Mabon continues to march along. The sky is grey and overcast. The gardens look sorry for themselves. Winter and neglect. It appears the fey have fired all the gardeners. At least, I hope that is all they have done to them.
“Here,” says Mabon.
I look around the semi-open space in full view of a multitude of windows. I force a swallow down my tight throat.
“How about over there?” I point to the overgrown bushes by a tall red brick wall at the very edge of the garden.
Mabon raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t being seen the fun part?”
“No! No. It’s…um the threat of being caught,” I stammer.
Mabon huffs and shakes his head. But he heads towards the bushes.
My stomach is heaving. I’m shaking so much I can barely walk. Somehow, we make it to the bushes.
“Here?” asks Mabon.
I lick my lips and nod. And then everything happens so fast I can barely process it all.
Black-clad people jump out of the bushes. More swarm over the wall. They surround Mabon. I hear the click of metal. Mabon’s slender wrists are encased in heavy iron cuffs.
A bush is pulled to the side, revealing a rusty open gate in the garden wall. We are bundled through it and into the back of a tatty looking van. Doors slam. The engine roars. We pull off at great speed.
I’m so dizzy. My heart is trying to beat out of its chest. Mabon is staring at his cuffs. He has been frozen like that since the moment they were snapped onto his wrists. I don’t think he has been aware of a single other thing since that moment. He doesn’t know he is in the back of a van. He has no idea he has been taken prisoner by the Resistance.
I watch as his mouth drops open. A screeching, anguished wail pours out of him. The sound of a tortured, dying animal.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise. I move towards him, but I’m held back.
The cuffs are hurting him. They are only supposed to bind his magic. But it sounds like they are burning. Are they going tokill him? Is he going to melt like a slug sprinkled with salt and disintegrate before my eyes?
I try to fight off the many people holding me in my seat. I need to get to him. Nothing else matters. He needs me.
He screams again. A long, drawn-out wail of utter misery.
“They are so ugly!”
The words bounce around my ears before they make sense. Realisation hits me along with intense, immeasurable relief, and all the fight leaves my body. I sag into my seat.
Bright amethyst eyes lift to look up at me. Clear and free from agony. He is fine. Mabon is fine. He is just a drama queen.
He looks around the van, and the several balaclava-covered occupants with interest. A dazzling smile stretches across his face.
“Have I been abducted?”
I stare at him. There is not one single word left in my brain.
“How exciting!” declares Mabon.
That’s one word for it. I bite back my groan. I should have seen this. I should have known. It’s blindingly obvious now that I’m thinking about it.
Mabon the captive is going to be just as much hard work as Mabon the captor.
Fuck my life.
Chapter twenty-one
The Resistance has an enormous, military grade underground bunker. I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I always knew my little cell was just that, little. Insignificant. Disposable. And anything higher up was kept on a strict need to know basis. And I didn’t need to know.
