Icame to with a pounding headache and my first thought was that I somehow wasn’t dead. My eyelids snapped open and I whimpered when I noticed the floor-to-ceiling steel bars that caged me in.
I was in a cell.
Terror ripped through me as I sat up and took stock of my surroundings. The back wall and two side walls were stone and the front was fully barred in with a small slot for what I hoped was for sending food and water through.
It was almost completely dark inside the cell. The only light that illuminated the space was a tiny sliver of sunlight that filtered in from a small strip of a window high above my head at the back wall.
There was a bedpan in the corner and the entire place smelled of damp urine. I would have almost preferred death to this. No bed, no clothing, not even a pillow.
A man screamed somewhere down the hall and the hair on my arms stood straight up. I noticed a pair of shackles on the far wall, bolted to the stone, and sighed in relief that I wasn’t currently in them. A small kindness.
“Hello, little witch,” a familiar voice growled.
I spun, ready to throw every emotion and feeling I had at the monster but the bastard flicked his hand out and a thick band of shadows wrapped around my throat, cutting off my oxygen supply.
“Before you do anything rash,” he said, “I want you to know that I have given your little dagger to my blacksmith who assures me it can be melted down and made into a door stopper, rendering it harmless.”
My heart sank at that and I grasped frantically at the black band around my throat, desperate for oxygen.
“If I don’t check in with him every hour on the hour, he starts melting and your way home, and to save your people, goes with that dagger.”
My eyes flew wide.How did he know that?
He released the black band and I coughed, gagging and sputtering for precious air.
“You’re not the first, little witch, to try to kill me,” was all he said and then he walked away.
Dawn? Was he talking about Dawn?
“Wait!” I screamed hoarsely. But it was no use, he was gone.
Had he been the fae who ended Dawn’s life? He must have been. Who else but a powerful Ethereum lord could have stopped Dawn from completing her mission?
I knew firsthand just how unstoppable a force he was and my heart went out to the fallen Summer princess. I hoped that whatever had happened to her, she went quickly and hadn’t been forced to endure this vile dungeon like I was.
My heart hammered in my chest and I had to take multiple deep breaths to calm it down.Passing out in here would be the worst thing I could do. Fae knows what kind of people came in and out of this cell. I didn’t want to be unconscious and helpless for hours.
My hands shook as the temperature dropped and night fell outside. Slowly, my tiny cell grew darker and darker until I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face.
The moonlight outside didn’t reach me and I was beginning to wonder if this was some kind of magic. Was it some blanket of shadows to make it so dark, you began to wonder if you existed at all?
“Hello?” I said, just to make sure I was still in fact here.
I could feel my legs but I couldn’t see them; I held my hand inches from my face and saw nothing but darkness.
The panic began to well up inside me as my fellow prisoners all began to scream, cry out or wail. I had no idea there were so many people in the dungeon with me until this moment. Dozens of voices carried through the space.
“I’m okay. I’m real. I’m safe,” I began to mutter to myself, feeling insanity press in on me.
This darkness was supernatural in nature, and there was only one fae whom I knew of that could manipulate shadows like this.
The Ethereum lord was doing this to torment us all.
It made me feel better about my attempts to kill him. I had always been told that the Ethereum lords were evil but this was the proof I needed.
Something slithered across my ankle, cold and smooth like a snake, and I screamed bloody murder, backing up until I hit the right side of the wall.
“It’s not real!” a muffled voice shouted next to me.
