My fae priest friend smiles at me, looking just as he did when he was slain. Another spirit says something to him. To my surprise, Athanis responds to them in their own language before he turns his attention back to me.
“I am glad to see you awake once more, my friend. Already, the fate I have foreseen for you is set in motion. But you must leave here quickly,” he adds, looking at the dead fae in the chair. “For although her escape has blessed you with this chance to claim your sweeter fate, Nivarrah slayed nearly everyone within this facility before she fled. If other fae arrive soon to investigate, they may blame you.”
I look around once more. “How long did I slumber? What is this strange time and place?”
“There are many things I must explain to you, Kaen, but you must?—”
“My mate,” I say as excitement over her fills me again, riling the beasts beneath my skin. “I saw my mate. Athanis, she is heavenly.”
Athanis huffs, looks skyward like he cannot believe how foolish I’m being, and motions impatiently at me. “Yes, yes—I can lead you to her. She is called Elise.”
Elise.
Elise,my beasts purr together.
I wish to bask in the simple pleasure of knowing her name longer, but if Athanis can take me to her, there is no time to waste. I see that he is pointing at a metal door at the other end of this red-flashing room. Moving carefully, I step over another fae body lying still upon the ground and crack open the door.
Peering down a long hall that also flashes red, I observe that Nivarrah has been here, too.
Three more fae lay on the cold floor, two with snapped necks, while the third is merely unconscious. I start to go in the direction Athanis tells me to, but the unconscious fae groans, waking to sit up against one of the walls. It is then that I notice her stomach is rounded with child.
She cradles her head as if it pains her, while one of her arms bleeds profusely. When she sees me, she screams, the scent of her fear souring the air around us.
“I won’t hurt you,” I try to promise her before remembering she doesn’t know my words.
“Nivarrah’s reality-twisting magic and violence have terrified this poor mother-to-be,” Athanis sighs. “Now, quickly, Kaenon, you must?—”
“One moment,” I tell him.
When I move toward the injured fae, she sobs and shakes her head, pleading in her language that I don’t understand. I check our surroundings quickly to make sure no one will attack while I am distracted, and then I rip a strip of cloth from one of the dead fae’s white coats.
The pregnant fae woman gasps, terrified as I crouch beside her with the strip of cloth. I hold it up and point at her arm to show my intent. She does not heal the way my kind does, and it is not good for her to lose this blood when she is with child.
She is still frightened, but doesn’t fight me as I tie the fabric tightly on her arm, two fingers above the injury. Hopefully, it will slow the bleeding until others arrive to help her.
The woman sniffles, tears on her cheeks as she speaks to me. “Th—thang-kyuh.”
Athanis is floating nearby. “That means she’s grateful.”
Smiling at the woman to show I understand, I leave her resting against the wall and slip through the bloodied doors that Athanis urges me toward.
My stomach sinks at the new view before me. This was once another laboratory room of some kind, before magic blasted holes in it. I am grateful to spy a hint of greenery through one of the larger holes ripped in the wall, which tells me this strange facility is surrounded by forest.
But this room is filled with several more bodies, and it is clear that Nivarrah turned them against one another with her magic. Blood pools on the ground where one’s head has been smashed in by a metal rod in the hand of another. One looks strangled to death, while another has been burned to ash by magic.
“Nivarrah is worse off now than she was when Thalo first took her into the laboratory at the king’s command,” Athanis sighs. “I shudder to think of the ways Veld may have tortured her mind while in that eternal suspension spell.”
Their bond is putrid, but during the time I knew Nivarrah, she became mad with determination to win his wandering attention back to her, however she could. But after so long inside her own sleeping mind with him and the damage Athanis suspects, perhaps she is finally sick of him.
The alarms chanting overhead are beginning to bother my strong hearing. My inner beasts dislike this metallic, cold place, which is so unlike our beautiful, natural world.
“It is irksome that Veld was not restrained here,” I frown. “Do you know where he is? He has taken an intolerable interest in my mate.”
“I only hope he will be found and sentenced according to their laws for whatever crimes he is no doubt committing,”Athanis mutters, waving off another one of the spirits who is trying to talk to him. “Thanks to the experimentations on Veld, Thalo believed he was close to understanding how incubi can enter and wander Limbo. He believed he could grant that ability to all, given more time. I know he found that research valuable and believed preserving Veld was vital, but I disagreed with him then, as I do now. There is something amiss with that incubus which cannot be cured or altered. He is without feeling altogether and preys on others for his own monstrous amusement.”
“Hell-oh?”
I jolt at the sound and realize it is coming from a strange, thin little box on the ground beside one of the recently-killed fae.
