“I was born in Elverstone, but I belong to Vindica now.” Not only because of my mother, not anymore. I’d found something in there, someone. He wouldn’t be accepted anywhere else, and I didn’t think I hated the reservation as much as I thought I would.

The woman discarded the cloth and shamelessly touched my skin again. Other than the sense of familiarity and the sizzling of my shield, I couldn’t feel a thing. She was in full concentration mode, however, and I had no idea what she attempted to do. I didn’t feel threatened by her touch, which is why I stayed still and studied her instead.

The room was dim, but I could see she definitely had chocolate brown hair, perhaps lighter. It was difficult to assess without a sufficient light source. Her eyes were closed but I could already guess at the colour.

“He’ll be coming for me,” I told her.

If Karmuth meant anything he’d said, he’ll be coming for sure. Even if he didn’t mean a thing, and the king ordered him to find me, he would. He’d be here either way.

“It appears you belong to Vindica, indeed.” The woman smiled sadly. “Not any less than you belong to Elverstone and Hessia. What in the world has Lord Terwyl gotten us into?”

“Hessia?” I croaked as she let go of me to grab at the cloth once more to continue her gentle scrubbing of my skin.

I could see her eyes now and they were as blue as the sky, as blue as Karmuth’s. Not a whole lot of dark fae out there who looked like that. I didn’t think I’d meet another.

“You do not know who your father was? You’ve not inherited his eyes, but then again, your mother is a naturel, so that might explain it. You do have his ability to draw from life, though. Most definitely a trait of Hessian bloodline.”

I shook my head in disbelief. The chains I dangled by jingled from the movement, and my wrists ached further, but the pain was secondary. My father had not been a Hessian. I would’ve known, my mother would’ve said something.

“Naturels can draw from life,” I countered.

“Naturels do not draw from life, girl. Never have and never will. If that’s what you believe, then someone has been slacking in your education.”

“But…” But the forest? The flowerbed? The parsley?

I’d always been able to feel the ecos pulsing through the plant life. It greeted me whenever I wandered through the forest behind our house in Elverstone. It had always reached out to me, and I’d always known I could connect to it.

My mother said I shouldn’t. She’d given me boundaries: naturels never took from life, we reinforced it. Our presence gave the forest strength. We generated our own ecos and gave it out to the environment, there was no reason to draw from life.

That was before I’d pulled from the delthers. I wasn’t sure I could survive without feeding any longer. The darkness countered the light of my birthright.

I’d drawn from the delthers. It dawned on me that no matter which way I looked at it, delthers were not part of plant life. And while I could believe all naturels could pull from plants but refused to do so, I couldn’t explain how I’d been so effortlessly able to pull from a delther.

“My father couldn’t have been a life fae,” I whispered, then winced as she rubbed the cloth over a cut Lord Terwyl had particularly enjoyed carving across my arm. “Besides, how would you know?”

She was an emotion-feeder. In no way could she sense anything other than my deep distress. I’d felt more, though. I’d felt that familiarity. A sense of kin. A similar sensation that drew me to Karmuth.

I already knew without her having to confess to it, but I needed to hear her say it. “You’re Karmuth’s mother, aren’t you?”

“Karmuth,” she repeated his name tenderly. “Is that what they named him? It’s fitting.”

“He looks like you. Bluest eyes I’ve ever seen on a death fae.”

She didn’t respond, just scrubbed my skin harder. I gritted my teeth to keep from squirming.

“Brown hair,” I continued. “He never knew why he looked different from the rest of the court, even after he found out he’s part Felrothian. Your court looks nothing like him, either.”

My voice held an accusatory tone which was not appropriate in my current situation. I was a prisoner and had no business provoking my captors. The woman looked harmless compared to Lord Terwyl, but looks were deceiving.

“He got his looks from his grandfather,” the fae woman finally said, giving up on my wounds.

She gave me a stern look meant to warn me off the conversation, but I couldn’t stop my curiosity. It was either the insurrection pushing me to fight against what clearly was the wiser choice, or I was simply that stupid.

“Who is Karmuth’s grandfather? Was he a light fae? Why did you give him away?”

Yes, I was definitely not in the position to interrogate the other fae since she picked up her basin of water and splashed her way right out of the room. The door locked after her. I’d gone too far, as always.

I wanted to know about his father, too. He’d obviously been a death fae, but no one had stepped up to claim him when he arrived at the reservation, so he’d clearly not known he had a son. Karmuth’s mother would know who he was, but she wouldn’t tell me a thing.

Chapter 34

KARMUTH

THE QUEEN FUMBLED WITH A KEYCHAIN, HER EYES JUMPING towards the staircase every now and then to make sure nobody would catch her in the act of releasing a prisoner. She stepped away shakily once the lock clicked, and the barred door swung open.

I pulled the keys out of the lock and marched over to Regar’s door.

“What are you doing?” Queen Siya demanded. “I told you to find Isay.”

“And Regar will help me do it. You want your daughter back? This is how it’ll get done,” I retorted hotly.

I don’t know what I looked like in my state of barely controlled rage, but the queen was shivering and stepped farther away from me.

“You do understand that when I arrive back with Isay, the king will still have my head for disobedience?” I told her as I unlocked Regar’s cage and he joined us in the hallway. “I am not doing this for you. I would do just about anything for Isay, but I’d appreciate it if you’d change his mind before we get back. If not for me, then for your daughter’s sake. It ain’t going to be pretty if this mate bond breaks.”

Siya nodded shakily. “I will convince him.”

Her promise didn’t give me a whole lot of confidence, but I wasn’t going to back out either way, and Regar had sworn to stick this out no matter what.

“You’d better leave now, my queen. It is going to get bloody in here.”

She flicked her gaze toward the back of the dungeon where the clunking had stopped. He knew what was coming. He signed up for it the moment he gave Isay to the enemy. He should’ve left with her. To think he could persuade the king of his innocence was idiotic.

The queen picked up the hem of her dress and scurried off. I didn’t see any of her in the way Isay ran toward danger instead, or the way she spoke her mind. In fact, I didn’t trust Siya to talk to the king on my behalf. She hadn’t been able to convince him to go after Isay. My life meant even less, despite my skill set being one of a kind.

She’d better stand up for Isay, however, because if I even got an inkling that she’d no longer be safe here, I would take her anywhere else. We could stay on the run together. Just Isay and me.

And Regar. He deserved freedom, as well.

“I feel like locking myself back up after this little confidence boost,” the warrior muttered under his breath as I pulled him to Ferro’s cell.

“She’ll come through for us.” I was trying to convince myself as much as him. But when I laid my eyes on Ferro, I no longer cared at all.

He sat on the concrete floor with a piece of wood that looked a lot like a leg of the cot gripped in his fingers. When he moved his hand, the wood hit against the bars that kept him imprisoned. The clunking resumed. He didn’t look up from his movement, but his lips curled up in a wicked smile.

The dried blood and the twisted angle of his nose made him look uncanny. The smirk on his face just wasn’t right. Ferro had never smirked like that. This was no longer the fae we knew.

“You’re not going to find the girl. It’s too late; they’ve already disposed of the body.” Ferro laughed dryly.