Yeah, I knew the story of the eagle sent by Zeus to eat the mythical hero’s liver every night. “If you torture me, then I can’t help you get out.”
“Help me get out?” Kiera’s words smacked of acrimony. “If you’d come to get me out, you wouldn’t be bleeding on a beach. You’d have come with a platoon of faerie guardsandGregor.”
“Why do you think I brought his grandson?” I hoped I sounded confident.
“I don’t know, but I plan on finding out. Kingston, your spear.” She held out her hand, and he tossed it at her. She caught it with the dexterity of a girl used to wielding a weapon.
Pressing the tip to my throat, she said, “Tell me the truth. Why are you and the boy here?”
“You pierce her throat, and I will make sure youneverclimb out of the portal.” Remo’s voice made my attention snap beyond Kiera. He’d sneaked up on Kingston, whom he was presently holding in a chokehold, the tip of his pen poised against my uncle’s throat.
Kiera’s lips twitched, and although her pressure on the spear didn’t lessen, she glanced over her shoulder. “We finally meet, Remo Farrow.” Her necklace clinked and blinked in the white light. “I’ve heardsomuch about you.”
The sinews in Remo’s forearm tautened. Although Kingston’s hands rose to the fleshy noose, he wasn’t able to dislodge or break Remo’s hold and then he just stopped grappling altogether.
Kiera shifted her eyes to the thinning lavender-gray steam. “Once the smoke from the explosion clears, the cats arrive.”
My heart, which was already beating too fast, sped up.
“In the state she’s in, she has zero chance of surviving. So either we leave her to get mauled, or I—”
“I’ll protect her.” Remo’s forearm flexed.
Kingston was turning a satisfying shade of grape-purple.
“You guys don’t understand what you’re about to face,” Kiera said. “Unlike in the other cells where you can jump on a train to get to the next one, there is no next cell, and unless all of the cats are hunted and killed, more will come. Trust me. I’ve been here long enough to understand a thing or two about your grandfather’s prison.”
“How will killing me help?” I whispered, the point of her spear digging into my neck.
“You’ll heal, then be able to fight. Instead of being a burden, you’ll become an asset.” Under her breath, she added, “Hopefully. Unless you’re too pampered to do any heavy-lifting.”
The ache throbbing in my waist reminded me I had little choice. “Can you die an indefinite amount of times here?”
“Yeah. Unless you bite the—”
“Kiera,” Kingston wheezed. “Smoke . . . Gone.”
She flicked her gaze to the dregs of smoke puffing out of existence in the white sky. “Follow the river to the waterfall.”
“Don’t kill her,” Remo growled.
“Sorry, Carrot-top, but it’s survival of the fittest around here. I’m not dying again, because you don’t have the balls to trim the fat. Besides, you’ll see your girlfriend soon enough.”
“Girlfriend?” Kingston rasped.
Really?That was the part that gave him pause?
Branches snapped. I expected to hear a litany of growls, but instead I heard a new voice. A man with a thick beard but no hair raced from the forest. Like Kiera and Kingston, he wore a tattered and stained undershirt and shorts with a hem so frayed and uneven they must’ve been pants at some point.
“I got the weapons.” He brandished a handful of hand-whittled spears.
Remo pivoted toward the newcomer, lifting Kingston right off the ground. “How many of you are there?”
“Four.” To me, she said, “Oh, and, princess, when you get up there”—she tipped her head to the plateau—“don’t wake the vamp beetles.”
Vamp beetles? The tip of her spear scraped my thrumming carotid.
“Don’t!” Remo tossed away Kingston, who smacked down on the sand so hard, anoompfescaped from his lips.
