
“I saw you in the library. You used magic to find the book—a kind I’ve never seen before. I could smell it on the air, feel it sizzle across my skin.”
He didn’t ask me any sort of question, so I waited for what I knew was coming. The same thing the Citadel would have asked, had they known about my powers. The things my mother warned me about.
