I gave him a sad smile. “Like you’ve let go of your past?”
His demeanor changed in an instant. He dropped his hand, the muscles in his jaw flexing in agitation, and the ice chips reforming in his eyes. “That is different, you know this. I actually did the things that stain my soul, if it is even possible for a vampir to possess one. But you are not at fault for what happened to Devlyn.”
Switching to Russian, I touched my fingertips to his stubbled cheek. “Regret and guilt don’t come with rules, moya brat. You have your pain, and I have mine. But our bond is stronger than all the hurt, and we’ll always have each other. Right?”
The corners of his mouth curved up slightly as he lifted my hand to press a brotherly kiss on the top of my fingers. “Da, we will always have each other, moy sever.”
Hours after that conversation, my declaration was no longer true. I was taken from him, from my home and my adopted clan. Because despite all my painstaking precautions to hide my fae features beneath a vampire glamour for almost five hundred years, Edevane somehow discovered my true identity.
The how is something I’ve never figured out. There are two cities in this realm I never dared to visit—Phoenix and Vegas. Neither are all that dangerous for tourists, but the last place I want to be is anywhere near the Celestial Courts, which Aine banished to the desert lands of the human world. If anyone has a reason to hate my mother and use me for revenge, it’s the Edevane royals of the Day Court and Verran royals of the Night Court.
In the end, though, I don’t have anyone but myself to blame for my capture. I’d grown complacent, comfortable in my protective station as tsarina of the Romanov clan. If I’d been more aware, more vigilant, I would’ve realized the gray dust on the white roses delivered to me wasn’t decorative paint, and I wouldn’t have left the safety of our building.
I’ve replayed that night in my mind thousands of times, analyzing every detail, wishing I could go back and change something—anything—that didn’t end with me getting into that limo.
“Yury? Yury, I think something’s wrong. I…” Reaching above my head, I turned on the dome light and studied my hands closely. The gray powder from the petals of the white roses must have transferred onto my fingertips. I brought them up to my nose and immediately yanked them away from the musty metallic odor. “Iron powder. Oh gods. Yury, stop the car!”
The vehicle pulled over right as my shaking hands managed to get my phone out of my clutch. I needed to call Dmitri. But the slight jarring from the sudden stop caused me to fumble the cell to the floor. Before I could reach for it, a man entered the limo and slid smoothly onto the seat opposite me.
Instinctively, I summoned my fire magic…but nothing happened. It felt like trying to tap water from a dry well.
“I’m afraid the iron will have already suppressed your powers,” the man said as he retrieved my cell phone and slipped it into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. “So, no magic, and by now you’ll be too weak to do much of anything, much less fight.”
Panic spread like ice in my veins. “Who the fuck are you? What do you want?”
Leaning forward, a slow grin spread across his face like the Big Bad Wolf eyeing up a weak little girl holding a picnic basket, complete with fangs. And that’s when I recognized him. He was no man. He was fae. Even worse, he was the godsdamned Light King.
Malevolence glinted in his bright green eyes. “Let’s just say instead of blowing out your candles tonight, Princess, you’re going to make all of my wishes come true.”
He opened the console and pulled out an oxygen mask that he placed over his mouth and nose just as a cloud of gas expelled from the air vents. “You motherfu…”
That was my last memory before waking up in this iron prison. I have no idea what his plans are, but I assume it has something to do with revenge against my mother or possibly bargaining his way back into Faerie. All I can do is guess or theorize because no one here speaks to me. I haven’t seen Edevane since the night he abducted me, and any supplies or food they give me is shoved through the slot in the door.
Every couple of weeks, they pump sleeping gas into my room through the vents. I know that I’m always out for a few days because of the position of the moon and stars through the lone skylight in the two-story ceiling.
When I wake up, however many days later, I always do a full body check. If they did anything to harm me physically, I’d still have the wounds since I can’t heal as fast with all the iron surrounding me. But I never have any signs of violation—of any kind, thank the gods—except feeling even weaker than normal.
After putting the final touches on my sketch, I study the pair of eyes staring back at me from the page. They’re not the narrowed, piercing arctic blues of my brother’s. These are almond shaped with a warm golden color, like jars of honey backlit by the sun, and framed with thick, black lashes that should make them look feminine, and yet I’m confident they belong to a male.
I don’t know whose they are. I don’t know what the rest of his face looks like. All I know is that I started seeing his eyes in my dreams a few months ago, shortly after I was returned to my room without my necklace. My Armas. It’s the only thing I took with me the night I left Faerie and never looked back. It might be a painful reminder of who I am, but it was my most prized possession.
I stare back at the two-dimensional gaze, the conflicting feelings it stirs up only serving to frustrate the hell out of me. If I come across him someday and learn he’s the one who stole my Armas, I’ll make it so he never sees out of his gorgeous fucking eyes again.
Ripping the page out of the sketch book, I tear a piece of duct tape off the roll and use it to secure the drawing to the wall by the door with all the others. “Damn it,” I say, wincing. Being this close to the iron feels like acupuncture needles are piercing every nerve in my body. I quickly back up, breathing in relief when the pain finally ebbs. Then I study the myriads of pages taped to the walls of my prison.
In the beginning, I drew different landscapes of the places I’ve been in this realm, and even some I remember from Faerie. Those fill up three of the walls as high as I can reach on my toes since my wings are too weak for me to fly—I’ve tried.
But the fourth wall is all him. The eyes of the stranger in my dreams. I’ve drawn them in a dozen different ways—photo realism, impressionism, conceptual, abstract, watercolors, cartoonish, anime, and more. All of them, though, are very clearly the same pair of eyes. The way they always seem to look right through me, like they can see past the mask, is unnerving. And at the same time, if I’m being completely honest with myself, just the slightest bit comforting.
“Who are you?” I whisper to the wall. The vents in the room hiss in response, but it’s not the one I want. “Fuck.”
I pull the bottom of my shirt up to my face, trying to avoid breathing in the gas for as long as possible, but it’s no use. I cough as it invades my lungs, and I wonder if I should try to make it to the bed or just lay down on the floor here to avoid getting a concussion when I collapse.
Before I can do either, I’m shocked to hear someone unlocking the door. They’ve never come in this soon after the gas starts. Maybe I finally have a chance to get out of here! I don’t have my strength, but if I have the element of surprise…
Grabbing one of my fountain pens, I stumble to the door and flatten myself against the wall. I summon my tiny, pathetic flame in the palm of my hand, then hold it under the metal tip of the pen. The door swings open for a male dressed in dark clothing, wearing a balaclava that covers the lower half of his face. I summon every ounce of adrenaline-fueled strength I have and drive the scorched tip of my pen to the strip of exposed skin on his neck.
But I’m too slow, or maybe he’s too fast. He catches me by the wrist just as the hot metal singes his skin and nothing else. I failed.
I’ve breathed in too much of the gas to do anything more. My knees give out, and he catches me against his firm body. My head becomes too heavy and tips back on my shoulders, forcing me to look up…into almond shaped eyes the color of sunlit honey.
“It’s you,” I whisper, just as the world goes dark.
THREEFINNIAN
I can’t believe, after all this time, it’s really her. Taryn Emory, Fire Fae Princess of the Summer Court and estranged daughter of Aine Emory, the One True Queen of Faerie.
She doesn’t look anything like the vibrant female from her press photos before she was taken prisoner. She’s practically skin and bones in the white tank top and baggy linen pants she’s wearing. Her hair is pulled into a haphazard ponytail, the curls dull and frizzed. There are dark circles under her eyes, hollows beneath her cheekbones, and her light brown skin appears almost sallow.
If I had time, I’d rage a war against everyone in this godsforsaken facility who had a hand in her mistreatment. I can’t imagine living in a room lined with iron for a year as she has. Even standing only a few feet inside the door, I can feel the draining effect it has on me.
Doing a quick scan of the room, I’m surprised to see drawings of landscapes taped up all over the walls. Art supplies are scattered on the bed and more on a desk, both of which are in the center of the room where the effects of the iron would be the least painful.
It doesn’t appear that they were overly concerned about providing her with certain things, probably because she didn’t have much of a fighting chance to use anything to her advantage between the iron keeping her weak and the gas making her unconscious anytime they wanted to get close to her. Again, my blood boils.
“Get the fuck out of there, Verran.” Garvey’s pissed off command squawks in my ear through the comms unit. “They gassed the room, and two guards are on their way to collect her.”
I pull my balaclava down from my nose and smell the slightly sweet odor of nitrous oxide. Shit. That explains why she’s passed out in my arms. “You said they weren’t coming for her today,” I growl, fixing the mask in place again.
“It wasn’t scheduled. You know I can’t sabotage you on purpose. But if you get caught due to your own stupidity, I don’t have to lift a finger to help you. That’s not part of our deal.”
Dmitri cuts in. “Do not worry, comrade. I promise he will lift several fingers, or he will lose them all.”
I grin, picturing the vampire lord hovering over the Light Warrior in the security room with his bogatyr sword ready to follow through on that promise. “Thanks for the assist, D. Moving out.”
Scooping Taryn into my arms, I cradle her against my chest and turn to leave the room but stop short. This wall also has dozens of sketches taped to it, but they’re not of landscapes. It’s a pair of eyes. My eyes. “What the hell?” Dozens of pages, all sketched in various styles. Some are black and white, but most of them highlight the golden color denoting my Dark bloodline.
Suddenly I remember the soft words she uttered before falling unconscious. It’s you…
“Three seconds, Verran,” Garvey grinds out. He’s probably fighting against helping me, but the debt is to help me rescue her, so he doesn’t have a choice. The contract will keep him honest. Not wasting any more time, I dart out into the hall and go left.
The route I’m taking should be clear. Garvey supplied me with blueprints, guard schedules, and access codes. His voice comes through again. “I’ve closed the door remotely and manually overrode the lock, so the guards’ passkeys won’t work. It’ll buy you guys a little more time to get clear, but not much.”
“Copy that.”
It’s a damn good thing we used a Debt Fight to draw Garvey out because we never would have found this place on our own. When the Day Court settled in the area that eventually became Phoenix, they built a secret hideout inside the Superstition Mountains just east of the city.
That’s where Talek’s been operating from since waging a war on the Night Court when he tried killing our king, and then when that didn’t work, brainwashed a group of humans into slaughtering Dark Fae in the streets of Vegas. We chose tonight for the rescue mission because Talek is somewhere else. Where, exactly, we don’t know, but all that matters is he isn’t here.
