Chapter 6

I came to with a pounding headache and my first thought was that I somehow wasn’t dead. My eyelids snapped open and I whimpered when I noticed the floor-to-ceiling steel bars that caged me in.

I was in a cell.

Terror ripped through me as I sat up and took stock of my surroundings. The back wall and two side walls were stone and the front was fully barred in with a small slot for what I hoped was for sending food and water through.

It was almost completely dark inside the cell. The only light that illuminated the space was a tiny sliver of sunlight that filtered in from a small strip of a window high above my head at the back wall.

There was a bedpan in the corner and the entire place smelled of damp urine. I would have almost preferred death to this. No bed, no clothing, not even a pillow.

A man screamed somewhere down the hall and the hair on my arms stood straight up. I noticed a pair of shackles on the far wall, bolted to the stone, and sighed in relief that I wasn’t currently in them. A small kindness.

“Hello, little witch,” a familiar voice growled.

I spun, ready to throw every emotion and feeling I had at the monster but the bastard flicked his hand out and a thick band of shadows wrapped around my throat, cutting off my oxygen supply.

“Before you do anything rash,” he said, “I want you to know that I have given your little dagger to my blacksmith who assures me it can be melted down and made into a door stopper, rendering it harmless.”

My heart sank at that and I grasped frantically at the black band around my throat, desperate for oxygen.

“If I don’t check in with him every hour on the hour, he starts melting and your way home, and to save your people, goes with that dagger.”

My eyes flew wide. How did he know that?

He released the black band and I coughed, gagging and sputtering for precious air.

“You’re not the first, little witch, to try to kill me,” was all he said and then he walked away.

Dawn? Was he talking about Dawn?

“Wait!” I screamed hoarsely. But it was no use, he was gone.

Had he been the fae who ended Dawn’s life? He must have been. Who else but a powerful Ethereum lord could have stopped Dawn from completing her mission?

I knew firsthand just how unstoppable a force he was and my heart went out to the fallen Summer princess. I hoped that whatever had happened to her, she went quickly and hadn’t been forced to endure this vile dungeon like I was.

My heart hammered in my chest and I had to take multiple deep breaths to calm it down. Passing out in here would be the worst thing I could do. Fae knows what kind of people came in and out of this cell. I didn’t want to be unconscious and helpless for hours.

My hands shook as the temperature dropped and night fell outside. Slowly, my tiny cell grew darker and darker until I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face.

The moonlight outside didn’t reach me and I was beginning to wonder if this was some kind of magic. Was it some blanket of shadows to make it so dark, you began to wonder if you existed at all?

“Hello?” I said, just to make sure I was still in fact here.

I could feel my legs but I couldn’t see them; I held my hand inches from my face and saw nothing but darkness.

The panic began to well up inside me as my fellow prisoners all began to scream, cry out or wail. I had no idea there were so many people in the dungeon with me until this moment. Dozens of voices carried through the space.

“I’m okay. I’m real. I’m safe,” I began to mutter to myself, feeling insanity press in on me.

This darkness was supernatural in nature, and there was only one fae whom I knew of that could manipulate shadows like this.

The Ethereum lord was doing this to torment us all.

It made me feel better about my attempts to kill him. I had always been told that the Ethereum lords were evil but this was the proof I needed.

Something slithered across my ankle, cold and smooth like a snake, and I screamed bloody murder, backing up until I hit the right side of the wall.

“It’s not real!” a muffled voice shouted next to me.

My heartbeat spiked, my breath came out in fast, short bursts and I knew I would pass out again if I didn’t relax.

“What?” I managed between trying to keep it together.

Feeling around with my fingers, I noticed a little drain grate at the bottom of the wall, between my cell and whoever was next to me.

“The snakes aren’t real. They are shadows, a trick from Lord Stryker to bend us toward insanity,” the voice said. It was a male voice, a young one I’d guess, only sixteen or seventeen.

Something slithered across my ankle again and I burst into sobs, screaming as I reached around me for anything solid I could protect myself with. A bedpan would do.

“Lady, I’ve been here two weeks. They aren’t real. Grab it next time. It dissipates.”

My stomach felt like it was in my throat. Was he insane? Grab a snake?

There it was again, that slithering.

Figuring I had nothing to lose and that if the snake was venomous I’d rather die sooner than later, I grasped it in my fingers, recoiling when I felt something solid in my hands but almost a second later it melted into shadows.

I sighed in relief, panting as I realized the fae next door was right.

“Once you stop fearing them, the snakes stop,” he said through the grate. “It’s like his magic knows.”

My breath settled and I finally felt like I could speak. “Thank you,” I told him. “What’s your name? I’m Aribella.” I needed to keep talking or I’d think about this darkness and go insane.

“I’m Eli,” he said.

I took a few more deep breaths, grateful to have someone to talk to between the terrified screams of other prisoners. “You said the lord’s name is Stryker? I’m not from here.”

“Yes, Lord Stryker is the most brutal of the four brothers,” he said darkly.

Brothers. Interesting. I knew there were four lords at any given time, but I didn’t know these current lords were brothers. How lovely that I happened to land before the most mentally unhinged of all of them.

“Why are you here?” I asked Eli, desperate to keep him talking and the panic at bay.

His voice shook a little. “Lord Stryker thinks I am part of some underground smuggling ring. I’m not, but my cousin is and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I wondered if it was the complete darkness getting to him or the topic.

“Smuggling?” There were a lot of things you could smuggle. Drugs. People. We had a nut in faerie that made you high when you ground it up and drank it in a tea. It was outlawed but people still sold it behind the scenes.

“Gold. Gems. Lord Stryker owns all of the mines in the Eastern Kingdom. All the riches are delivered to his vaults here in Easteria. He’s the richest lord alive.”

Ahh, that made sense. Rich men were always a bit unhinged.

“Right. Easteria.” I played dumb. I mean I’d seen it on the map Master Duncan had given me, but I didn’t know about the gem and gold mines.

The guy whimpered then and I knew something scary must have happened.

“Hey, I’m going to make you feel better, okay? It’s part of my magic,” I told him and then pushed the feeling of peace over him. There was no reason we both needed to be terrified of this place.

“How?” he breathed, and sighed in contentment. “That’s incredible.”

I smiled, glad he was feeling better. “I’ve always been able to. So tell me more about Lord Stryker?”

Now that the man was in a calm and peaceful state, he opened up like a book. “He took over Easteria very young, after his older brother died in a freak accident. I don’t remember much about the Eastern lord before him. I was young myself then and the Warrick family is wide-reaching. They have more cousins and uncles and brothers and nephews than you can imagine.”

I frowned. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

My stomach sank. Lord Stryker was torturing a fifteen-year-old!

“So he got drunk with power and money and now he’s a sadistic maniac?” I mused.

“Not exactly. My mother said he used to be kind in the beginning. But then people started asking for loans, favors, lying to him to get money, or begging him to save their farm only to find out they had a gambling addiction. My mother says money brings problems.”

His mother was wise. “So that’s when he built a magical dungeon of darkness that feeds off of his prisoners’ fears?”

I could hear the boy smiling. “No.” He chuckled. “It was after the love of his life tried to kill him in his sleep. She used a poisoned blade, which is how he got those scars.”

My heart shuttered in my chest and I sat up straighter. “What?”

“Yeah … that’s when the curfew started, and the interrogations, and then this place was built.” His voice had darkened.

I was speechless. His lover tried to kill him? “Why did she—”

“I just told you, Aribella. He’s the richest man in Ethereum. You must come from money if you can’t understand why that matters here.”

I cleared my throat. “My family is well off. Merchants,” I lied.

“Well, mine aren’t. Where I come from we only have a day’s worth of food in the cupboard and we gotta be thinking about where we can get coin for the next day,” he said.

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “But to steal it from someone doesn’t sound like the right way.”

I could almost imagine him bobbing his head in agreement. “It’s not. That’s why I said no when my cousin asked. But I understand why others do it. The chance to have that kind of money would change my life.”

I frowned, feeling bad for the kid. “Well, what job did you do? Before this.”

“I worked in the gold mines. I’ve held unimaginable wealth in my hands, only to have to give it away at the end of the day.” He sounded wistful.

I sighed. It was a sad tale but I didn’t agree with stealing because someone had more than you. We were both quiet for a moment and I felt the heaviness pull at my eyelids.

“Aribella?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep.

“Hmm?” I wondered aloud, laying down myself and attempting to get comfortable, despite the circumstances.

“Can you keep your power over me until I fall asleep? This is the best I’ve felt in weeks.”

It was the least I could do. He’d kept me sane in a terrifying moment and now that I didn’t fear the snakes, they’d left me. Just like he said.

When I heard a soft snoring coming from the grate beside me, I pulled the peace back into myself, not wanting to leave him with it overnight in case he needed to be alert or afraid of something.

Fear was a good emotion in some cases, it kept us safe from harm and told us when to run from danger. If I kept him blanketed in peace, it could harm him eventually. He might not fight back if attacked.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I tried to calm my nerves. Lying in the dark on hardened stone I thought it would be impossible to relax, but eventually sleep took me.

* * *

I awoke to the sound of scraping metal. My eyelids sprang open and I looked up at Lord Stryker, hovering above me.

“Enjoy the night?” he asked with a handsome smirk.

There were two guards behind him, both with swords held aloft. I might be able to subdue all three of them but I couldn’t go anywhere without my dagger.

I would need it to get back to Faerie. A portal back to my kingdom wouldn’t open until I used it to carve out a heart from an Ethereum lord’s chest. If his blacksmith melted it down I was a dead woman, along with my people. Besides, I wasn’t even sure I could subdue the big fae before me. His power was like none I’d ever encountered before.

I sat up, glaring at him, and his smile grew.

“You’re trying to find a way out of this. A way to kill me and still get your dagger.”

I clenched my jaw. Did he read minds?

His eyes raked up and down my body and then he scowled at me. “ Don’t use your power over me.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Color crept up his cheeks and he cleared his throat. “Nothing. Get up, we need to speak.”

I stood, brushing off my dress, and eyed the bedpan. “I have to pee. Unless you want to help me pull down my pants, I suggest you get out.”

His eyes sharpened. “Little witch, the last thing I ever wish to do is help you out of your garments.”

I growled when he didn’t move. “Fancy a show then?”

I started to unlace my pants to call his bluff and he turned, stepping out of the cell and shutting the iron doors as he and his guards gave me their backs. “Tell me when you’re done.”

“This is foul,” I grumbled as I hovered over the pan.

I felt my cheeks heat in mortification and anger. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this. A princess of Faerie, relieving herself in front of three men. My parents would be horrified.

“If I pee on my feet I’ll make you kiss a horse,” I threatened.

“Then you can kiss your dagger goodbye,” he shot back.

When I was done I stepped away from the bedpan and fought the urge to gag. “Just kill me if you’re going to kill me. This is beneath my station.”

He opened the door again and shot me with a glare. “The next ten minutes will determine how long you live. I’m glad we are on the same page about that.”

Fear spiked through me and I swallowed hard. The two guards rushed in and hooked a hand under each of my armpits, and pressed a blade to my throat.

“Walk,” Lord Stryker growled.

I did, all the while my mind spun. How could I convince him to let me live and not in his dungeon, but in the castle?

Maybe I could get him to trust me and then double-cross him later. Master Duncan had given me about a ten-minute rundown of what to do in case I was captured and seduction was one of the options I’d laughed off. With how inexperienced I was, it wasn’t something I thought I could pull off. But now, without access to a weapon and knowing that Lord Stryker was strong enough to withstand my power, it was a reality. Could I … without using my power … seduce him into giving me my dagger back?

It felt cruel, especially knowing his past lover had all but done the same, but I seemed to be out of options.

I followed the giant lord to a room at the end of a hallway that was lined with prison cells. I was scared to look into the open door for fear of what I might find but was forced to when we reached the threshold. In the center of the room was a chair and beside it was a tray full of different tools.

Torture tools.

I reared backward but the men held me in place and forced me into the chair and then strapped me to it.

“You would torture a lady?” I scowled at the lord, who picked up a pair of scissors caked with dried blood and began to sharpen the blades on a stone.

He looked around the room. “I see no ladies here. Just a murderous witch who hails from a long line of murderous witches.”

I wanted to argue, but he was right. I was here to kill him.

“You stole our magic! Cursed our lands! Our people are dying because of you and the vile curse your ancestors put over us,” I spat.

He rolled his eyes. “Is that what they tell you? Because if so, you’ve been grossly misinformed.”

Shock ripped through me. Whatever could that mean?

No.

No, he was lying. That’s why Master Duncan said not to let them get a word out. The Ethereum lords were liars.

“I think you can still function without your pinkies. What do you think?” He held up the scissors and I felt the blood rush from my face.

My heart pounded and sweat beaded onto my skin. Dizziness washed over me and blackness danced at the edges of my vision.

Not again. Not right now.

I breathed in and out deeply through my nose, trying to fight off the fainting spell but when he stepped closer and held the scissors up to my pinky finger, my heart rate tripled and then everything went black.