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This time her abductor did seem to pause. “I beg your pardon?”
His response struck her as odd, and she felt her temper fray. “Don’t bullshit me,” she said. “You’ve got me tied up, practically incapacitated, and my magic sealed all in this super sketchy, pitch-black cave. That creepy fire is the only source of light in here. This is not on the up-and-up. But you’re the freakingPrince, so why not justsummonme?” Her mouth was like a runaway train, it seemed, and once she set it to running only a terrible crash was going to stop it.
He gave another laugh, but this one sounded distinctly less genuine. “The Prince? Which prince, exactly, do you think I am? Crown Prince Leif? Or Elder Prince Denham?”
She gave him the bestduhlook she could manage, considering her position, her inability to make eye-contact, and the surely nasty, bleeding patchwork scrape on the side of her head. “Is this some kind of disgusting test? Isawyou when you got in my face. It’s only been a couple of days since we met. I’m not an idiot.”
“Apparently you are if you think I’m the Prince.”
“Well, I’m the one without magic here,” Rochelle said. A weird, uncomfortable feeling crept over her even as she proceeded to vocalize the alternative, even more ridiculous, possibility. “So I guess that means you’re wearing an illusion of him as a disguise, maybe trying to cause a scandal. I’m pretty sure that’s against the law in this situation.”
He lurched back into her line of sight and slammed a palm into the rock overhead, knocking a small puff of dust and mineral particles loose. “Enough! I won’t continue to indulge your side-tracking,” he said. “How did you come to this world, woman? Tell me what you experienced, before and after. Tell me everything you know. Tell me about your home world.”
Well. He came right out with it.She strained her arms on reflex, wishing she could at least curl in on herself, and looked away from his glaring eyes. Whether or not he admitted it, she knew who he was. What she now desperately wanted to know was why, if he knew her secret, he was going about interrogating her this way? And what did he plan to do once she’d answered his questions?
“If you know I’m from another world,” she said after several long, tense seconds, “then you probably know that world doesn’t have magic.”
Denham straightened. She could sense him towering over her better than she could see him. She heard no indication of him moving away. “Yes,” he said. His tone was terse. “That was the goal. A world without magic. But until the moment I heard your ridiculous story I had come to believe that such worlds repelled any magic which crossed their thresholds.”
Rochelle frowned at his wording. He almost made it sound like he was searching for something. “What could the Prince of Yafae need with a magic-less world?”
He reached for her again, this time taking hold of her nose and mercilessly snapping it to the side until the cracking bone echoed through the cave. She choked on a cry of pain, immediately gasping for breath as blood rushed over her lips and pounded in her ears. He continued holding her by her broken nose as his angry voice carried down to her. “This is the last time I’ll remind you who asks the questions here, woman. Remember that every time you’re forced to pant for your next breath like a weak, defenseless dog.”
His hand fell away and all Rochelle could do was sink sideways against the wall, barely remembering to keep from pressing her still raw and bloody face into the craggy surface. For a long minute, she used the excuse of gathering herself to fight the urge to scream and rail at him. She didn’t care what his title was. If he was going to pretend he wasn’t himself, then even better. No one had the right to treat another human being this way. The idea of giving him what he wanted only fueled her rage. But she was in no position to fight back.
As she wrangled her temper, forced to swallow down traces of her own blood as it ran into her open mouth, she watched Denham fire another spark into the dwindling turquoise fire, once again rejuvenating it, as he’d done several minutes earlier.
The fire’s important.Was it what was keeping her magic sealed? Or their location hidden? The color alone told her the fire was magical. That and the way he continued feeding it. It was a short-term, but apparently critical, spell. One he wasn’t willing to let fade in the current situation.
Rochelle told herself to make a mental note of that detail and dragged her focus around to where she estimated her assailant stood. “The world I’m from,” she began, and quickly found she could only speak a few words without having to pause and suck in another breath. “Has a variety of religions. Higher powers that people worship—”
Denham scoffed. “I don’t care about any of that nonsense.”
“There’s also an underworld, a Hell, where the souls of people who did terrible things are condemned. After they die.” She dragged in a deeper breath. “I hope you go there. You don’t deserve to be revered.”
Denham leaned into her personal space again, his lips twisting up in a sneer. “You truly are a mouthy wretch, aren’t you?” He curled a hand around her throat as he had before and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe at all. “That’ll be the last sass from you before you lose a finger. Or maybe a toe. I have a basic idea of the way your world has advanced without magic. I want to understand howyouended uphere, and if at all possible, how you who came from such a world have proven to possess notable magic.”
She slumped against the wall when he released her, too desperate for air to snap back at him. She also wholly believed he’d follow through, and she didn’t want to lost a finger or a toe. Or anything else, really.
“I would rather we finished this by morning,” Denham said. “So start talking.”
Her eyes stung for a second with the threat of tears, but Rochelle willed them away. He could draw her blood at his leisure, but not her tears. He wasn’t worth those. She swallowed, gagging a little at the warm, coppery taste of her own blood rolling down her throat, and gave him what he wanted. As slowly as possible. “I don’t know how I ended up here,” she said, “but I can tell you the story of my last memories from that world.”
“Do so.”
If he expected her to sayyes, sirhe was going to be more disappointed than his royal, pompous ass had ever known. Somehow, she choked back that thought, too, and propelled herself instead into the story of her final night in her old world. Her old life. That night in her California apartment when she’d been so bone-tired after yet another long day of thankless work, when she’d barely had the strength to throw a frozen meal in the microwave.
“My employer used to work me ragged,” she said. “So that night I heated up a pre-made meal, and after, I curled up on the couch and was aimlessly scrolling social media.” She let herself pause for a steadying breath, wondering what questions he’d have. She wasn’t overly inclined to simplify her explanation and that last set of phrases did not exist in the way she’d just used them in this world.
“How do you scroll or socialize from the seat of your sofa?” Denham asked after a moment’s pause.
Rochelle was honestly a bit relieved to hear the question. Her relief made her stupid and she said, “I thought you understood that world’s technology?”
A spark in her peripheral vision gave her a heartbeat’s warning before real, orange-red flame burst to life over her left foot. It burned through the thin material of her sock in a second and seared into her skin, rolling to her toes and up to her ankle, but holding at the line of whatever bound her. It never crossed over or spread to the other foot. Half of which Rochelle barely noticed as a scream of pain and abject horror finally ripped from her lungs. The stench of burning human flesh quickly wafted up, choking her with each ragged breath.
She attempted to squirm and twist and kick her feet to escape the flame but couldn’t maneuver her body the way she needed. She tried summoning her magic, begging the flame to simply heed her and go away, or for water to douse it—forsomethingto douse it—to no avail. All she ultimately managed to do was wrench her shoulder and leave herself breathless, her body trembling in fresh agony and a new layer of genuine fear.
Finally, the flame receded, blinking out of existence on its own.
