AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Pain reverberates through my body and I grit my teeth in a bid to kill my scream.
God damn that hurts.
Once Rys gets over his obvious surprise, he crouches low, reaching for me, stopping when only a few inches separate his hands from my shoulder. He’s careful not to touch me and, for the first time since I’ve learned that skin to skin contact means something different when touch magic is involved, I find myself regretting the distance.
Shaky and afraid, I could totally use the comfort right now.
The door slams shut above us. It goes completely dark.
Not wanting to face what’s happening to me, I shutter my eyes before swallowing my moan.
A burst of light flashes from behind my closed eyelids, painting the insides orange. My eyes spring open, then immediately close again when I’m blinded by the flames that burst into existence at Rys's back.
When I blink them open again, fluttering my eyelids to get my sight back, I focus on Rys. He has this wild look in his eyes, his mouth pulled in an angry line. His shoulders are hunched yet, surprisingly, it makes him seem bigger than normal. The silhouette from the burst of faerie fire surrounding him only adds to his air of danger.
I could use the comfort. So, it seems, can Rys.
He’s pissed.
“What are you doing here?”
“I—”
How do I tell him? He told me that all I’d have to do is hold up the lantern and it should hold Dusk off. Only I threw it at the Unseelie guard and now he’s barbeque. Shit. Why wouldn’t I be tossed down into… well, it’s a hole, isn’t it?
A big, ol’ fucking hole in the ground.
As I hesitate, trying to figure how to explain what happened when I don’t really know what happened, Rys dials some of his overt fury back.
Oh, he’s still fuming. It’s just not as obvious.
He’s watching me closely. I don’t even know if he’s blinked yet. Purposely avoiding his stare, I glance around the space. There might not have been an army of green “helping hands” to lower me into the hole, but that doesn’t mean my brain has finally given up on the Labyrinth references.
“It’s an oubliette,” I mumble under my breath.
“What are you saying?”
I wave my hand around me. At the packed dirt floor, at the rocky wall, at the empty pit that has me and Rys inside of it and that’s all. “The captain told the guards to put me in the shadows. I, unh, I guess this counts.”
“No. You said something else. What did you call it?”
“An oubliette.” My voice comes out as a tremor as my situation sinks in. Empty means no toilet. No bed. Just Rys and his fire and, holy shit, what am I supposed to do now? “It’s… it’s this place where you put people to forget about them.”
“That’s an apt description.” He looms over me, his hands splayed along his thighs as if he wants to touch me but won’t. “What happened? Tell me now. I made a deal. You were never to know this place.”
I shake my head. I can’t bring myself to tell him.
My teeth suddenly start to chatter. Part of me wonders if it’s shock mixed with fear. I mean, I’m trapped in a hole with a dangerous criminal whose fire just burned an Unseelie guard to a crisp. Did Rys know? I can’t bring myself to ask. Am I frightened?
I’m scared shitless.
But not of Rys. The realization slams into me and I let it give me the strength to pull myself out of the dirt.
Nothing’s broken. That’s one positive. I was terrified during my free-fall that I would splat at the bottom and that would be the end of me. My hip is screaming and I’ll have one hell of a bruise on my shoulder before long, but the pain is tolerable.
The dark expression on Rys’s face isn’t.
Did he know? When he gave me the fire, did he know what was going to happen when I opened the latch again?
