AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I recoiled at the callousness.
“But to do it, he needed your DNA—that’s the secret sauce. It would mean getting close to you, and after what happened to your mother…”
She shrugged. “I said I wouldn’t do it, and he insisted. I was the only one without a criminal record, the only one who didn’t have prints in the system. I wouldn’t be looked at twice if I applied for a position in the castle. It had to be me. All those times I had stayed back had worked to Agnan’s advantage. But I refused.”
“You refused?” I echoed dubiously.
Mirielle shivered and shook her head, as if trying to shake off the entire experience. “I said no. I told him I wasn’t doing it. The risk of death was too great. I could see that we were all dispensable to him by now, but he didn’t seem to care that I was worried for my own safety.”
I scoffed, folding my arms under my chest. “Never mind the moral dilemma—how wrong it was to steal a fae’s powers?” I demanded.
She hung her head. “I wasn’t thinking about anything but my own survival, Zen,” she whispered. “I don’t expect you to understand, but that’s how it was.”
“So? Then what?” I pressed.
She bit on her lower lip and met my steadfast stare. “And then he just agreed and let it go.”
My brow furrowed into a vee. “What?”
“I should have known better,” she muttered. “I’ve known him for more than a decade. I should have known that he would do something sadistic and cruel.”
“What did he do?”
Her eyes glazed over, but the tears didn’t spill, her eyes blinking rapidly to cast them away. She didn’t speak for a long moment, and I didn’t force her, her windpipe bobbing as she swallowed.
“One day, he informed me that there was a plant he needed in the Bellewoods.”
“Ah.” The picture became clearer now.
“I knew we weren’t allowed in there, but he promised he knew exactly where it was, and we would be in and out before anyone was any wiser. It wasn’t as dangerous as some of the tasks he’d asked of us before, and I knew I was skating on thin ice with him. I wanted to get back on his good side again.”
“I bet,” I growled, but when she looked at me, tears soaked her eyes, and a pang of guilt shot through me. Before I realized what I was doing, I got up and joined her on the settee, taking her hand to comfort her trembling palm.
“I don’t remember exactly what happened next… if he beat me first or wiped my memories. I remember he dragged me through the bushes and called me useless, stupid. He said he wished he’d left me in the orphanage where he’d found me…”
Now the tears did fall from her eyes, but she wiped them away quickly and sniffled, turning her head away.
“I think he intended to kill me,” she admitted. “I don’t know exactly what was on his mind. Or maybe he figured you would find me? I never really know what Agnan is thinking, Zen. Just when I think I have him figured out, he does something else.”
My jaw twitched, and the urge to kill Agnan was stronger than it had ever been before.
“Once he found out I was here, though, he knew he could get your DNA, and now…”
She exhaled, and I released her hand, rising to pace the room, my mind whirling. “He got what he wanted in the end, anyway.”
A fusion of emotions washed through me, but the strongest was the need to protect Mirielle from the hell spawn that was Agnan.
“Please say something,” she begged, her voice a raspy whisper.
“If he cast a spell to take the ability away, then there is an antidote,” I suggested reasonably.
“Possibly,” Mirielle agreed slowly. “I don’t know what it is.”
“You could create it, though, with enough time and resources,” I insisted, excitement mounting inside me. “You have a passion for botany. And what better resources than here at the castle?”
She nodded slowly, the wheels of her mind turning.
“But to create the antidote, we would need the washi plant to start.”
