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“What happened to him?” He whispered, his face going pasty white.
“I…” Somewhere in my head, a warning bell started going off, and I clamped my lips together.
He grasped my shoulders and shook me, pain rattling around my body like a ball in a cup. “Tell me what the fuck happened to those males, or I swear to the gods, I will beat it out of you myself.”
“They’re dead.” I told him through chattering teeth. “All dead.”
“Who killed them? Solok?”
Stop talking Anaria. Stop talking, right now.
“I did.” The edges of the world darkened, my back screaming as Tavion dropped me onto the table.
“I killed them.” The room—Tavion’s face—faded into gray.
“Then Solok and the Mistress ate them.”
17
ANARIA
Iregained consciousness while being dragged down a dim corridor, the echoes of begging and moaning all around me.
“Are you sure this is where she’s supposed to go?”
“The Commander said so. This floor. This cell.”
When they tossed me in a cage, I hardly even noticed.
I never saw Tavion again, but someone had obviously healed me, then dressed me in a misshapen gown, ten sizes too big, too rough for my healed, yet too-tender skin, but I didn’t care. I was alive and not chained to a table.
I tipped over the cot, flipped the mattress onto the floor, then curled up on the filthy thing, keeping my eyes on the cage door.
I was in real trouble.
I’d clearly been brought here for a reason—I refused to think of the word sacrifice—but I didn’t know who to trust, or if there was anyone left to trust in this godsforsaken place.
Clearly, I had to fear everyone.
And clearly, Tavion Montgomery, the Commander of the Fae Guard, was hiding something.
He’d masked the color of his eyes and possibly known someone in that group of mercenaries, from his reaction to their deaths. Perhaps I should have stopped talking when my instincts warned me to, but now it was too late.
But his wounded feelings were the least of my worries.
I had to get this collar off.
Find Ember and fight our way out of here.
By the gods, I’d sworn to protect her and I’d done anything but.
I pulled up a mental map of Caladrius, tried to picture a northern road and came up empty. But there had to be one, otherwise, why would the High Seer bother mentioning it?
Unless that, too, was a trap.
Something brushed my back and I scuttled away, hurtling off the filthy mattress, over the bedframe, landing in the center of the tiny room.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” The voice that came from the shadows was elegant, lilting, and female. The cage beside mine was dark, no light penetrated it, not even the faint glow from the corridor that cast shadows across my floor.
