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Heads low, the fairies obliged, wishing they, too, could sleep to escape their grief. Sleep to numb the pain. Sleep to pretend it was all a bad dream. But they had already hidden away for too long, so they stayed awake and wept.
The whole city slept.
All but two.
A man and wolf who had escaped the sleeping magic by hiding in the Forbidden Forest now raced toward the storming Spires.
Chapter 15
Trapped
Killian
AfterZalinaleft,Killianstudied the room from his prickling bed. Breathing hissed from the steps, although he couldn’t see the creature from his blackened, rusty cage. Each bar plunged into the stones above and below, and the cage’s door swung on thick, solid hinges. The stone floor was covered with slick brown mildew that crept up the edges of the metal, growing thicker toward a pile of bones and refuse in one corner. A slight slit on the side wall might have allowed archers to defend the castle at one time, but now it provided Killian his only sense of passing time. The wind howled from outside the window. The room was lit by a crackling, flickering firelight from the torches that lined the stairs. Water dripped loudly on the stone from the ceiling above.
The stairway leading up was the only way out.
The room was darkening, and he began to shiver. Rising, he touched every bar, shaking them to see if there was any weakness. The door didn’t budge no matter how much he pulled on it. He shuddered again from the cold and dropped to the ground to do pushups—anything to warm up his body. The floor smelled horrific: mildew, urine, food rot, and something metallic, so he didn’t continue the movements for long. His breath quickened, but he stopped before breaking a sweat to prevent true cold.
Staring grimly at the pile of bones in the corner, he grimaced when he noticed the patches of fur that covered some. Many pieces were tiny, but other bones were larger than Killian’s. He turned away to stop the dread of his own demise.
Killian switched to squats. Anything to keep his body warm and his mind from thinking. But his mind was restless, each memory more intense than the last. His father’s horror at his decision. The hurt on the Walworth king and queen’s faces. Phineas’s confusion and desperation. His father’s last words removing him as heir. Raela’s look of betrayal.
He tried to think of L’Turetian words, murmuring them under his breath with each squat, but that only made him think about her.
Raela.
How she must hate him. How confused and hurt she must be by the kiss. He didn’t have time to right it, to get her out of the forest, and to tell her he had chosen her over all else. And now Zalina had trapped him, so he couldn’t tell her the truth. Couldn’t tell her that he loved how her stunning smile lit up the world. That he wanted to reach for her touch like flowers reach toward the sun. How impressed he was with her cleverness and quick wit. How he loved watching her purse her lips together when she was thinking and memorizing. He loved her humor, her confusion over foreign concepts like courtship. He could hear her laugh echoing though the room. Killian grumbled before he collapsed on the prickly bedding. His head felt heavy. How many mistakes could one man make?
“What? Stopping already? That was the most entertaining thing I’ve witnessed inyears.”
Killian stood and whirled toward the cage beside him, where a mass of brown and matted blankets rose up and blinked at him. The voice was haggard and came from a wrinkled face caked with mud. Ten nubs stuck out from the base, which he assumed were feet but appeared as mildewed as the stones they rested on.
An arm, more like the leg of a gangly stork stuck out the side and waved him on. “I particularly appreciated the exercises. I try to do my own to maintain these muscles.” She flexed the rail-thin appendage.
“Excuse me, who are you?” he interrupted.
“Some old forgotten thing. You may call me Meshougi.”
“Meshougi? What does that mean?”
“The Crazy Lady.” From beneath her matted gray locks, she winked at him. “But you are quite muscular. We can’t have you losing those in the future, can we? Mm? Carry on. Don’t let me stop you. Here, together.” She grinned, displaying a wide, toothless, turtle-like maw as she started doing squats, her blankets sending puffs of dust around her with each descent.
“I—” He shook his head, trying to clear his head. “I’m Killian.”
She paused. “I know. And a prince.”
His brow furrowed. “Are you a seer?”
She tapped her fingers together with a mischievous glint to her eye before she giggled.Giggled.“She did say your name and standing, my dear.” She huffed a wheezing laugh … or maybe a cough? “I am a pretty good guesser of the future, but I shan’t claim that one.”
He settled back onto his bed, shifting so his back was on the stone before realizing how much faster it pulled the heat from his body. Wrapping himself in the tattered, scratchy blanket, he looked over at her grinning form. “So you are also imprisoned?”
“I am currently here, yes.”
Killian nodded and looked to the ceiling, wondering what she had done. He searched for a clue as to what day or even what time it was. The slit in the wall had shifted from yellow to a dull, lime-green hue and was now darkening to a blue.
The old lady bounced on her bed, and pawed on it, like Jax circling his napping place. “Settle in, my dear,” Meshougi said as she snuggled back into her bedding, and the wafting odor of rot and sweat assaulted him. “The storm always gets worse before it gets better.”
