“I’d rather spend an untold number of days in a cold, dank cell. But thank you, oh gracious one.”
His gaze swivels around the room. “You sure about that?”
Instead of responding, I give him a dead-eyed stare.
“Hmm. Perhaps a few days down here will change your tune.”
“Doubtful.”
“Another test then for us, yes? A test of wills to see how long it’ll take before you break.”
“I don’t break.”
“I guess we’ll see, won’t we, wee one.”
A shrug is my only answer.
He shakes his head, smiles, and turns to leave. “Micah, cut it back to one meal a day, and eighty-six the clean clothes.”
“Yes, sir,” Micah responds like the good little puppet he is.
Bastard.
“I heard that,” the said bastard shouts as he strides away.
Good, I wanted you to.
Micah pulls me in the opposite direction. Before the door seals shut with the white Horseman on the other side, his voice again filters back to me.
Be a good little prisoner, won’t you, and don’t give the guards any trouble.
I mentally flip him off with two fingers. Something I have never done in my life, but the act is almost instinctive. It’s as if the brimming anger needs an outlet, and this is the only one that comes immediately to mind.
His laugh reverberates through my skull for the longest time. I swear, even hours later as I sit in the corner of the chilly, bare cell that smells of mildew and some other person's waste, that it still echoes through my thoughts.
His voice, his laugh. It has my body rioting in weird, uncomfortable ways that I don’t entirely understand, nor do I want to.
Chapter Twelve
Caged Dove
Pollock
The moment I stride back into the Sovereign Tuath Hall, I send word for my council to reconvene in the war room. My jaunt to reclaim my horse and capture the White Witch cost us time we can’t afford to waste. We have less of it now, and there’s still far too much we need to settle before Kahill and his army arrive.
Arthur is outlining new rationing measures when I realize I have not absorbed a single thing he’s said. Not really.
My mind has drifted off.
To her.
I suspected there would be beauty beneath the cloak she wore, but I hadn’t been prepared for the contradictions that shape her. Warmth and ice—that’s what she is. Petite features and doe-like eyes with a glacial, otherworldly stare. Freckles scattered like specks of cinnamon across her nose. But skin as pale as newly fallen snow, as if her real coloring has been bleached out, like mine has, which shouldn’t be possible.
She mirrors me in many ways, though—her coloring, her eyes, and the way she stands apart from others. The unnaturalness humming just beneath her skin. Her existence, like my own, is a mystery on this plane.
And like me, even the air seemed to shift around her. People in the city stepped aside without thinking, parting before her path as if some deeper instinct recognized what she was. A predator, quiet and deadly, all of them giving her space without ever understanding why.
Her armor was not rudimentary, as I would have expected from someone surviving alone beyond the city walls. It had been crafted for her lithe frame—fitted, intentional. Not merely functional, but ornamental. Small silver religious symbols and a cross were inlaid in the metal, speaking of a righteous purpose, but what she envisioned that was, one could only guess.
