Page 151 of Wolf Caged
She nodded.
I exhaled hard, shock sweeping through me even though I had suspected as much. “He needed me strong. That’s what he said to me here in this dungeon. He made me eat because he needed me strong. Why?”
“Because you were in danger of breaking, and you are no good to him broken.”
“Is that the reason he let me leave the cell, too? Because I was breaking.” I had been. I had been in a vicious downwards spiral, letting my grief and my pain slowly devour my will to live. And then I had been moved to my current rooms and shown this incredible world, and little by little, my grief and pain faded and were forgotten.
Replaced by a hunger for vengeance.
“What is my purpose?” My breath lodged in my throat as I waited to hear the answer to that question, as if everything hinged on it.
But Neve shook her head. “That I do not know. The visions are fickle. They refuse to come, and I fear if they do not come soon…”
“What? What will happen to you? Will Kaeleron hurt you?” My hackles rose again at the thought of him harming Neve.
“How ill you still think of him, despite all he has done.” Pity shone in Neve’s amber eyes as she looked at me.
Guilt churned my stomach.
“I never know what to think. I never know what he’s capable of,” I admitted, hating myself a little for jumping to the conclusion that he might harm Neve, when he had shown me how protective he was of those he cared about.
“He is not a monster, not to those he loves. He only becomes a monster when those he loves are threatened… as you well know.”
Flashes of Elanaluvyr’s battered body hanging in the courtyard crossed my eyes.
A violent death Kaeleron had wrought because the fae female had hurt me.
Had become a threat to me.
“Kaeleron would never hurt me,” she said with utter confidence and opened one of the books, her gaze scanning the first page. “He would ask me to force a vision, and in doing so I would hurt myself.”
That sounded a lot like Kaeleron would be the one responsible for hurting her if he forced her to have a vision.
“He seems content to attempt to decipher your role in his vengeance without my assistance though.” Neve flicked the page, a small smile teasing her lips as she glanced at my hands, at that hidden ring. “In fact, he seems to be rather enjoying it.”
Her head lifted and she sniffed the air.
And then waved me towards the door.
“Run along. A storm is coming.”
A storm?
I scented the air too, and smelled nothing but the musty dampness that clung to the stones surrounding us.
“Visit me again soon,” Neve said, her eyes glittering with gold as she stroked the books on her lap. “Bring me my present.”
I nodded as I pushed to my feet and went to the door of her cell, opening it only enough to squeeze through it, which seemed to please the dragon as she smiled fondly at the book on her lap and began humming softly.
The steps up from the dungeon seemed even darker as I climbed them, and I frowned at the heavy clouds that roiled in the sky as I exited the arched entrance, stepping out into the courtyard. Maybe Neve was right and there was a storm coming.
Not wanting to get caught out in it, I hurried to the castle and had barely made it inside before the skies opened. Thunder shook the building. I yelped as my shoulders hiked up, ducking my head as the vicious growl of it rolled over the land. I glanced back out at the courtyard, but the other side of the castle obscured my view as another great rumble of thunder made the ground beneath my feet quake and stole my breath.
I had never heard such a violent storm.
Wanting to see it, I hurried up the stairs to the first floor, to the bank of windows that rattled as another great boom shook them.
Lightning flashed across the mountains, forking wildly as it lashed at the jagged black peaks.
