Page 31 of Fae Exile

I sheathed my sword and clutched the bars with both hands before I understood why I was doing it. My friends did the same, and even Gadiel apparently hadn’t lost his warrior instincts as he sank to the floor where he stood and wove both arms through the grate that contained him.

The instant he was seated, a roar rocketed through the dungeon, an earthquake slamming into us at the same time. As captives around us cried out, all I could do was hold on.

An invisible pressure squeezed my skull, my muscles, my eyeballs. I’d never felt anything like it. Instantly, I needed it to stop.

My hair lashed around my face. Braced on either side of me, Hiroshi’s and Ryder’s braids smacked me too.

The bellow was perhaps even more enraged than before, and when it seemed as if it must wind down, it only intensified. Everything around us shook, and my insides followed suit. I sensed internal organs I was usually unaware of as they tensed. My ass clenched as the ceiling released its loose sediment, and I forced my mouth open so I wouldn’t bite a chunk out or shatter teeth.

The howl finally weakened and subsided, a whistling wind left to barrel across the large walkway behind us. When that, too, quieted, the shouts and growls of what sounded like pygmy ogres thundered through the wall to our left, along with the unmistakable cracking of whips.

Our sense of urgency renewed, I still held on, just in case, and asked Gadiel, “Do you know what that is?”

He looked up at me, his eyes at last showing signs of their former enthusiasm. “No, but I have a guess. And I hope I’m right, and that it gets out of there and finds her and eats her alive.” He loosened his hold on the bars a little and bared his teeth, once again revealing the gap where others should have been. “I want to watch.”

“So you think it might be a...” Hiroshi glanced all around us though nothing had changed since he’d last done so. “A dragon?”

Gadiel released one arm but left the other entangled in the bars. “I do. I’ve obviously never seen a live one before, but the sounds that’ve been coming through there seem spot-on for a dragon. And she comes down here regularly, not just to approve of our suffering, but to go through that wall. What else would get her to make time out of her busy schedule of evil to monitor?”

“Nothing,” Hiroshi said on a wave of awe. Of all of us, he’d dreamt most of what life among the dragons might have been like for our ancestors.

“Exactly,” Gadiel said, his voice regaining some of its strength the more he spoke. “She doesn’t even send Ivar or Braque to check for her.”

“It could still be something else,” I said. “I heard the three of them talking when the shaking first started, wondering if it could be ‘that thing’ they didn’t want anyone else knowing about. She could’ve found someone with the skills to breed some other terrifying creature.”

“True,” West said. “Hiro can shape the physical form of anything living. She might’ve found someone who’s willing to create killer beasts for her.”

“Or it might be something from the Sorumbra,” Ryder offered, the suggestion pulsing tension through my body at the fresh reminder of all the danger I’d exposed Elowyn to.

“Whatever it is,” West said, “we don’t want her to have it on her side. Already, we barely stand a chance against her.”

“As long as we have a chance,” I growled, “that’s all we need. We’ll make it work.” I sighed, struggling to keep a familiar desperation from taking hold. “We have to.”

Around me, my friends nodded their similar resolve. The alternative was failure, and we couldn’t allow ourselves to consider it. The mirror world was too magical to be lost forever to the darkness.

“How do we see through the illusion?” I asked Gadiel, and he straightened at the sharpness of my tone.

The use of illusions was strictly forbidden in all of Embermere—to everyone but Braque—but the queen could only practically enforce that rule at the palace. For those of us with the skill and stuck here at court, we couldn’t attempt to cast an illusion. She always found out, and the transgressor foundthemselves “disappeared.” Nobody that I knew of had ever been seen again.

Ryder had the uncommon ability to wield illusions. But the queen required he remain at court as much as she had me, which meant he hadn’t gotten to practice his power in years.

“I don’t know how you see through it,” answered Gadiel before sliding across the grimy cobbled floor to lean against the wall, as if he didn’t have the strength even to hang on to the bars any longer. He looped a few limp fingers around one. “I’ve never seen the wall change into anything else. But I think Braque’s the one who set it up. He takes extra time with the wall before he walks through it, like he’s checking on his spells to make sure they’re holding.”

“Where?” Ryder asked, stepping toward it.

“I’ve had plenty of time to occupy myself with such questions. I’d say, twenty-two of your paces, which are probably as long as mine, from the edge of my cell.” He winced as he heard himself use the possessive with his prison, but didn’t correct himself. Trips to the fae dungeon were all too often one-way.

A small rumble shook the walls and ceiling, but it was nothing compared to the ones before it. An aftershock, then. The pygmy ogres’ shouts beyond the wall were muted now, little more than grumbles. They could come through the wall and into the prison proper at any time and catch us in the act.

Hiroshi, West, and I released our grip on Gadiel’s cage to watch Ryder measure out the distance. He stopped in front of a patch of wall no different in appearance than the rest of the dull, dark, wet stones, their mortar compacted and worn smooth over many centuries.

“Here?” he mouthed, and pointed to keep from raising his voice. The lighting in the dungeon was permanently and purposefully dim—long, slim, grungy lights recessed into the ceiling to match the gloomy décor.

Gadiel bobbed his head, his hair sticking in heavy clumps.

Ryder stalked away from the wall several feet before he whirled and narrowed his eyes to study it.

Tense minutes passed, delivering another faint aftershock, and still Ryder stared. While the queen, Ivar, and Braque were likely to have left the palace, they wouldn’t stay away forever, especially if the queen suspected whatever she had brewing on the other side of this wall was the culprit of all the damage done to her precious palace.

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