Page 73 of Taken By Shadows

I moved closer to the cage. It was like approaching a dangerous animal with the way he looked behind bars. Even though there was a wall of iron and manacles between us and I held the key for both, there was something truly terrifying about seeing him caged.

“They asked me—Ouch!” I yanked my hand back after resting it on one of the bars. A faint mauve mark painted my palm where it had made contact.

Kaed was nearly pressed to the cage limits the next second. “You’re hurt.” It wasn’t a question. He sounded angry, in fact.

I hissed at the pain. “What is that?”

“It burned you?” he asked steadily, as if it took him great effort not to be more annoyed with me.

“Yes! What in the hells was that?”

“You’re more fae than you give yourself credit for, peach.” Confusion blatant across my face, he continued, “The Cage has been imbued with faebane. The manacles too. They’re taking no chances by having me in here.”

I flicked my head to Kaed as I cradled my hand. “Why isn’t it affecting you, then, with the manacles?”

“It is,” he said simply.

My throat went dry. “They’re burning you right now?”

But he was so reserved? So calm?

“Who does it serve to show my pain? To show my weaknesses?”

I flinched, but maybe I could relate a little to that. Masking how you truly felt could be a sort of defence, I supposed. It was something I had mastered over the years. Maybe he was right? What did it help, who did it serve, to show how you felt? When the people of Shadowfall had seen me cry or thought they’d broken through my carefully constructed walls, they only tried to hurt me more. They didn’t move on when they’d broken me. That was the cruelty of people. Best to shatter something else rather than face their own pitiful lives, their own shortcomings.

I pushed past that with a hard swallow. “What about the raw crystals? They don’t burn me.”

“It requires fae witch magic and processing to activate the properties of the crystals.”

Despite his earlier claim of masking the pain, I saw a pulse in his temple just where his scar carved downwards. It throbbed even as he forced composure across his features. It had seared my skin, and I’d only touched it for a second.

“We should get those off you.”

I moved to the door of the cage but hesitated as I reached for the lock with the key.

Kaed was as still as a predator seconds away from prey. What was I thinking?

But before I could answer myself, I slid the key into the mechanism. The lock turned with an echoing click in the chamber.

I stepped in before he could step out. “So humans can’t use faebane against fae, then? If they can’t magically process it?”

“You do realise that’s the way out,” he said as I closed the door behind me.

“Answer me first.”

His lips twitched into a sort of smile as he regarded me, now in the cage with him. “I suppose, a particularly pointed shaft could do some damage.”

His ability to throw around humour while still bound and in pain was impressive. Or was it disturbing?

“How does it work? What’s it doing to you now?” My voice softened. I felt cruel asking these questions when he was suffering. But this was the only chance I was going to have to learn anything about the faebane he so desperately wanted from me.

I knew what it was to suffer at the hands of others, but I couldn’t let him out. Not yet. Not until he gave me some answers.

I stared straight at him. And Kaed stared straight back.

Kaed winced as he clinked the metal of his cuffs and showed them to me. “Think of it like a dampener,” he finally said. “The faebane binds magic to it.”

He’d said as much when he’d taken me but seeing the faebane actually do it, suppress his magic. I had no idea that’s what it was used for when I traded it to merchants. The thought of it falling into the hands of people who would rob someone of magic. Take a part of someone as they took their freedom too. If the wrong people ever got hold of something as powerful as faebane …