Page 24 of Wolf Caged
She just did not know it.
I turned from the scattered remains of my furniture, towards the window and the world beyond, slowly clawing back control over my darker nature. Shadows twined around my hands, threading through my fingers, and I focused on them, soothing them as I let them soothe me too, seeking comfort in the darkness.
One day I would tell her.
Once this was all done.
Then, we would have a reckoning.
I turned my mind to the wolf in the dungeon, to the things Neve had told me, using them as a distraction as I continued to toy with the shadows and struggled to let the rage and anger Vyr had provoked in me fall away. Thoughts of my brother kept it strong, slipping in whenever my guard was down, flashing images that haunted my sleep.
My older brother, broken and bleeding, at the mercy of the seelie.
Jagged shadows clawed at the stone walls, hungry to sink into those responsible.
He was not dead. I knew it. But he would be better off that way.
The seelie were as cruel as my kind, and took pleasure from harming my breed. The things they might have done to him in the decades since they had snatched him from the castle in Belkarthen.
I did not want to contemplate them.
I pulled the silver-haired wolf into my mind instead, attempting to banish my dark thoughts, unsure whether it was her image or my vengeance I was using to distract me from them. A growl curled from my lips. It was my vengeance. She was the key to it, and that was all the delicate little wolf would ever be.
Neve had called her vital to the future I desired—and the only thing in this world I desired was Summer Court blood coating my claws.
The wolf was a tool to be used.
A weapon I would wield to carve out my vengeance.
Nothing more.
Chapter 6
SAPHIRA
Rather than what I had imagined would be revealing clothing, I was given leather pants and a cream blouse—almost human clothing, albeit a little antiquated in their style—that covered me entirely. I ran my fingers over the supple burnished black leather, taking comfort from being covered after feeling so exposed.
I felt safer.
Protected even.
Despite the fact the fae around me, even the servant who had delivered the bundle of clothing to my cell, were strong enough to rip the clothes right off me if they wanted.
“You think too loudly.”
I started at the female voice, not one I recognised, and my head whipped towards the cell to my right.
A huddled kneeling figure emerged from the shadows, peeking out from behind the corner in the L shaped cell that I had decided looked as if someone had made it larger, removing two of the barred walls. Holes in the heavy, worn stone floor and the ceiling matched the spacing of the bars that separated me from the newcomer.
She blinked large deep amber eyes at me, the gold around her pupils shimmering as if fire burned inside her, her look inquisitive as she took my measure. And I took hers. She was pretty, delicate almost. Like a doll with her clean porcelain skin and braided gold hair.
I wasn’t sure of her species, but I knew she wasn’t human. Perhaps fae. I hadn’t sensed her or smelled her before she had made her presence known, and even now I couldn’t detect her. It was as if she wasn’t there.
Concealed by magic?
Maybe she was a witch.
She didn’t resemble the dark fae king.
