“Butyourcastle?” I’d have much sooner expected Cael tolove and friendshipall dissenters into submission. I tuck my hands together in my robes. “Huh.” Wait. “Why in the realms isFrelsiin yourdungeon?”
“Because she is, for lack of a more quaint word…rabid.”
This news makes me smile, until a jolt of pain runs through my connection to my poor feather. Mirth abandoned, I refocus myself on my task: retrieve the hatchling; get out of here; go home to my angel.
Farther up, a high-pitched shriek accompanies the rattling of what I believe might be…a small prison. “Cael, you lousy—” Swears erupts, specific and plentiful. “Let me go back to my Dani, you monstrous—” More enchanting vocabulary.
“My, my,” I murmur.
“She’s an explicit bundle of malice.” Cael sighs. “I asked her four times to stop stealing, then twice to stop stabbing my guards with needles, then after she killed several rats and painted a main hall with their entrails…” He sighs again, weary. “I had to put her in time out.”
Well, she’sunseelie. What do you expect?
Moron.
Dryly, I say, “This is some odd…what did you call it before? Ah. Right.Careyou’ve got here.”
Frelsi gasps, and her wee voice loses its anger. “Castor?” Her tiny arms stretch beyond the bars. “Castor! Free me! Take me home!”
Home.
What a beautiful thought.
I find myself smiling again and pulling a hand from my robe in request of her cage. “I’ll take my charge off your pretty pure white hands, Cael. No need to thank me.”
There’s no way for me to be sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve just felt Cael’s eyes roll. All the same, he settles the little pixie’s prison in my palm and untwines his magic from around it. “Don’t let her out until she’s back in your domain.”
Frelsi whimpers.
Ever so slightly, I let my lip pout.
Cael stiffens. “Castor.”
My pout becomes a touch poutier.
“Castor, so help me—” Cael begins.
I unlock Frelsi’s cage, swing the door open, and free her. She exits the metal with a rambunctious cackle, and I let the prison clatter to the stone ground.
“Fear me!” she cries, zipping toward Cael with, what I suspect, is a needle.
By how he yelps, anyway.
“You little—” he snaps, concluding with averycolorful, “—twerp!”
Frelsi zips past me, hissing, “Run.”
I dance out of reach of Cael’s grasp, dodge a string of his magic, and turn on my heel to race after the darting pixie. “Always a…time, Cael!” I bolt toward the stairs after Frelsi’s maniacal giggle.
“Home to Dani! Home to Dani!” she cheers.
Home to Danielle, indeed.
Flying backward up the steps, she snips, “What took you so long to come save me?”
“My apologies, hatchling. I had assumed you were having a delightful time and would return when you were ready. How was I to know you’d mischief yourself into a cage?”
She huffs. “That Cael guy isawful. Hates fun!” She drops her pin, and I dodge over the sound of it against the floor as she collides with my cheek in a hug. “I much prefer you.”
