But then I look closer. He’s not being pulled along, nor is he in chains. He’s not sporting any injuries from a tussle with the guards, and his expression isamused.
He smiles, letting out a light chuckle as his eyes meet mine. ‘Your face. Surprised, Kismet? Did you really think I was coming to liberate you?’
I say nothing, my stomach rolling.
No. It couldn’t have been a trick…
‘Gods, I really believed you’d see through me, but I must have played my hand better than I thought. The truth is, I didn’t even need to track you,’ he laughs. ‘I knew exactly where you’d be brought when Warrior took you.’
He looks at the fae female and bows at the waist. ‘My lady Fiana.’
Tears threaten to track their way down my cheeks, but I push them back. I won’t give him that.
He was the one feeding them information all along? Was that how the slavers got through Halsford’s wards? How they knew where I would be?
‘How lovely of you to come,’ Fiana croons. ‘Take her back to the cells, Warrior. I’ll call for her later.'
'But can't I just—' he whines.
'No!’ Fiana’s eyes flash at Warrior. ‘She is mine now. If I find that you have used her for any of your little vendettas, I'll have your head.'
Warrior grabs me by my hair with a snarl and drags me from the room, past Locke, who doesn’t even look at me.
He takes me back down into the bowels of the fortress without a word, throwing me into my cell, and closing it with a loud clang.
He stomps away, and I hear the door bang when he leaves.
I go to the back of the tiny space, and slide down the wall, tuning out the sounds of the other humans here. I hear Claudia speaking, asking me something, but I ignore everyone including her.
Was Locke Fiana’s agent all along? Was anything he ever said the truth? Tears leak from my eyes and drip onto the rotten reeds covering the floor as I curl into a ball, and finally begin to realize how bad this is.
Locke has betrayed me again, and the others as well. All the humans here.
I should never have trusted him.
He took me for a fool again, and now I’m in the Dark Realms, this time, with no escape.
LOCKE
‘You’re a powerful mage,’the fae female says low, her eyes taking me in, lingering on my broad shoulders. ‘Warrior did tell me, but even if he hadn’t, I can feel it like a river raging beneath the surface.’
I chuckle, letting my own gaze linger on her for just as long. ‘Not as powerful as you, my lady Fiana,’ I flatter her.
Her eyes narrow a bit. ‘You’ve heard of me, then.’
‘Of course. The fae lady who’s built an empire is whispered of from Merediea’s Citadel to the most outlying villages of the Eighteenth Circle. I came to find you.’
‘Did you?’ She sounds skeptical.
I smile smoothly. ‘I did.’
‘Warrior has counseled me not to trust you.’
I smile, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. ‘Of course not. I tried to kill him when he stole from me. Those scars he now wears on his face are courtesy of my hand, and then he spent weeks torturing me in the pits for it.’
I shrug.
‘Suppose he and I are square after all that. But, then, you don’t really care how we feel about each other, or why. You don’t trust him either. I’d hazard a guess that you don’t trust anyone at all, my lady Fiana.’
