Page 34 of Taken By Shadows

He didn’t need to know I wasn’t entirely displeased to be in the Eastern capital. Despite the bargain we’d struck, I needed to get out of here. But maybe not quite yet. I could bide my time, make use of this new city. If I could find out anything about my family before heading south, perhaps this situation wouldn’t be a total disaster. And it would give me time to find something here to barter passage with. A lord ought to have enough riches that he wouldn’t miss a few trinkets when I did get out of here.

I turned then, arms folded. “Fine.” He could trust me, for now, I supposed. “But my name is Imogen. Use it.”

“Not Gen? Your lover called you Gen.” He bit the words like they were shards of glass.

“He’s not my lover,” I explained again. The knee-jerk reaction to refute Bray as mine, or me his, was instinct. The fight we’d had before everything happened was just an example of why we weren’t each other’s anything. We were too different.

But maybe Kaed didn’t need to know that. Maybe he’d treat me differently if he thought someone was coming for me.

But no one was coming.

And that was how it had always been. Looking out for myself was nothing new.

Bray was likely dead. I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t seen anything when Kaed snatched me into the air with him.

“Whatever you say, peach. But I guarantee you, he doesn’t believe that.”

Kaed shut the door, and I heard a loud click as he locked it. There was a soft pop, and the seam of the door sealed with shadows.

“Imogen! My name is Imogen!”

His deep, rumbling laughter faded as he walked away, leaving me magically locked inside.

My fingers shook as they reached for the worn shell around my neck. I gripped it so tightly I thought it might shatter in my hand. How was I ever going to find my family? I was going to have to figure out a way. Alone in the lavish room, I sank into the gloaming of my new world and found sleep came easier than I would have thought possible after such a day.

Chapter eleven

Iwoke to the sound of a gull flying somewhere nearby. The memory that Kaed had landed us near the coast crashed in my chest. I had never seen the sea. I was closer than I’d ever been to it now, though. Even if it wasn’t the southern coast, it was a step in the right direction. I could get passage on a merchant ship.

Or, I might have been able to if he hadn’t taken my only source of funding. The thought rolled around in my head like a marble. The faebane was gone. I looked around the room I found myself in for anything that might suffice as payment. It was indeed a room. I’d not dreamt that. He hadn’t locked me somewhere dank and cold.

Wooden shutters swayed in a salty breeze. The storm had passed but must have blown them open in the night.

I’d slept right through it all.

The early morning sunlight had me squinting to take in the room I found myself in.

Tangled around me were teal blue silk sheets that washed over me like a tropical tide. I’d slept fitfully, even if I didn’t feel it. The bed looked like I’d been the nexus of the storm last night, not the Four Corners.

In the moonlight, the sheets had looked like the depths of the ocean: dark and inviting, calling me to get lost in them and drown my exhaustion. But the colour was transformed in the pale light of the morning.

White walls framed the entire room. The only colour breaking the monochrome was a large, stained wooden vanity with a mirror that sat opposite the bed.

There was nothing of value I could take with me, unless I felt like trading my bedsheets. The room felt empty and other than the furniture and the gulls outside, I was alone.

Alone, without Kaedian standing over me, casting his obnoxiously large shadow.

At some point during the night, I’d kicked off my boots and undressed to some degree, so the silken bedsheets became a makeshift robe as I crossed the room and tried the door.

Of course, it was still locked.

The handle didn’t even move when I pushed on it. Magic wrapped around it and had it welded in place.

Well, I suppose walking out to explore my new city in the morning air was off the table, then.

Something tightened my muscles at that. It wasn’t fear, exactly. I was used to being in places I didn’t belong. But tension was threatening to sour my morning at the door still being locked.

I was someone’s prisoner. Yes. But I wouldn’t remain that way. Whatever happened, I would be in control of my own fate here.