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Father might think I have accepted my fate to waste away in this cell for eternity, going insane with monotony and isolation, but he was wrong.
Leaping upward, I grasped two bars along the top of my cage and began my routine, pulling my weight up then lowering in aslow, even pace. I focused on the tempo of my heartbeat, the flex of my muscles, and the mild pain that reminded me I was alive.
My complexion had faded to a pale ashen gray rather than the deeper shade of a healthy wraith fae. But as long as I was breathing, there was a sliver of hope that I would get out of here.
The warded bars blocked my magick, but I felt it sizzling under my skin, itching to be used, whispering through my blood. During the past fortnight, I’d felt a sudden quickening of powerful energy through my veins. The melodic refrain told me my time was almost here.
I lifted myself repeatedly, finally reaching the point where I’d pushed past the pain when suddenly there was the clang of the iron door opening at the top of the stairs.
Feeding time.
The wights erupted into ravening groans, knowing what that sound meant. The bone-keepers were hauling some poor mortal down to their doom.
Gaunt arms with exposed bone and fingers covered in pasty gray skin reached up toward the platform suspended high over the pit. The black-stained hook where they’d lower the victim dangled freely, waiting for fresh meat.
I realized long ago that my father housed me here next to his pit of foul wights, his army of bone soldiers who obeyed only him, for a reason. Putting me within sight where he’d feed victims to his death horde would eat away at my sanity.
The two hulking bone-keepers were clad in leather tunics, their ears severed. Their tongues were as well. My father spoke to his guards through mind alone and kept them deaf and mute to any order but his own. They wouldn’t hear the anguish and despairing cries of their captives, only the demonic voice of their king.
I was glad the gods hadn’t bestowed on me the gift of neklia, to raise and use the dead as my army. But I’d been given theremarkable power of a zephilim, able to wield feyfire with a single word. Not that it did me any good behind these wards.
The bone-keepers hauled a sack between them with the wights’ dinner struggling inside. My pointed ears pricked at the muffled sound, for it was…feminine.
Scowling, I leaped toward the bars, gripping them tightly. They’d never fed a female to the wights. The victims thrown into the pit were alleged traitors to my father, wraith fae who’d wronged him or light fae captured near the border. But never once a female, not even a magickless hag, not even they were fed to the wights.
“Let me go,” came the soft cry within the canvas sack as one of the guards set it on the platform above the pit.
My gut clenched at the desperate plea, but nothing prepared me for what happened when they pulled the sack open and she fell to the platform floor.
A guttural groan trembled up my throat at the shimmering light filling the room, haloed around the beautiful creature—battered and bruised—whose slender arms were now held tightly by the foul bone-keepers. When she twisted to try to get away, I saw an open gash on her back through her torn gown. Her wings had been ripped from her body. My grip tightened on the bars.
Her skin was as smooth and white as the marble carved from the northernmost mountains of Solgavia. Her white hair was soiled and dirty, strands falling loose around her fear-brightened face. Her gossamer gown was tattered and torn.
A delicate light fae female. She was young, just a girl. An innocent. My gut clenched at the cruelty of it.
When she turned her angelic face down toward the pit, dawning horror washed over her expression.
“No!” The first word I’d spoken since my imprisonment scraped raw and true out of my throat.
My magick replied with a fervent ripple through my body, bashing against the wards of the cage, relishing the spark to life.
The bone-keepers forced her onto the hook dangling above the platform and tied her to it with tattered ropes. Rather than fight them, she grasped hold of the hook, as if this instrument might be her savior.
Frantically, she kept glancing from the guards to the pit below. One of the bone-keepers pressed a lever, and her slow descent began. She cried out in alarm, the sound piercing through my flesh and bones, snaking through my body like an invading viper. An ethereal whip lashed at me to act.Now.
“No,” I repeated, burning with rage, feeding it to my magick, allowing the power that lived within my royal blood to burst forth in torrents. The magick listened and relished the aggressive fury, devouring the darkness that lived inside me, kept bound for far too long.
A dark fae’s power was a sentient, dominant force that craved to be free. And mine burst from within.
My muscles bulged as I poured my power into the iron, breaking the chains with surprising ease. It was as if the wards were never a barrier for me at all. I’d only needed a catalyst strong enough to set me free.
My gaze riveted on the frightened faeling, her slender arms clinging helplessly to the hook lowering her to her death.
Just as the lower edge of the hook reached the frantic hands of the hissing and groaning wights, I roared with rage.
An explosion of red light sliced through the gloom as the wards broke, and then the iron bars bent to my will with frightening ease. I leaped through the opening of the bars and bounded toward the pit.
She cried out as wights pulled at her tattered gown, clawing at her bare legs. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, while I roared yet again.
