Page 45 of The Last Heir of Elsewhere

“Fine,” the commander growled after a pregnant pause. He bent down to my eye level. “Human, take me to your mother. Or I won’t see any further reason to keep you alive.”

* * *

I awoketo a dull throbbing in my skull, and the feeling of the ground swaying beneath me.

My mind still chased the memory of my dream, which slipped further away with every passing second. Eyes closed, I tried to force myself to fall back into the story…to remember what happened next…but the face of the silver-haired fairy was lost.

The bed made a distinctive lurch, as if the floor really was moving, and my eyes snapped open.What in the name of Aisling?

Alarmed, I sat up with a start and looked around.

Wherever I was, the room was dark except for the faint glow of a wisp lamp. Bookshelves lined the room, and maps were tacked to every available open space on the wood paneled walls. I reached up and felt a lump on the back of my head, causing me to wince even as I sighed with frustration.

It had never once happened in the first twenty years of my life that I awoke with truly no notion of where I was or how I’d arrived there. In the past year, however, it happened so often that I was starting to become accustomed to confusion.What a disheartening thought.

The clink of metal on metal caught my attention, and I turned abruptly, making my head pound even more.

Ambrose Dullahan sat beside a foggy port window, his feet up on the wooden surface of a small table. I gaped at him, remembering the last thing I’d seen before something obviously struck me into unconsciousness. His smirking face blinked in the back of my memory, and anger rose in my chest.

“Where am I?” I demanded, my voice coming out raspy with disuse.

Dullahan looked up, eyes widening as if surprised to find me awake. He had changed his clothing since accosting me in the barn, and now wore a thin, off-white shirt with a tie undone at his throat. His sleeves were rolled up, and I could see more of the swirling black tattoos that adorned the right side of his throat covering the flesh of both arms. He held a sword nearly as long as I was tall across his lap, and those muscular, tattooed arms were busy polishing the blade with a cloth. On the table in front of him sat two bottles, one a dusty, amber-colored whisky, and the other a clear glass bottle with no label, filled with a moon-bright liquid.

“How’s your head?” he asked casually.

I bit back an angry growl. “Painful, as you no doubt already know.”

“My apologies for that, love. Would you like something to drink?”

In truth, I would’ve liked to take him up on the whisky, if only for my nerves, but out of pride I ignored the offer. “No, I’d like to know where I am, since obviously you’ve taken it upon yourself to kidnap me.”

“Would you say this is kidnapping?” he asked thoughtfully. “I would view it more as speeding up the inevitable.”

“Pardon?” I hissed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you would have eventually decided to join me on your own, I’ve simply made that decision easier for you.”

I scoffed. “All you fucking royals are so damned entitled. You think you can make decisions for everyone just because you were born lucky.”

“Whatever you say, love.” He looked back down at his sword and continued polishing, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “But I thought you’d softened to royals as of late.”

I felt heat creep up my cheeks. What did he mean by that? Was he such a talented seer that he’d had a front row seat to everything I’d done in the last weeks, or was he simply making an observation based on the distress I’d shown when the castle crumbled with Bael and Scion still inside? I looked down, hiding my burning face. “Even if I have, it doesn’t make it any less true that you all think you can drag me around without any concern for my opinion.”

“Fair enough,” he said flatly. “It did seem easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for your permission. My apologies once again.”

I blinked at him, more confused now than ever.

Only last night I’d sat with Bael and Scion discussing the likelihood that the male in front of me would kill me, but clearly I wasn’t dead…yet. Stranger still, neither Bael nor Scion had apologized to me upon our first meeting, or indeed, admitted they might have any faults until we’d grown to know each other well. When judged against his peers, Ambrose Dullahan was almost…nice. Or, as nice as anyone who’d struck me in the back of the head could be.

Deciding to press my luck for more information, I sat up straighter and leaned toward him, “I want to know where we are.”

“On my ship.” His response was delivered with an almost chilling calmness, as he reached up to a map pinned on the wall behind him. Pressing his pointer finger into the space between the island of Nevermore, and the coast of Inbetwixt, he shrugged. “Somewhere in this vicinity.”

Cold dread washed over me. “That’s impossible—” I blurted out, only to break off, a hacking cough bursting from my mouth as pain shot up my throat.

Any other time, the fact that lying had once again caused me pain would be of far larger concern. Now, however, it barely registered in the face of far worse things. The third hunt would have taken place in Nevermore, had the kingdom not fallen beforehand. Perhaps the original theory Bael and I had devised while in Inbetwixt was correct after all, and I was being ferried to the winter island only to be murdered in the hunts.

Looking entirely unbothered by my coughing fit, Ambrose plucked the unlabeled, white bottle from the table, he held it out to me. “Drink this, it will help.”

---