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I don’t want to get Rys in trouble. I’m sure they expect he has something to do with it, but unless I snitch, they don’t know for sure.
I shake my head.
Helix narrows his gaze, then spins away from me. He pulls out his sword, clanging the diamond blade against the crystal that surrounds the iron bars of my cell. Sparks fly and I wince at the ringing sound it leaves in its wake.
“See this?” Helix says, hitting the bar again with the flat of his sword. Clang. “Iron. It’s built into the walls. The bars. The floor. No one should be able to conjure faerie fire in this prison, especially not a human. I will ask you one last time. Where did you get the faerie fire from?”
I open my mouth. Exhale. Shake my head.
I can’t.
“You don’t want to talk? Fine.” He turns to Vale and the other two Seelie guards. “Leave her to the shadows. Maybe that will loosen her tongue.”
The guards don’t bother with the whole march down the aisle at swordpoint spectacle. I don’t even get the dignity of being cuffed.
Nope.
Because Helix had been warned that it was the human prisoner who attacked the Unseelie guard, he came prepared. Every one of the guards is wearing diamaint gloves. At the captain’s command, the two unfamiliar guards pick me up. One has my arms, one has my legs, and the uncut gems dig into my flesh as they tighten their hold.
I kick out wildly, thrashing as they drag me out of the cell. That only lasts as long as the one gripping my feet allows it. He twists my ankle, the jerk so rough that I’m lucky he didn’t snap it, then he squeezes it to make his warning clear.
I go limp after that because what else can I do?
My position has me staring up at the ceiling. I can’t see where they’re taking me, though something called “the shadows” doesn’t sound so great. The jeers from the other prisoners as I’m being paraded past them are drowned out by the pulse in my brain as I relive Dusk’s pained scream over and over again.
I only know that we’ve left the main straits of the prison when the ceiling changes. It’s the back halls again, the dark walls with the torches and the strange wooden doors. Am I going to the same room where I met Veron this morning?
I don’t think so. The walk seems to go on even longer, t
hough maybe that’s because my arms are on fire and my ankle is throbbing.
And then I hear the guard at my head command, “Open the door.”
I try to angle my neck up to get a better look at where they’ve taken me. It’s a dead-end; the wooden door is the last one along this hall. The guard at my feet drops one of my legs, letting it dangle like free weight.
He grabs the crystal knob with his diamaint glove, yanking it open and propping it with his hip. Then he lifts my leg up again, nodding over my head at the other guard. “On three.”
What?
“One.”
They’re… they’re not setting me on my feet.
“Two.”
Oh, hell no.
“Please, don’t, no—”
“Three.”
A scream rips out of my throat as I go flying.
I don’t know how long I’m falling for. While realistically it was two maybe three seconds, it feels like an eternity as I sink like a stone. It’s pitch-black, I can’t see which way I’m falling, and it’s only pure luck that I land on my side, taking the brunt of it on my shoulder and my hip instead of banging my head on the packed dirt floor.
Oh, and that I don’t land on Rys.
He’s in here, too. The small amount of light from over my head—the door that led to this place—reveals that he was standing with his back up against the furthest confines of the hole.
