I glance up at the stone ceiling, at the spiderweb fissures that have appeared around the metal fixture from which dangled my cage. Are the cracks wide enough to let my words through?
Lore?I whisper to the sky that he rules over.
Had I not been surrounded by soldiers, I might have attempted to project myself toward my mate, but I don’t dare leave my body. Besides, if my voice cannot slip out of this underground prison, then my consciousness surely cannot squeeze through either.
“Sprites, check the ceiling.” Dante’s voice flicks my gaze back to his face. “Plug any hole with obsidian mortar.” His expression is as cold and hard as the gold armor he wears. Gone is the jewel-eyed, gentle boy who gave me my first kiss in a Tarelexian alleyway. “Were you out of your bloody mind? You could’ve died!”
Like you care, Dante Regio. Actually, the Faerie King probably does care since he wants to marry me to ally himself with Shabbe. “You really should’ve considered my mortality when you stuck me in a fucking cage, Dante.”
His blue eyes narrow on my violet ones; I can tell he hates what he sees, the same way I loathe who he’s become.
“Unlock her door,” he snaps.
“Immediately, Maezza,” his minions respond, approaching my prison.
As they begin to fondle the warped bars of my cage, I’m cast back to the day Phoebus unlocked his family’s vault. Little had we known that what lay behind the armored door would change our lives forever.
“I’m being freed?” I roll my fingers around the edges of the cot I still sit on.
Dante trails the dance of his soldiers’ fingers. “Your magic is; you’re not.”
My heart holds still before stampeding like a herd of warhorses, drowning out the loud click of my cage door.
My magic?
That means . . .
That means that I’m about to meet Zendaya, the woman who made me. The woman who would’ve birthed me had Marco not ambushed her.
Oh my Gods, I’m about to meet my mother!
The hinges screech like my wild pulse. Even though I still rue the night Bronwen cast me on Dante’s lap, I’m excited. Really damn excited.
“Get up,” Dante snaps.
I level my gaze on the Faerie King who fills the doorframe of my golden cage like an oil portrait.
“Will you require assistance?” Dante asks.
I narrow my eyes, spilling what I think of his offer into my expression. If he so much as touches me again, I will bite him—again.
The memory of my teeth sinking into his flesh ferries my attention to his hand. I don’t expect there to be any wound—after all, the man is a pureling and purelings heal rapidly—and yet, gauze adorns his flesh. Either less time has frittered by than I assumed, or Dante Regio is healing slowly.
“How long have I been your prisoner?” I ask as I finally get to my feet.
Dante’s eyes blaze like the candles oozing pale wax along the sconces carved into the obsidian walls. “Meriam must perform the spell while the moon is full.” He turns on his boot and stomps toward a narrow opening in the black rock. “Come.”
“Meriam will unbind my magic?” I’m ready to meet my mother; I’m wholly unprepared to meet the witch who doomed my mate, my parents, and me.
On the threshold of the tunnel, Dante peers over his shoulder. “Did you expect me to do it?”
“Obviously not, but I—” I lick my lips. “I thought my mother would be the one to unbind it, since she was the one to bind it.”
“Fal, your mother is dead. She died shortly after Meriam ripped you from her loins and stuck you in that Faerie carrier.”
That Faerie carrier has a name, I want to growl, but my tongue has become rooted to my palate and all I manage to push out is a hushed, “What?”
“Zendaya. Is. Dead. Meriam bled her dry before casting her desiccated corpse into Mareluce.”
