Page 61 of Caged By Dance and Desire

Andrei, I think I’m in trouble.

I forced myself to remain calm.Where are you?We knew, but I wanted confirmation.

Sahakian Arts.

I waited, sensing her growing discomfort. Her attention not on me, but on?—

I stumbled, almost going to one knee as the shock of her mental cry slapped me, and a flood of disjointed information.

What do I do?

A face, a conversation, the conclusion of danger she’d instinctively reached. Shock, and then a muffling of her interior voice I understood. Feared.

Hasannah!

A half-second later I was in a full sprint down the street. With her fear came a powerful command to come to her, an infant succubi’s call she flung out without any awareness.

“She commanded me, Lord,”Mathen had said, eyes haunted and desperate because we all knew what a sudden disappearancecould mean,“and I couldn’t tell her no. I couldn’t break from the compulsion until she was completely gone. If I’d known she was lamia-born, I could have withstood, but she took me by surprise.”

Her terror bloomed in my mind, a series of disjointed images before it dampened, muffled by either a physical blow or power.

No. No no no no.Darkness, please. Take whatever you want from me, but don’t let her die.

Constin caught up two blocks later, flinging open the coach door and holding out his arm. I grasped it, still running, and leaped into the moving conveyance.

“She's been taken,” I snarled.

Constin spoke into his telegem, communicating with Adoncia who confirmed the last visual of Hasannah on the steps of the Sahakian building. She’d kept Anah in conversation for forty-five minutes then followed my consort, who’d intended to wait for me outside.

Outside. Alone.

By the Dark.

If I find favor with the shadows, do not spill my bonded’s blood.

This was my fault. I’d been too gentle, and now she was paying the price, a female who’d never harmed a sentient creature in her life. She’d wept when Constin had broken his wrist in training the other day, though it healed in hours. She was terrified of spiders, but wouldn’t let me kill them, commanded me to capture and release them into the inner courtyard.

And she was in the hands of people who had taken her for no purpose other than to be used. Either because of what she might be, or to hurt me.

“Steady, boy,” Constin said. “Keep it together.”

Boy.

He was furious with me. He’d warned me, and I’d been swayed by my weakness for my mortal rather than protecting her when I knew better. We’d expected her to try to behave foolishly. I was supposed to save her from herself, the way Constin had spent centuries saving me, guiding me.

Hurting me, when the small pain taught me to avoid a larger one.

My first luudthen didn’t say I told you so. He didn’t look at me—that was accusation enough.

I focused on our muffled mental connection, trying to access any sensory data that would offer a clue to her surroundings or who’d taken her. I let my breath out through my teeth, centering myself so that?—

I cried out, my body seizing in instinctive defense. Her mental scream rippled through my mind. Her pain a wash of pokers searing every nerve ending.

“Andreien!” Constin rasped.

I bit my tongue, controlling myself. I was Fae. I was warrior. I was Casakraine. Pain would not defeat me.

But her pain might.

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