Luceran’s grip tightens, and the mine reacts.
Frost veins across the walls, trembling with the force of his power. His free hand rises, palm blazing with a blinding, unnatural blue.
Luceran is done arguing.Done listening.Done pretending mercy was ever an option.
He summons a slick ribbon of frost that ripples down the tunnel floor, then hurls Rollin along it. Rollin screams, scraping across the ice, clawing at it, leaving streaks where his nails shred, but he doesn’t slow. He’s flung straight into the white glare of the mine’s entrance.
Luceran goes after him.
He moves along that same frozen strip without slipping or scrambling. He glides, closing the distance between them in seconds.
I stumble after them, heart slamming against my ribs, but while Rollin scrambles to find his feet, Luceran is already weaving frost into shape. Bars. Walls. A cage. It forms in the blink of an eye, a prison of clear, shimmering ice.
With a flick of his hand, a gust of frost lashes out, scooping Rollin clean off the ground and hurling him inside. He cries out, crashing against the frozen floor before sliding helplessly into the opposite wall. The door seals behind him with a vicious crack.
Somehow Rollin manages to crawl toward Luceran, trembling uncontrollably. He grips the bars as he begs, but the moment his skin touches the ice he screams and tears his hands away. Angry red burns flare across his palms, the flesh peeling in strips.
“My lord, please!” he sobs.
Luceran tilts his head. “But is this not what you wanted?” His voice is smooth, poisonous, making my stomach twist. “I am not forcing you back into the tunnel, am I? You should be rejoicing.”
Rollin’s shoulders cave inward, unable to form a reply.
Pax steps to Luceran’s side, spine stiff, jaw clenched. I recognize that kind of anger. The silent kind. The kind that must stay buried if you want to keep your head.
“He is to receive no food or water,” Luceran continues. “And he will sleep in this cage.”
Pax swallows hard. “But my lord… what if he freezes to death during the night?”
Luceran’s reply is curt. “Then you will need to find someone else to fill his quota, foreman.”
“Lord Luceran,” I snap.
The echo rings through the camp, far louder than I intended, and every head whips toward me. Luceran’s last.
His upper lip twitches. It feels like a warning.
But I cannot swallow the words burning in my throat. I may be indentured to the Fae, but I am still Neve Devlin, and this is wrong.
“You cannot leave this man to die,” I say. “Not when there is something in those mines so horrifying, he would rather sufferyourwrath than return to it. You must release him. You must find out what frightened him so badly.”
Silence tightens around us like a drawn bowstring. I feel it in my bones, ready to snap, ready to whip back at me with brutal force.
And then… Luceran laughs.
It is low and dark and cuts straight through the cold.
“Are you pleading on this man’s behalf?” he asks at last, voice deepening beneath a husky growl.
I want to shake my head. I want to say no, if only to save my own skin.
But I don’t. I can’t.
I nod. “I am.”
He takes a single step toward me, and I shiver as wind seeps through my coat, curling icy fingers down my spine.
“Have you not heard the stories, Neve Devlin?” he asks, looming over me, so close my breath catches. It is impossible to concentrate on anything but the rise and fall of his chest at my eye level, the cobalt runes along his collarbone flaring bright blue with each inhale.
