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Frankie felt the drool make its way down from the corner of her mouth and streak across her chin.
She realized she had passed out. She had wasted precious time by allowing herself to pass out. Her eyes felt as though they were sewn shut but then she managed to open them and took a good look at Crystal. Oh…no, oh no.
She had to buck up and take the pain, somehow get past it and do something soon, because it looked to her like Crystal was dying. Whatever Crystal had been given was killing her.
It hurt like hell to keep her eyes open, but she steeled herself and looked around for something, anything to help her get free. She knew she had to save Crystal and soon.
And then, like a balm, she heard Graely’s voice in her brain.
He said her name; he said he would come for her.
How could she hear him? He shouldn’t be able to get through the iron of her cell. Yet, she was certain she heard
his voice in her brain, but his voice told her he was in trouble. There had been something about it? Something was choking him…but what? Where was he? What had happened?
She had to get to Graely, or die trying.
Stupid girl, ye are just a simpleton, too cocky by half and forever rushing yerself into trouble, and then what did ye do? Ye passed out.
Dumb as well as stupid girl.
What she needed to do was drown her Fae and dive into her Fios. She had to separate the two. It was so very difficult. For six years she had been integrating the two, and now, now she had to part them once again.
Her Fios is what got her out of Pestale’s iron prison in Conglam, and it would get her out now, she told herself, but this time something was different. The poison in her veins was so much stronger than the first dosage she had received, and it was laced with something else, something she could not recognize, but something that seemed to confuse her thinking.
It was fireball time.
Her wrists—her wrists were bound and spread apart and over her head. No wonder her arms ached so.
Think, damn it! she screamed in her head, think. Can ye still call on yer fireball? Can ye be accurate with it?
Okay then, stupid girl, be smarter now. Remember. Something about Eslym/alias Fiona had troubled her from the start and she had ignored it. She was in a tough jam, and the pain was making it difficult to think clearly, but...
Crystal lifted her head at that moment, and whimpered interrupting Frankie’s thoughts. She saw Crystal move, but when the Dark King’s consort did she was repeatedly injected with poison and groaned with the excruciating pain it caused her.
Frankie heard her trying to breathe evenly before Crystal managed to say, “Dearest Frankie…can you hear me, child?”
Frankie twitched with hurting, and restrained a groan. She wasn’t hallucinating was she? Crystal had talked to her, hadn’t she?
She tried to focus, but everything was a blur. Was that the voice she remembered? Was this really Crystal all wrapped up in netting? Wasn’t she like all powerful? “Crystal, is that ye or am I dreaming?”
“Frankie…I need ye to…” Crystal’s voice sounded breathless as though she had exerted a great deal of energy to speak. She stopped there as though trying to recoup.
“Don’t worry yerself, the Dark King will find ye and that will be that,” Frankie said through her pain.
“He won’t find me—iron,” Crystal responded on a whispery breath.
“The Dark King is affected by iron? How can that be? He is the most powerful Fae of all and isn’t he all energy now?”
“No, he maintains his Fae form within himself for me…for us…and even the energy he has evolved into is affected by iron.”
Frankie tried to wrap her brain around this but she was seeing stars as the poison played havoc with her muscles, making her feel like rubber, but rubber that was capable of sending waves of pain signals to her brain. Crystal who had been instrumental in saving Jazz couldn’t be defeated here. She just couldn’t, yet, here she was, trussed up like a slab of meat all netted and ready for cooking.
“Frankie, I have seen the future and fear the worst,” Crystal said and then seemed to slump.
“Crystal?” Frankie said hoarsely. “Oh no, Crystal…” she sent out wave lengths worried that Crystal had died, but no, she could hear her breathing. She was still alive.
