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Dusk steps past the other Unseelie guard. He actually walks right into our cell.
“This has nothing to do with that. Don’t get any ideas. You try to stop me from doing what I’ve been ordered to do and it won’t be you who pays for it. I’ll take my pound of flesh out of the human’s hide.”
“You can’t touch me,” I point out. My voice is shaky, my legs wobbly as I perch on the edge of the cot. Not this guard. Anyone but this guard. “You don’t have permission.”
Dusk flexes his hands, showing off his gloves.
“I won’t need it.”
Damn it. I was right.
After some posturing between Rys and the guards, I’m taken from my cell. My questions fall on deaf ears—Where are they taking me? What’s going on? Am I moving cells again?—and I eventually stop asking them when it becomes clear that no one owes me any kind of explanation.
I’m brought to a whole other part of Siúcra. Halfway through, we leave the prison aisles I’m familiar with. Dusk marches me through a door tucked between two narrow cells. He mutters something, the door evaporates into golden sparkles, and we’re in a dark, gloomy hall that belongs in a haunted castle or something.
No fairy lights here. A few spotty torches, and that’s it.
We pass a few wooden doors set into the brick. Each one has a crystal doorknob. I want to ask what’s behind them, but I can’t muster the nerve. It’s spooky and quiet back here and, when we emerge back into the sterile prison halls, I let out a sigh of relief.
Until they open one of the magic doors with a whisper and I’m marched into a small room with one chair, one table, and a mirror for the fourth wall.
There’s a pair of iron cuffs on the table. The other Unseelie commands me to put them on. Feeling a pit in my stomach, I do.
Dusk lowers himself to one knee. A crystal shackle is attached to the chair; because it’s transparent, I don’t see it at first. It isn’t until he lifts the hem of my jeans and claps the shackle on that I even notice it.
With the bare bit of skin revealed, the patch between my boot and where he hiked up my jeans, Dusk runs his gloved hand along the back of my ankle. It’s a soft caress, but the diamonds sewn into his gloves aren’t smooth. They’re jagged, uncut, and they slice right into my skin.
I yelp.
Dusk chuckles, pats my ankle again, then lowers my pants leg.
Damn it. I behaved. I didn’t give either guard a reason to touch me with those gloves on the long walk to this space. And now he takes advantage of me being trapped to this chair to cop a feel? It doesn’t do anything for him except hurt me.
And that’s the point, isn’t it?
God, I fucking hate him.
He pats the top of my head. A stray hunk of hair gets caught in the diamonds. It pulls when he takes his hand back.
“Wait here.”
I’ve got the iron handcuffs on, my feet shackled to the floor with crystal. Where does he think I’m going?
The precautions all make sense a few minutes later when the mirror in front of me starts to shimmer. My reflection disappears, replaced a few seconds later by a face that still haunts my dreams.
“Remember me, Elle?”
As if I could forget.
He’s as pretty as I remember. Magnificent, really. The Seelie noble just has an elegance about him that the guards lack. Rys is pretty close, when he lets the charm slip into his tone, but the scar kind of ruins the effect. With Veron, he’s pure perfection—and it still turns my stomach to see him.
“Lord Veron. It’s been a while.”
“Yes. You’ve been in Siúcra for some time now. You look better than I expected. Perhaps the magic feeds differently on humans.”
That’s right. Because Siúcra is one big, ol’ parasite. Without us prisoners, the magic would die out. Talk about a catch-22. We feed the beast with our emotions and our strength so that it can be strong enough to keep us inside. Without the prisoners, there would be no prison.
Gotta love that.
