My heartbeat spiked, my breath came out in fast, short bursts and I knew I would pass out again if I didn’t relax.
“What?” I managed between trying to keep it together.
Feeling around with my fingers, I noticed a little drain grate at the bottom of the wall, between my cell and whoever was next to me.
“The snakes aren’t real. They are shadows, a trick from Lord Stryker to bend us toward insanity,” the voice said. It was a male voice, a young one I’d guess, only sixteen or seventeen.
Something slithered across my ankle again and I burst into sobs, screaming as I reached around me for anything solid I could protect myself with. A bedpan would do.
“Lady, I’ve been here two weeks. They aren’t real. Grab it next time. It dissipates.”
My stomach felt like it was in my throat. Was he insane? Grab a snake?
There it was again, that slithering.
Figuring I had nothing to lose and that if the snake was venomous I’d rather die sooner than later, I grasped it in my fingers, recoiling when I felt something solid in my hands but almost a second later it melted into shadows.
I sighed in relief, panting as I realized the fae next door was right.
“Once you stop fearing them, the snakes stop,” he said through the grate. “It’s like his magic knows.”
My breath settled and I finally felt like I could speak. “Thank you,” I told him. “What’s your name? I’m Aribella.” I needed to keep talking or I’d think about this darkness and go insane.
“I’m Eli,” he said.
I took a few more deep breaths, grateful to have someone to talk to between the terrified screams of other prisoners. “You said the lord’s name is Stryker? I’m not from here.”
“Yes, Lord Stryker is the most brutal of the four brothers,” he said darkly.
Brothers.Interesting. I knew there were four lords at any given time, but I didn’t know these current lords were brothers. How lovely that I happened to land before the most mentally unhinged of all of them.
“Why are you here?” I asked Eli, desperate to keep him talking and the panic at bay.
His voice shook a little. “Lord Stryker thinks I am part of some underground smuggling ring. I’m not, but my cousin is and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I wondered if it was the complete darkness getting to him or the topic.
“Smuggling?” There were a lot of things you could smuggle. Drugs. People. We had a nut in faerie that made you high when you ground it up and drank it in a tea. It was outlawed but people still sold it behind the scenes.
“Gold. Gems. Lord Stryker owns all of the mines in the Eastern Kingdom. All the riches are delivered to his vaults here in Easteria. He’s the richest lord alive.”
Ahh, that made sense. Rich men were always a bit unhinged.
“Right. Easteria.” I played dumb. I mean I’d seen it on the map Master Duncan had given me, but I didn’t know about the gem and gold mines.
The guy whimpered then and I knew something scary must have happened.
“Hey, I’m going to make you feel better, okay? It’s part of my magic,” I told him and then pushed the feeling of peace over him. There was no reason we both needed to be terrified of this place.
“How?” he breathed, and sighed in contentment. “That’s incredible.”
I smiled, glad he was feeling better. “I’ve always been able to. So tell me more about Lord Stryker?”
Now that the man was in a calm and peaceful state, he opened up like a book. “He took over Easteria very young, after his older brother died in a freak accident. I don’t remember much about the Eastern lord before him. I was young myself then and the Warrick family is wide-reaching. They have more cousins and uncles and brothers and nephews than you can imagine.”
I frowned. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
My stomach sank. Lord Stryker was torturing a fifteen-year-old!
