“I don’t want to, but there’s something I need to do while it’s still dark,” he whispered. When he stood, she did as well. “Here, drink as much as you can before I go.”
Reluctantly, she accepted the flask and drank until she thought she would burst. When she handed it back to him, he tucked it into the canvas bag.
Following him to the cell door, she touched his shoulder. When he turned, she walked forward deliberately to hug him again.
As his arms came around her, she said haltingly, “Don’t scold me for saying this, but thank you again for everything. And be careful, will you? I can tell you have a bandage around your ribs, and I worry about you when you leave.”
His arms tightened. “There’s nothing wrong with my ribs that won’t heal. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back again this evening.”
With any luck, this evening she wouldn’t be here to greet him, but she didn’t tell him that.
Because she couldn’t trust him, after all.
After he slipped away, Sid listened for the bolt sliding into place. Once the sound confirmed he was truly gone, she turned to pace around the confines of her cell, one hand outstretched and the tips of her fingers touching lightly against the wall to keep her from running into it.
Practice your truth, he had said. Practice until you believe it.
So she began to tell a story to herself.
Not a story of what had actually happened, but a story of what she wanted the truth to be. What she needed the truth to be, in order to get out of this cell and back into the sunlight. She whispered it to herself over and over again, pacing and repeating until she had it thoroughly memorized.
She had enjoyed Juilliard. While most of her time had been focused on her obsession with music, she had played with some of her electives and had taken a few acting classes. The classes helped her to find a way to bridge some of the social isolation she had grown up with.
Acting on the stage or in front of a camera was not the same as acting to save one’s life, but if it was one thing she knew something about, it was how to face the pressure to perform, and how to hide her fear in front of a sometimes pitiless audience.
After she had memorized her story the way she wanted to tell it, she sat cross-legged facing one wall and ruined the zipper of her hoodie by running the metal teeth against the rock until she saw small, fleeting sparks.
Unwilling to miss a single precious flash of color, she didn’t blink. Aside from the guard’s torch, those sparks were the first thing she had seen in days.
The blackness in her cell started to lighten to gray. Then the reflection of a far-off fire appeared and drew closer. She listened to the squeaking wheels of the cart and the metallic clang as the guard shoved food trays into the cells of other prisoners down the hall.
Cry, she told herself. She bit the insides of her cheeks until she drew blood, and the pain became bad enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Then the guard was at her cell door, squatting to take the empty tray and shoving a full one through the slot. It was always the same guard, a dull-eyed Light Fae male with a scarred face. She had always wondered what he had done to be punished with such duty.
Jumping to her feet, she rushed to the cell door and grasped the bars as she sobbed, “Thank you! Thank you!”
Curling a lip, he sneered, “What nonsense are you spouting?”
“My hands. They’re healed!” Shoving her arms through the bars, she held out her hands for his inspection while she bit her cheek harder to make tears run down her face. “Someone came to heal me while I slept. The Queen must have decided to show me mercy after all. Please give me the opportunity to thank her in some way!”
The guard paused, the dullness in his gaze sparking with surprise. Staring at her fingers while she wiggled them, he said slowly, “You think the Queen did this?”
“Well,” she replied, “who else would have done it? I don’t have any magic. I certainly couldn’t have healed myself. If there was only some way I could repay her. I’d be so honored if she would give me another chance to play for her, but even if that isn’t possible I just want the chance to apologize.”
He laughed, a cynical, grating sound. “As if she would waste any more of her time on the likes of you.”
“I know, I know, but… just look at my hands,” she said, opening and closing them in front of his face. “Everybody knows how much she loves music. What if she wants to give me a second chance to perform?”
“You’re a massive fool if you think that,” the guard scoffed.
But his frowning gaze lingered on her hands for a long moment before he pushed the cart away.
After that, there was nothing to do but wait. While she could still see, she dumped the bad food down the privy hole, and after chewing her lip in thought, she dumped her good food too.
The familiar dark gray of the day settled around her. Having lost her night sight, she felt her way back to one wall where she sat cross-legged to run the zipper across the stone and watch the sparks again.
I’m getting out of here, she thought. Maybe things will get better or maybe they’ll get really bad again, but one way or another, I’m leaving this particular hell behind.
While she had no ability to tell time, presently the glow of approaching torches lightened her cell again, much too soon for the supper feeding. She listened to the sounds of footsteps as they grew nearer. There were three guards, maybe four.
As they stopped just outside her cell, she wrapped her hoodie around her middle, shaking.
Here we go.
A key grated in the lock, and her cell door was flung open. While the other guards waited outside, a powerful male strode in, grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her upright.
“On your feet,” he commanded. “I have some questions I want to ask you.”
It was too late to change her mind now. The pitiless audience had chosen to appear, and now she had to put on the performance of her life.
Chapter Nine
They took her to the same room where they had broken her fingers. Her breath shook as she looked at the grim surroundings. She had to stiffen the muscles in her legs to remain standing.
Bad things happened here. This was where they tortured people and killed them.
The guard who brought the meals was present, but he remained in the background while the powerfully built male who had dragged her out of her cell swung her around to face him.
“Who did this?” he demanded, gripping her by the wrists so he could stare at her hands, which she had clenched into fists.
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed, throwing every ounce of passionate conviction she could into her voice. “I was asleep when it happened. When I woke up, my hands were completely healed.”
“You were asleep when someone miraculously healed your broken hands,” the male said, his tone skeptical while his eyes narrowed. “In an underground prison.”
Her gaze darted around. This was a room where they questioned people as they tortured them. Someone had to have truthsense.
“Well, I couldn’t have healed myself,” she said flatly. “I have no magic. I can’t even telepathize. You can ask him if you want.” With a jerk of her chin, she indicated the mealtime guard. “Didn’t I say thank you? I’m a musician. It’s the one skill I’ve got that might interest her majesty. The Queen had to have ordered this, right? Who else could it have been? Like you said, it’s an underground prison.”
Questions weren’t lies. She was banking her future on it. They just helped to support her statements as she was telling them.
When her interrogator’s hard gaze lifted to the mealtime guard, he admitted, “That bit’s true enough. She kept crying and carrying on, and insisting on the chance to apologize to her majesty and make it up to her.”
Her interrogator released his bruising hold on her wrists. “Keep her here while I inform his lordship,” he ordered the guards.
As the male strode out, Sid backed against a wooden table so she
could lean against it as she massaged her wrists.
After having been in the darkness for so long, her eyesight felt weak and oversensitive. Although most of the illumination in this room came from a fire in an iron grill, everything seemed overbright, and her eyes kept tearing without her having to resort to biting her cheeks. She avoided looking at the three other guards left in the room.
His lordship. Did he mean Modred?
Well, she knew it had to get worse before it could get any better.
If it got better.
She didn’t know if she would live to see another evening, and she regretted…
She regretted so many things. She was sorry she never got the chance to have breakfast with Julie in Paris. She wished she could see another sunrise. She regretted not being able to tell Vince what had happened to her, because she knew her disappearance would haunt him.
But she especially regretted not being able to look in her benefactor’s eyes as she told him good-bye and thanked him one final time. She wished she’d had that eye-to-eye contact with him, just once.
The wait felt interminable, her patience stretched tight from nerves. This time the sound of approaching footsteps was rapid. The door flew open, and Modred stalked into the room.
He looked the same as he had when she had first met him, a richly dressed, handsome Light Fae male, but now there was nothing pleasant in his hard expression. Striding over, he grabbed one of her wrists and yanked up her hand to stare at it.
She had been correct. Her body knew him, and every nerve rioted at his touch. Under his piercing gaze, she opened and closed her fingers.
He shook her hand under her nose and hissed, “Who did this?”
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. With a quick yank, she took him by surprise and pulled out of his grasp. Before he could grab her wrist again, she hid her hands defensively in her armpits, her arms wrapped around her torso in a classic defensive gesture. “I never saw who did this or heard their voice. I certainly can’t see anything in that cell, and I wasn’t awake when it happened.” She looked at her first interrogator. “Somebody in this room has got to know I’m telling the truth.”
As Modred looked at him too, her first interrogator raised his eyebrows and gave an infinitesimal shrug.
Without taking his eyes off the other man, Modred said over his shoulder, “How many Hounds do we have on the castle grounds?”
“Not many, my lord,” the male said from behind him. “Most of them are on the search, on Earth. Perhaps three or four?”
“Get a couple of them down here to see if they can pick up a scent.” Modred turned away. He told her first interrogator, “Bring her.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Oh, yay! They were taking her someplace else. Almost anyplace else would be better than this horrible room saturated with blood and pain. Except for her cell. That wouldn’t be better. But from the sound of it, they had another destination in mind.
Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself as her first interrogator grabbed her arm and hauled her after Modred, who strode as rapidly down the hall as he had the first time she had met him.
She would have a collection of bruises on her arms from all the manhandling. “I’m cooperating, you know,” she told the Light Fae guard. “You don’t have to drag me along like this. I can keep up.”
He gave her a disdainful frown but released her. “See that you do,” he snapped. “Or you’ll end up in worse condition than you were in before.”
“I’m well aware of that,” she muttered through clenched teeth as she yanked her hoodie and worn T-shirt straight again. As bad as her captors were, her worst enemy was her own temper. She mustn’t let any of them get to her so badly she forgot her goals, because if she let that happen, she was done for.
Modred led them up the stairs and, just like the first time, through a maze of halls. Enchanted with the dizzying array of colors, textures, sights, and scents, Sid couldn’t stop staring around her. After days of sensory deprivation, the rich scenery was almost too much to take in.
He led the way past guards onto a verandah that opened to a walled garden filled with emerald green grass, flowering trees, and climbing roses. Travertine marble provided a cool, elegant floor, while columns of travertine punctuated the space.
Isabeau sat in the shade of an apple tree on the marble border of a large, round pool, throwing scraps of bread into the water while small ripples appeared as fish snatched at the food.
As before, the Queen looked strikingly beautiful, her long golden hair dressed in curls. She wore a light, sleeveless gown of pale blue silk with a plunging neckline. The material was so thin, it outlined the slender legs underneath it.
When the Queen glanced at them, her delicate brows drew together in a frown. She said in an edged voice, “Modred, I thought I told you I wanted the afternoon to myself.”
“Of course you did, my love,” he told her. “But trust me, you will want to hear this.” Turning, he gestured at the Light Fae guard, who reached for her arm again.
But Sid saw him coming and slipped neatly away from his grasp.
Throwing herself forward, she landed on her knees in front of the Light Fae Queen, bowing so deeply her chin almost touched the manicured grass. She focused her gaze on the delicate leather slippers in front of her.
“Your majesty, I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” she said. “When I first met you, I had no idea who you were. Nobody told me anything or taught me how to address you properly. Now that I do know, I’m embarrassed to be brought into your presence in such a state—filthy, unbathed, and in ragged clothing. This isn’t an appropriate way to have an audience with a queen. If it were in my power to choose otherwise, I would have presented myself in a way that showed much more respect for your person.”
With her head bowed, she could just see Modred’s long legs out of the corner of her eye. As she spoke, he shifted abruptly. The air around her seemed to sharpen, as if filled with invisible knives.
You threw me under the bus the first time, she said silently to Modred. Just watch. I can throw you under a bus too.
Then Isabeau said, her tone light, measured, “Well, it appears at least someone is thinking of the correct protocol. Even if it is only the ugly brown-haired girl.”
And you, Sid said to the Queen. If I could chew off your leg and beat you with it, I would. Maybe I’ll get the chance one day. Now there’s a goal to strive for.
“Trust me, my love. This is too urgent to wait for protocol.” Modred’s reply sounded edged.
“Was that true the first time you brought her to me?” Isabeau asked.
“I smelled like a barnyard,” Sid murmured, ducking her head farther. “I was afraid, and I hadn’t eaten properly in days. Not that it’s any excuse, but it caused me to lash out. A monarch should be greeted with elegance and diplomacy. Your majesty, please forgive me.”
Silence fell over the tableau, heavy with nuances and the ripe scents of summer. Danger breathed softly along the back of Sid’s neck.
Then Isabeau murmured in a guarded tone, “Perhaps I’ll consider it. Now, why are you here? Modred, why is she here? Why are you here, when I expressly told you I wanted to be alone?”
“Show her, ugly brown-haired girl,” Modred said.
Holding up her hands, Sid turned them over and opened and closed her fingers. The silence grew heavier, like the press of a knife to her jugular.
“What is this?” Isabeau asked.
She couldn’t answer with anything but questions. “Isn’t it mercy?” she asked. “Didn’t you order this, yourself? The moment when I awoke to discover my hands were healed was indescribable. Your majesty, I’m so glad to get the chance to apologize.”
As she waited, her pulse pounded in her ears. Isabeau said nothing for so long, she plummeted into certainty. They were going to kill her and be done with it. A flash of heat washed over her body, followed by a wave of nausea.
Then she jettisoned past terror to reali
ze Isabeau’s extended silence meant she must be telepathizing with someone. Perhaps Modred. Perhaps Sid’s interrogator. Isabeau would be demanding an explanation from her people and getting their versions of the truth.
Sid knew she had convinced the interrogator she knew nothing, but she had no idea what Modred believed.
Tightening every muscle in her torso, she willed the nausea away and waited.
With a rustle of silk, Isabeau left her seat. Long, bejeweled fingers curled around one of Sid’s hands, turning it first one way then the other.
“Look at that,” Isabeau murmured. “They are perfectly restored, aren’t they?”
Did the Queen believe she knew nothing? Was she going to claim credit for the healing? Sid didn’t dare look up. She hadn’t been given permission to do so.
“I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart,” she said, again pouring all the conviction of that truth into her voice.
Isabeau ordered, “Look at me.”
Lifting her head, Sid looked into the Queen’s intent, narrowed gaze.
Watching her closely, Isabeau asked, “Now will you play music for me, ugly brown-haired girl?”
And there it was, the chance to take her money shot. Her opportunity to deliver the closing statement, to seal the deal.
Filling her mind with the memory of the unending bleakness in her underground cell, Sid said with perfect, heartfelt honesty, “Your majesty, there is nothing I want more in this world than to play the very best music I can for you.”
A smile broke over Isabeau’s lovely face, like the deadly blooming of a poisonous flower.
“Excellent,” the Queen said, releasing her hand and standing. “Luckily for you, my music master Olwen is away for a fortnight, so I suppose I might as well give you one more chance. But you will not play anything while you’re like that. Your smell is too offensive. The next time I see you, I want you bathed and in proper attire. You may come to me this evening.”
The wave of relief that hit was so strong, Sid saw black spots dance in front of her eyes. Swaying, she murmured, “I apologize, your majesty, but—”