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“Take them to the tower.” Toste swiped a tan hand across sandy brown, disheveled hair. The drying sweat causing it to stick up away from his face.
“Hey, we came to help you!” I tried not to sound indignant; I really did. But I literally begged for Yunez and his Mannos to let us come here, and if I got us all thrown into Fennin prison, they’d never let me have any input again.
“Don’t think I don’t appreciate that, I do, but these…” his top lip curled, “sorry excuses for Fennins wouldn’t stop spouting about the Mazza that was going to be the destruction of us all. They could hate you because you’re their downfall and not mine, but I don’t trust you either.” He motioned to the group of shirtless, grungy, GQ models. “Take them away.”
And that was how I landed almost my entire Lusty Legion in the tower like we were Rapunzel clones. Here was to hoping Yunez actually knew Toste and could get us free.
“Well, this is great.”Sage kicked a dusty old chair into the wall. We all watched as it crumbled into a thousand splinters waiting to happen.
Honestly, I was surprised they left us any furniture at all. What with us being dangerous Fennins and all.
The children, bless them, tried to argue on our behalf, and one apparently was Toste’s child, but the Caen men didn’t feel their opinion was greater than the safety of Senadia.
“What do you see out of the window?” Nato grunted where he had Jari on his shoulders.
The tower they’d thrown us in was, in fact, a tower. It was a circular room of stone, much like the rest of the castle. Except there were no windows for us to use bedsheets to climb down from. The only windows were these super skinny, horizontal things that required a man of ten or eleven foot height to see out of.
“The battlefield is empty of living people. There’s a smattering of dead, probably on both sides,” he said dourly, but there was nothing we could have done to save them. “It looks like they’ve rounded up the remaining Mannos who weren’t able to make an escape and placed them in the city square.”
“How are they holding them?” I plucked a fractured piece of wood from the floor and chucked it across the room from sheer boredom. Boredom and self-recrimination.
“The city square in Senadia is a cell. When the people come together to power it, it’s an unbreakable cage from the inside. They just need to have one from each house. And although most of Senadia is heavily made up of Caen members, they do have a grouping of each house here,” Rand said as he dropped down next to me.
He’d been great since we got tossed in here. Never once had he looked at me accusingly. It just wasn’t in his nature. The others hadn’t either, but I still felt like they had these whispers of thoughts in the backs of their heads.
“Why didn’t they just toss us in with them?” I asked sourly as Jari hopped off of Nato’s shoulders.
“Because they clearly didn’t like us. On the off chance that we are the good guys, they would want to keep us separated. That’s my working theory anyway.” Rand smiled and nudged my shoulder with his.
“Oh, great.” I rolled my eyes. “Was it even worth it to come here? I think they would have ended up saving themselves.”
Man, why was I being such a sourpuss?
“It was worth it,” Sage said as he clasped his hands behind his back and paced the room. “At the very least, you saved some of the children. That’s very valuable in itself. If nothing else, most Fennin cherish and love their children.” He stopped and glanced up at the window. “Two, and maybe the most important, the Fiasla Mannos want the world to know they exist. And by coming to Senadia’s rescue, needed or not, we showed the realm that there are other players on the board just as powerful, and willing to fight on their side. That’s worth our, hopefully short, stay in the tower.”
“It could be worse.” Egan tried to smile but it ended up as a grimace. “We could be in the dungeon. That’s a very unpleasant place, Issy Girl. I don’t think you’d rather spend your time there. Da showed it to me once to get me to stop sneaking off when I was a child. It did the trick.” He scratched his head and sent a longing look at Jari. “You didn’t happen to see Da on the field did you?”
“No,” Jari said quietly with a firm shake of his head. “I haven’t seen him since he ran out of the container. But I saw Farrah and her friend at his back. I think Cabbie might have assigned them to take care of him.”
Egan blew out a breath. “Good.”
“While we’re in here, we might as well use the time,” Nato said pensively as he walked over to me. He stopped with barely a foot between his feet and my knees. The gold in his amber eyes soaking up all my attention. I loved his eyes. They had a tendency to come to life any time he looked at me or our LL.
But right then, the way he worked his jaw and the arch of his brows added to his seriousness, and I panicked.
“Why do I feel the sudden urge to run?” I laughed but it came out as a trembling huff.
He shrugged, still not smiling. “You had a brief burst of power at Yunez’s home. It’s what made Yunez change his mind on coming. Did you have any powers when you got here?”
I moved my head side to side with all the speed and reluctance of a turtle going to its death. “Nothing. I tried, but every time I reached for a power, there was nothing there.”
“Hmm.” Nato glanced at Egan and Rand who were positioned next to me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“What?” I scooted back but hit the wall far sooner than I had hoped. They had me effectively pinned between them, and I didn’t think they had even meant to do it. At least not Egan and Rand.
“Batse thinks you’ve been blocked. That you only have access to your powers when you’re experiencing high bouts of emotion.” Nato shot an overtly suspicious look at Sage and Jari as they crept up beside him.
A slow smile spread over Jari’s face as he pulled his blond hair away from his face. He took a weathered hair tie off his wrist and put his hair in a low bun. It was his favorite one that he’d carried here from the Earth realm.
