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“All right. Then we’ll escape before that. Let’s get cracking on a plan.”
“Don’t tell me what it is.”
“But you have to know—you’re coming with us.”
He spun on his heel, staring at me as if I’d completely lost my mind. “Do you understand nothing at all, foolish Gwynn? I cannot come with you. That’s why I warned you not to look for me. I’m trapped with her forever. Think of me as dead.”
I scooted myself off the bed, not easy when your recently crushed hoopskirts are springing back to life around you, and faced him. “You are not dead. Who’s being the idiot here? There must be a way out of this mess. I know perfectly well you got into it over me, and I won’t let you just take the fall.”
“You’re wrong, Gwynn.” He ran a hand over my hair, unsmiling, but with that tinge of sad affection. “You got into all of this over me.”
“I thought we got swept into it together.”
“That may well be,” he agreed. “But none of it really matters now.”
“Probably not, but we’re certainly not going to win the game with you stuck here sucking up to the Queen Bitch instead of the whole impregnating me thing.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Something flashed in his eyes. He cupped my face in both hands, frustration and despair tingeing the air like burnt milk. “Don’t you get it? The game is over. We lost.Ilost. This is it. The aftermath. This is what it looks like.”
I searched his face. “How can that be? We had seven years.”
“Youthought you had seven years. You may recall I pushed for less. Did you think I had no reason for it?
“I’ve never understood your reasons, Rogue. If you could explain them to me, that might make all the difference.”
“Would it?” He dropped his hands and paced to the clear wall, gazing into the abyss. “What about your list? Even if you’ve resolved points one and two, as I recall, points three and four have not changed. Even if it is all moot now.”
I struggled to recall exactly which points I’d reeled off to him. The man had an eidetic memory. Impossible for a mere mortal to keep up with. “I’m not saying I’m ready to have a baby with you—and geez, this sounds like a conversation from a Harlequin novel—but we can’t debate it when you’re locked up here. Come with us. We don’t have much time left.”
“Actually, you don’t have any time left, Sorceress.” Titania oozed into the room, bringing a wave of scorching heat with her. She pulled off the living mask and tossed it to the floor, where its mouth worked like a dying fish, shaking her head at Rogue, making a little disappointed moue. “Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize your mortal pet? You are not clever enough to defeat me, Lord Rogue. You never were. Chain her to the bed.”
In two strides he had me locked in those arms of steel, his face an impassive mass, the oily rope snapping through his mind. I screamed and fought, lashing out with spells that Titania neatly shattered, one after another before they could fully form. The cat rose up, snarling, but my flesh caged her in. I slashed at Rogue’s face, the pitiful human claws causing little damage. Then my hands were fastened to the bedposts with cuffs of silver and the magic faded to a distant chime, my hoop skirt belling up ridiculously.
Until Titania vanished my dress also, leaving me naked.
With ruthless strength, Rogue spread my legs, fastening my ankles to the bedposts, while I thrashed and fought, bowing my body in an effort to free myself, the emerald hair coming undone and spilling everywhere. The cat drove me as much as my own fear and panic, the silver cutting into my skin. She howled, desperate to be free. The ethereal entity solidified, hurling itself against the wall of my flesh.
And broke through into the real world.
Gleaming metallic claws split through my fingers, shredding the flesh, the agony piercing me. Helpless to stop it, I writhed with the pain, with the terror and hopelessness of facing my own death.
But the claws stopped there.
Leaving me panting, broken. Trapped.
Titania slid an arm around Rogue’s waist, extra-jointed fingers sliding open his tight shirt so she could toy with his chest, watching with avid interest. “She has a certain appeal, I suppose. Perhaps she’ll last a little while, entertain the guests for a time. In the meanwhile, would you like to have her again?”
I fought the rolling pain from my hands, struggling to understand. Again? And the leaking emotions from Rogue—guilt, remorse, desolation.
“Again?” I managed to grit through my teeth, begging for it not to be true.
Titania smiled, sweetly, and rounded the bed to trail burning fingers down my sternum, resting her hand over my belly. “Don’t you remember?” Then she giggled, a carefree, happy sound that pounded through my skull. “Oops. That’s right. I made you forget. Silly me.” Her eyes narrowed into cruel slits. “Let’s fix that, shall we?”
I gagged when she slid into my mind, that oily rope of her presence so palpable. I hid myself behind silent walls, but she pursued me, an anaconda gorging itself on all my thoughts until she reached that knot she’d left behind.
