‘And yet you still covet the Black Lake?’ I ask.
She sucks in a short breath. ‘We are well informed, aren’t we?’
I smirk over my shoulder at her. ‘It stands to reason. That’s why you wanted the Kismet.’
She doesn’t answer for a moment. ‘The location died with Varrik. If I’d known that, I’d have made sure he lived so that I could torture it out of him, but,’ she shrugs, ‘I’ve risen well enough with what remained of his experiments along with some of my own.’
‘Then what do you believe the lake can give you?’
The look she gives me is hard. ‘The means to destroy the Light all together.’
I raise a brow. ‘Surely you don’t believe Gaila, the First, would allow such a thing.’
‘Gaila is gone, both Ceres and she fell in their battle over Kitore’s towers. No true Gods protect the Light now. I will reap what I like from it, and then I will destroy it so completely that not one grain of sand remains of that fucking place. I have enough humans here. It’s no longer needed anyway.’
‘Then why steal from it even now? Why bother with Halsford.’
She moves slowly across the room and takes an apple from the table piled high with various foods.
‘Because I can.’
She laughs.
‘And because some members of my court like to deal in the ones who quail and fear. They take delight in breaking them. Who am I to deny them their pleasures?’ she asks casually. ‘Besides, taking Halsford, the village the Harbinger built, amused me. The Underhill sees now that their enemies are much closer than they imagined. They were already terrified. Now, I have little doubt that they’re running about their fold like headless chickens.’
Her tone is telling. She’s playing with me, amusing herself. She telling me all this because she does not intend on letting me leave. She also has her own spies in the Underhill as we suspected. She knows much more than I would have believed.
And she still very much hates Lia.
But how much longer will this game go on for? And how much more can I learn before she decides it’s time to kill me?
‘I’d love to see more.’
She puts the apple down and gives me a seductive look over her shoulder.
‘I’m sure you would.’ Her lips upturn just a tad. ‘Come.’
She leads me back into her hall and around her dais, where her black throne sits atop it. I keep up and try not to notice the naked human slaves who meander around with trays of food and drink. All the men and the women have rings in their noses with delicate golden chains hanging from them. I see a fae female from the corner of my eye pull one of them viciously, making the man attached squeal as she yanks him down to where she is seated, so that she can pluck a single grape from his tray. She lets go just as quickly, and the man loses his balance, falling to the side, but I notice that he keeps the tray as still as possible so that nothing falls.
'Humans are quite easy to keep,' Fiana says as we walk through her court.
All make way for her. Most don't meet her eye, even the fae I notice. She's feared.
'Is it just the conjures you use to make them do as you will?' I ask. 'To make the humans happy? Appease them?'
'Sometimes,' she says airily. 'But I won't lie. I do enjoy humiliating them. Subjugating them. Punishing them. It’s a little vice I harbor. I even leave some of their minds untouched by my conjures for those reasons alone.'
She turns and stops dead.
'You,' she snaps at a young woman who's carrying a tray of goblets. 'On your knees.'
The girl complies without question or hesitation, sinking to the floor in front of her mistress and Fiana plucks the tray from her hands, holding it out and allowing it to be whisked away by one of the others. She stares down at the girl, whose eyes are on the floor.
'Look at me.'
The girl's eyes rise.
'I haven't noticed you before. What's your name?'
