Sorrow floods me, rushing in to mix with my bitterness and fury, and I can feel the sobs forming in my chest. I glare at Siah and shake my head. “Why?” is all I can croak out before I slam down the floodgates on my surging emotions. I will not cry in front of this fucker. I will not let him see one millisecond of weakness from me, I demand from myself. I survived Beth; I can survive this asshole and his psychotic master.
He steps closer to me, and I jerk back away from him when he tries to wipe at the drying trail of blood on my jaw. I glare at him, and once again he’s trapping me against him and forcing my compliance. He wipes my face clean, and then when he’s done, he just stops and stares at me for a minute, his eyes bouncing back and forth between mine.
“It’s not what you think,” he whispers, the sound of his soft voice calling goosebumps to rise all over me. His eyes drop to my lips. For a second, I think he’s going to try to kiss me, but just as quickly as he pinned my face against him, he flashes away from me and settles himself in the corner. He looks at me like somehow I’ve wrongedhim, and then his heated gaze morphs into ice, and he fixes his stare on a spot on the wall above my head.
I’m not sure what the fuck just happened or what he meant, but for some reason, I feel like if I speak right now, I’ll lose and he’ll win. I pull my gaze from the statue impersonation that Siah the asshole is now doing and look around the room. The walls are a rough stone, and the look of them gives me the distinct impression that we’re somewhere underground. The lighting is electric but dim, like maybe the connection isn’t strong. Or maybe they like it that way. I don’t know much about lamia traits and abilities, maybe they have sensitive eyes.
I’m currently perched on a large bed, the gray bedding soft under my palms. A massive dark wood headboard rises up behind me, and a short but chunky footboard sits at the bottom. There is a side table and wardrobe in the room and an arched doorway that I hope leads to a bathroom. The space is stark, masculine, and for some reason smells familiar. I can’t place what the scent is, but it’s a strange sliver of comfort in all the chaos surrounding me.
Siah’s jaw tenses ever so slightly, and the sound of a lock being released fills the room. The large black lacquered door swings open, and in walks a self-satisfied Adriel. His eyes land directly on me, and his lips tilt up in a friendly smile.
“Pet, I’m so relieved you’re up. You gave us quite the scare. We’ll have to be more careful not to get you so worked up,” he teases. He’s not at all fazed by the fact that he’s the only one amused by any of this. His gaze roves over my face and then moves down my body. When his eyes meet mine again, he studies me for a beat.
“You look like your mother, but you have your father’s eyes and dark hair. It’s a stunning combination,” Adriel observes. I keep my features dead, not sure what he’s trying to get out of me.
“I would ask you how you’re feeling, but I imagine it’s quite an abysmal state you’ve just woken up in.”
I don’t miss the satisfied flash that moves through Adriel’s features with his words. He loves that he’s taken me down, collared me. The piece of shit probably has a hard-on right now. It’s clear he likes stealing others’ power and not just of the magical variety. Adriel’s twinkling red-gold eyes leave mine, and he looks around the room. I don’t take the bait and copy him; I just wait until he gets to whatever it is that he wants.
“This will be your room for the time being. Don’t set that pretty head on escaping; you’ll have guards on you every second of the day, even when you can’t see them.” He pauses for a minute, and his eyes land on where Siah is standing in the corner. He stares at him contemplatively for a few seconds before turning back to me. “Come now, pet, let’s tour your new kingdom.” Adriel holds his hand out to me like he honestly thinks I’m going to take it. I don’t move from the bed.
He clicks his tongue at me in a disappointedtsk’ingsound and shakes his head. “Now, now, pet. You’re new here, so I’ll grant some leeway, but when you’re commanded to do something, you will do it. Understood?”
We watch each other for a minute, and I debate the best plan of action. I’m hurt and weak, although grudgingly doing a little better since Siah forced that blood into me. As irritating as it feels tofall in linelike I’m being ordered to do, I need to choose my battles with this mental case very carefully. Is refusing to cooperate now going to gain me anything? I push slowly off the bed. My body protests the movement at first, my muscles stiff and angry, but with each step around the bed toward Adriel, my body feels a little better.
I keep my movements shaky and cringe a couple times for show. According to Siah, Adriel expects me to be down for weeks. I can work with that and play the battered and broken Sentinel to my advantage. All I need to do is find something to cut this fucker’s head off, and I’m back in the game, magic or not. Adriel’s eyes light up as I make my way sloth-fast over to him. I sneak a quick glance at Siah as I pass, and I try to piece together what his deal is. He brought me here to Adriel and, for all I know, had Sorik attack everyone I left behind, and yet he’s trying to get me back into fighting shape as soon as possible and whispers cryptic shit like “it’s not what you think.”
I rub at my chest and reassure myself that everyone is fine. They’re all more than capable of kicking serious ass, and even if they were surprise attacked, it doesn’t mean they lost. I would feel it if something happened to them, wouldn’t I? I ask myself and immediately decide that I would. We’re all connected together through magic, and if that connection was severed somehow, I would know. A reassuring calm washes through me, and I hobble right past the open palm that Adriel is holding out to me. I’ll listen to this fucker, but if he thinks I’m going to touch him, he’s got another thing coming.
I wait to see if he’s going to press the issue of my not taking his offered palm, but he just releases an amused chuckle and falls into step next to me. We exit through the large black doors out into a hallway made of the same stone that the walls of the room were. I look up and gasp at what I find. The ceiling is high, roughly domed and completely made up of crystals. They sparkle from the dim light of the sconces in the hallway, and I run my awed gaze over the various shades of blue and purple. There are small groupings of clear crystals interspersed amongst the other colors, and the whole ceiling looks like a bejeweled image of deep space.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Adriel asks me.
He looks so satisfied by my appreciative reaction to the ceiling, you’d think he’d hand made it himself.
“There are many breathtaking places in our home. Just wait until you see the dining room or the pools,” he tells me and then leads me through the hallway.
I’m certain that we’re underground now, but I’m less hopeful that we might be located under the ruins that Siah stopped the car at. I suppose it’s possible that the ruins had lower levels that might have connected to these cave systems, or maybe that’s just my wishful thinking. I didn’t ask Siah how long I was incoherent from the pain the collar caused me, so it’s possible they had enough time to move me somewhere else.
My eyes roam over everything we pass, and grudgingly, I have to admit it’s a good hiding spot. Whenever I pictured Adriel and where he might be, I figured he had a building or home that was hidden just like Solace. But a fucked up sparkly bat cave is a smart move and not something I would think others are likely to search for.
I’m herded down a hallway and into what looks like a massive lounge room that has different spaces that lamia are congregated around. There’s a corner with some pool tables, different sitting areas facing TVs, a grouping of high tables and stools that laptop-using lamia are perched on, and chairs bookending chess boards scattered around the room. Everyone is stunning and appears to be around my age. The place looks like a rad dorm common room or a community center for the super-hot. I look around, and it’s not hard to forget that each of these individuals is a supernatural predator and part of the nest that hunts my kind.
I spot female lamia for the first time ever, and I try not to stare at them. I’ve only ever seen males, and even though Siah said there were females, it didn’t register as real until now. I don’t really know what I expected, but they possess the same impossible beauty as their male counterparts, and I would guess the same speed and strength too.
A tall male walks into the room. He’s holding a leash that’s attached to a black leather collar that’s been secured around the throat of a female who’s walking behind him. He plops down on a lush black leather sofa and pulls on the leash roughly until the female is forced into his lap. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be there, and my hackles rise as I watch him forcefully position her the way that he wants.
Adriel is boastfully telling me something, but I can’t even be bothered to pretend I’m listening to him as I watch the grimace on the female’s face when the lamia brushes her hair over her shoulder and drops his lips to her skin. The lamia says something to the woman in his lap, and she pales ever so slightly. It doesn’t take a genius to guess what whispered words would have her on the verge of tears, but the picture grows even clearer when he fondles her breasts, and she shudders and squeezes her eyes tightly shut.
I run my gaze around the room, calculating if I can reach them before any of the indifferent lamia in this room would think to stop me. If I sprint, the couple are maybe twelve paces away. Could I get to them? A cheer goes up around the pool table closest to the black sectional couch, and it pulls my attention away from the couple. Adriel says something to Siah, and before I consciously make the decision to do so, my bare feet are slapping against the stone floor as I sprint toward the noisy pool table.
I’m surprised that my body responds to my pressing demands as quickly as it does with how weak I was feeling, but I don’t focus on that as I close in on the rowdy group of pool playing lamia. I drive my foot into the back of a male’s knee and rip the pool cue out of his hands as he yelps in surprise and falls forward into another lamia. I turn like a cheetah cutting prey from the herd, and leap over the back of the couch to land next to the couple. I’m shocked that I’ve gotten this far in a room full of beings that I know first-hand have supernatural speed and strength. Maybe I just shocked the hell out of them with the stunt I’m pulling, or maybe they’re more comfortable and complacent at home than they are out in the world.
Shock registers on the face of the lamia on the couch, and he moves to shove the female off his lap. Before he can even shift his weight to stand, I’ve sunk the pool stick into his neck. He grabs at the wound and a blood-filled gasp escapes his stunned mouth. I move my makeshift weapon from side to side widening the hole I just put in his neck, but I know I don’t have enough time to try and rip his head off as roars of indignation fill the room. I give up on my goal of decapitation by pool cue and pull it out of the lamia’s neck with a sickening squelching noise. Lamia can die if their magic stores get too low, and Siah said magic is found in the blood. So maybe this asshole will bleed to death.
I wipe the blood off the wood on his shirt so it’s not too slippery and turn, my weapon in hand, and step in front of the woman. I’m about ninety percent sure she’s human. I know that Talon mentioned something about Beth being a blood slave, and that’s exactly what this set up between the lamia and the girl looked like. She’s still on the ground, looking up at me in terror, and the rest of the room is very obviously pissed about what just happened. No one has taken one step in my direction, but I’m sure once the shock wears off, that will change. A rage-filled cry echoes around the room, but I don’t look for the source as I focus on Adriel and ready myself for an attack.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t look even half as outraged as the others in the room clearly are. He seems more put out by what I’ve done than anything else. A breeze caresses my skin to the left, and a lamia tries to move in closer to me. I twirl the pool cue in that direction, and I smash him in the jaw. He falls to the ground, cupping his mouth, and glares at me but doesn’t pop up like I expect him to.
