Chapter 18

Richart's fingers tightened, the rings on his left hand cool against my skin. The pressure of his nails over my pulse felt like nothing…it was going to happen though. He was going to kill me, and I was going to let him. It would save my friends, save the world, and thwart any other attempts at the spell being used to revive an army of the undead.

The thoughts raced through me over and over as my heart beat faster with the tightening of his hands.

My head began to buzz with lack of oxygen, and I fought not to fight back. I wanted to jerk away, to take a deep breath.

A flash of heat ripped across my skin, so suddenly I wondered if a bolt of lightning had somehow gotten into the dungeon. At the same moment, Richart bellowed and fell backward, and yet somehow his hands were still on my neck.

Sort of? My brain didn't compute what had just happened. How fast things had gone from me dying to something else. I just stood there as his hands, still attached to his arms, but no longer attached to Richart, slid down the front of my body.

I screamed and threw his hands off me, which I could do because they'd been cut off at the elbows right where they'd rested between the bars.

"JAYSUS GAWD IN HEAVEN!" I screamed as I flung myself backward so hard that I bonked my head on the bars that separated me from Ivan.

He reached through, his hand cupping my elbow, steadying me. "Bree!"

"Keep your hands in your cage!" I yelled. "The bars just…they cut off his arms!"

It had happened so fast that I could not wrap my brain around it. There'd been that flash of heat and then he'd started screaming.

There was no blood. Just arms on the floor at the base of my cage. And Richart moaning on the other side.

"That tricky bastard," he growled and sat up. Both arms still attached.

I gasped and took a step forward. "How?—"

"Like lizards, Bree," Ivan grumped. "Cut off a limb, it grows right back. He'll be a hungry bugger for a few days, but losing an arm or two won't hurt him much."

"A spell on the bars," Richart said as he groped for his discarded shirt. "To keep you safe from someone doing exactly what I just tried to. Your death stops her plan, and she knew someone might try." He shook his head. "I must go, I can feel her presence drawing close."

Before I could even question whether he'd try to kill me again, he was gone, his body a blur as he raced back up the stairs, not even a sound from his footsteps.

"You'd better hide those," Alan said, motioning to the arms on the floor.

I looked at him and back at the arms. "Say that again, Alan?"

"Those are evidence that someone was here." He pointed out. "You need to hide them so your new friend doesn't get caught."

I snorted more to myself than to him. "Only a lawyer of your caliber would tell me to hide the evidence of an attempted murder."

Alan didn't hide his scoff. "You agreed to it. Technically, it was suicide, not murder."

"It was a sacrifice, you idiot. I don't actually want to die!" I grimaced as I took hold of the already cooling hands and carefully took them over to my bed, tucking them under the loose blankets at the foot of it. There was nowhere else to hide anything. I fluffed the blankets, so they looked rumpled rather than like they were hiding two amputated arms. It was the best I could do with what I had at hand.

No pun intended.

I sighed and rubbed at the back of my neck, feeling a headache beginning there. What the hell was I?—

"What now?" Alan asked. "What about me, I helped you, so what do I get out of this?"

I sighed and sat at the far end of the bed, as far away from Richart's arms as I could get. "Your lack of direction or what you get out of this—and I know this is hard for you to hear, Alan—is the very least of my concerns at the moment. I can't help you with anything while I'm in here. So it's still in your best interest to help me."

He frowned. "Are you sure?"

I'd have laughed if I had any energy left. "About as sure as I can be, Alan."

He put his hands on his hips as he paced. "Then you have to try and get out. Can you use the music sheet? I don't remember you being musical at all."

I thought about it—Richart had felt Evangeline drawing close. But would she come here to check on me?

"We wait, make sure that she isn't coming here first."

Which left us sitting in a weird, tense silence. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty.

Alan went up and checked the area at the top of the stairs. "Nothing. She isn't coming."

It was about as good a time to look at the music as any.

I reached under the pillow and pulled out the thin folder of papers. Those on the top were written in French, and they didn't appear to be sheets of music as far as I could see. "Ivan, can you read French?"

"A little." He motioned for me to hand the papers over, without actually reaching through the bars. I took one sheet and slid it across to him.

I flipped through the rest of the sheets and at the bottom was a single sheet of music. Scribbled across the top was more French, but I recognized the handwriting.

"Remy wrote on this." I ran my fingers over the notes on the paper. "Every good boy deserves fudge."

"What?" Alan barked. "What is this about boys and fudge?"

"I took piano lessons for about half a minute when I was ten." I stared at the notes, half notes, and rests. I could sort of read it, far more than I could anything in French. It looked simple enough, but there was no title on the top.

"Why didn't you keep playing?" Alan asked. "It would have been nice when I had the firm partners over if you'd been able to do something other than cook."

I didn't even bother to look up at him. "Because…hell, I don't know why I stopped."

The more I thought about it, the more there was a tiny gap in my memory. Was that one of the memories that Bramble had messed with? If I'd had any money to gamble, I would have bet that was the case.

I needed a pen or something to write with. "I think the first one is an E?"

"That sounds like a question," Alan said.

I glared over at him. "I am not sure because I haven't tried to read music in, like, a hundred years!"

He huffed and headed toward the stairs. "I'm going to see what I can find. Maybe your fish woman friend."

With that, Alan left. Which was good because he riled me up too easily.

"Lass," Ivan said after a moment. "These papers, I think you are right, they were all written by Remy." His voice broke on his son's name.

I looked at the music in front of me, then at the bars. Standing, I tapped a fingernail against the bar in front of me.

A note rippled in the air, a burst of sparkles around it. The sound hung for a moment before fading.

"You know what note that is?" Ivan asked.

I grimaced. "I could guess. But that won't help."

How did I crack this?

I stepped to the corner of my cage, where my bars started. Tapping each one individually, I made my way around the twenty-by-twenty-foot space.

The notes were not even ascending or descending. They were all over the damn place.

"Duck me," I whispered.

Ivan looked up, eyes narrowing. "That's not good, I'm guessing?"

I shook my head. "Even if I knew music well, this would prove to be a challenge. The notes are all over the place, scattered."

Footsteps in the distance snapped my head up. I scrambled back to the bed and stuffed the sheets under the pillow. Turning, I saw Ivan tuck his sheet away on the other side of the bars.

"So that's the only good joke you know?" I asked as if that's all we'd been doing.

"Well, there was this one about two shifters walking across the field. They come across a sheep with its head stuck in the fence. First one says, ‘Let's have some fun and he pulls his pants down and?—"

"That was not two shifters, father," Remy drawled as he stepped off the bottom stair. "I believe it was two fae. It's always fae, if it's a joke about fucking a sheep."

I turned from Ivan and forced myself to look at Remy. "What do you want? Come to gloat?"

"Come to check on you. My wards were set off. Was someone down here?" He raised one eyebrow and quirked a smile at me, like he already knew I'd try to lie.

I shrugged. "Someone came down, yes."

"Did they try to touch you?" Still spoken with that same soft smile. Damn him, he did know. I shrugged.

"And if that person did?"

"Well, I imagine you have a limb or two in your care now? A hand perhaps? Tell me, why would you hide that unless you don't want the friend who visited you to get caught?"

I smiled. "Well, go and find someone who has recently had an appendage cut off, should be fairly easy I would say. You are lazy, your father was right about that." His face tightened and I plowed on. "Or you could always open the bars and search my cage."

"Ah, ma chérie, I have no doubt you would love for me to do just that. But perhaps you would like to tell me who it was? If you don't, I could hurt your other friend." Remy's smile, a quirk to his eyebrow.

I swallowed hard, fear slamming into me. "No. I don't want that."

"Of course not. Give me the hand that touched you." Remy's voice seemed to darken. The unsaid threat made it clear that Feish would be hurt if I denied him.

I turned and went slowly to the small bed, pulling the sheets back, my body blocking his view of the two pale arms. Working his words over in my head. He'd asked for one hand. So I would give him just one.

"You are the monster here," Ivan growled, pulling Remy's attention to him. "To think I believed you could be changed. Brought back from the darkness. I was a fool—you have too much of your mother in you."

I stared down at the hands as Remy snapped something back at Ivan in French. Both hands had rings on them. I tried to remove the rings on the right, figuring it might take longer for them to identify my attacker as Richart if I took them off. They wouldn't budge, but the ones on the left hand slid off. The limbs were cold. It was gross work, but I managed and quickly pulled the blankets over the other arm and the removed rings.

Holding it by the wrist, I turned and threw it across the cage. It hit right where Remy stood and slid to the floor.

He startled and took a step back. "Well, I see my spell worked."

"Yup." I sat on the bed, just in front of the other arm.

"Who was it?" Remy asked.

I shook my head, feeling like I had to be careful here. While I didn't want to identify Richart, I had to give him enough that he would believe me. "I didn't know his name." At least not before he'd told me. "He said he didn't like what Evangeline was planning. But I don't think he'll be back now that you cut his arm off."

All truth. Remy nodded. "Did you know that I put a truth tracer on your cage as well?"

I frowned. "What is that?"

"Tell me you love me." Remy smiled.

I stared at him. "Why?"

"To show you what will happen to a liar in this cage."

I was not stupid. "It's going to hurt me, isn't it? When I speak a lie?"

He nodded. "Speak the words, tell me you love me."

How did I break him? By giving him a truth he didn't like. "I loved you, Remy, at least a little bit, because I thought you wanted to be a better man. At first."

No pain, not even a flash of heat, no slap like a whip. Nothing.

His eyes widened and I let him just look at me.

The way his eyes dilated, and nostrils flared…I wasn't quite sure if he was angry or shocked. Maybe both. But it was obviously not what he'd expected me to say. I hoped it hurt him.

I shrugged and looked away, and before he could get angry at me, I said what he'd asked me to. I lied to him. "I love you."

Pain arched through me, like a cramp erupting from my lower abdomen, striking out across my kidneys and up my spine to my throat.

I gasped and went to my knees, not sure if breathing would help or hurt me. I opted for a slow, shaky breath that made me shudder only a little.

"Now you know," Remy said. "And the pain? It only gets worse with each lie you tell. That was the first. The next will hurt you even more."

I swallowed hard as pain continued to ripple through me—less now, but still enough to make itself known.

"That was a dick move, Remy."

He laughed and turned his back on me, but not before I saw the seeds of uncertainty in his face. Maybe it had helped, telling him about the way I'd felt before he'd stomped any sympathy for him out of me.

Then again, he hadn't let me out.

The cold of the stones under me helped cool the heat of the pain, the feel of them grounding.

"You think you got through to him?" Ivan asked quietly. I shook my head and then shrugged.

"I don't know. But…" I moved to the bottom of my bed and flipped the sheet back. "We have to get these rings off."

Maybe Richart wasn't a friend, but he was the only sort-of ally we had here, and the last thing I wanted was for him to end up dead. Or as dead as a vampire could be.