"I'm observant."
"The Fae are going to lose it when you tell them," Cosimo commented. "My liver is already hurting just thinking about the inevitable party."
"No parties until Elise asks for them," Kian said, pointing to Quinn. "No acting suspicious."
Taranis knocked his hand away. "Don't point at my mate."
"Tell her to behave herself."
Quinn laughed evilly. "Have you met me? I don't do 'behaving.'"
"It's because you like discipline too much," Apollo chimed in.
Quinn opened her mouth to say something, but Taranis put his hand over it and muffled her reply. "Okay, enough. We need to focus on finding Yelena and Avallach. Elise and Kian's good news, and when they want to share it, is their business," he said, and then looked back at Valentine. "Use the letters and anything else you can think of to track them down."
"And then what?" Valentine asked, his mind already turning to the magical problem.
"Then I go and find them. I hope it's just me overreacting, and they are just being overly cautious, but until I find out otherwise, we treat this like a rescue mission," Taranis said.
Valentine thought about the letters and his dreams, and magic tingled his fingertips. If there were any connection linking their magic, even if it were just the magic of the letters, he would find it. And he wouldn't sit back and watch Taranis go into Faerie without him.
Valentine closed his eyes, let the voices in the room drown out, and dropped into his magic. In the warm darkness, the dragon inside of him stirred.
Unlike the rest of his family, he hadn't needed to wait until magic had been restored to feel his dragon. He had kept his beast and his knowledge of it locked up since he was a teenager. It had been safer that way for all of them.
I need your help, Valentine told the slumbering beast.If my dreams of Yelena are real, help me figure out how to use them to find her.
The dragon opened its ruby eyes.You have ignored me every time I tried to warn you before…especially about her.
Valentine knew it was right, but he didn't have time to argue about it.I know, and I'm sorry. It might be safe enough for you to be free soon, but she was the only one I thought might help us not hurt anyone when we let you out.
Sleep, demanded the dragon.Sleep, and we will fly to the silver one together.
4
Yelena had been sitting in the dank cell for weeks. They kept her away from Avallach and bound her in enchanted manacles to ensure she didn't shift. She could still feel a faint, low hum of magic, but it wouldn't be enough to send a message for help.
Soon. Soon. Soon.
Ice was rolling in her veins and her soul. It would take her under, and then she would have to trust that what she saw in her vision would come to pass.
The long bolts to the cell were thrown back, and two warriors dressed in furs appeared. Without a word, they unlocked the chains that were holding her to the wall. Her numb arms fell to her sides, and she was dragged forward.
She didn't bother to ask where they were taking her. They wouldn't tell her anyway. They thought that not talking to her was going to torture her more. They were idiots. Yelena had always enjoyed the silence. It was being around others that gave her anxiety. She never knew how to act, and it was exhausting.
Yelena was marched up dirty stone steps and out onto the crumbling battlements of the fort. It had surprised her that theyhadn't tried to take her and Avallach to Brí Léith. Midir clearly trusted his general to get what they wanted, but not enough to risk having both of them in his seat of power.
Yelena had heard stories of Cathal. He was a true shapeshifter and Midir's master spy and interrogator. He could break a person by shifting into the people his victims loved before he brought out his torture instruments. He could become a bear berserker in a battle or turn into a fly and sit on the wall of a council chamber. He was a spy, an executioner, a general…anything that Midir needed him to be.
Taranis had always had magical defenses around his fortress to ensure the only creatures that could take another form were born dragons because of Cathal's abilities.
Cathal had already tried torturing Yelena in the form of Taranis and then all his knights, one by one. He had even tried her own face. None of it had worked.
Cathal had never seen the only face that could have had a chance to break Yelena. If she had her way, he never would.
Today, the general wore his real face. Cathal was tall and lean like many of the fae, with a braid of black hair threaded with small feathers and bones. His armor was bronze and black leather, and at first glance, he looked less wild than the warriors he commanded—until you looked into his eyes and saw the lack of a soul in them.
Yelena was thrown toward him, and she stumbled but managed to keep her feet under her.
