Page 26 of Wolf Caged
“Neve.” The woman shuffled closer, and that was when I noticed just how fine her dress was, glittering with gold thread laced with crystals, and that she was using her finger as a bookmark in a leatherbound hardback that looked new. “I serve as King Kaeleron’s seer.”
“And he keeps you in a prison cell. How lovely of him.” I was starting to suspect I was destined for his bed and this was to bemy own personal quarters. Whenever he was bored of me, he would toss me back into this hole. I pushed the thought of what was to come from my mind and focused back on Neve, using her as a distraction I badly needed. “Are you a witch?”
It had been a magic user who had foreseen that I would be Lucas’s mate, scrying the future for us. She could have told us he would reject and condemn me to a miserable life. I might not have fallen for him and might have denied all my instincts and my parents to strike out into the world in search of adventure.
Neve stared at me, expression blank as she said, “I am a shifter, much like you… but not like you.”
I could do without the riddles. I was tired and my head was starting to ache, and my stomach had been rumbling for the last thirty minutes. Neve looked in good health, so hopefully someone would remember to feed me too at some point.
“Not a wolf,” she said, as if I was as stupid as the fae king believed and couldn’t work that out for myself. She cheerfully tacked on, “A dragon.”
“A dragon shifter.” I might have gawped at her a little. “Of course. If the faerie realm is real, then why not dragons too?”
While I was still taking that in, Neve gracefully stood and went around the corner of her cell, and returned carrying a heavy upholstered wooden chair in one hand as if it weighed as little as a twig. She set it down near the bars, sat down, rested her book on her lap and folded her hands over it.
Looking for all the world like the teachers back in my pack had when I had been a pup, eager for story time at the end of the school day.
“I will tell you of this world… for a price.” She smiled widely, her gaze going glazed as it lowered to my breasts.
“Not you too.” I clutched my blouse over my heart, and felt like an idiot as my fingers brushed cool, hard metal.
“It is a pretty thing,” Neve cooed, swaying a little as she continued to stare at the pendant still hanging around my neck.
The only thing Lucas had left me with.
Another cruelty from him, the male who was supposed to be devoted to me, his fated one.
He had taken my precious bracelet and left me with this trinket he had given me—a token of his devotion and love.
I scoffed as I took hold of it and yanked on it, snapping the chain, and tossed it to Neve. “Take it. I don’t need it anymore. In fact, if you could burn it with fire, I’d really appreciate it. I want it destroyed.”
She gasped, horror flashing across her delicate features, and snatched the necklace up, tucking it against her chest as if to protect it from my wrath. “It does not deserve such treatment. Save it for the one who betrayed you. Take not your vengeance upon this precious item, but upon the one responsible for your pain.”
Vengeance.
That word lingered in my mind, echoing there, tempting me even as Neve slipped the necklace into the pocket of her dress and patted her book, apparently satisfied with her payment.
“I do not have long, so I will need to fill in the details later, when we are alone again.” Neve smiled almost fondly at me, as if we were already best friends and having a pleasant conversation over coffee rather than through the bars of a cell in a dank dungeon. I was starting to suspect her captivity had worn away some of her sanity, and maybe that was the reason she thought the king wasn’t a monster to be feared and I wasn’t in any danger. “There is a world beyond these bars, Saphira. A world far different from your own, filled with things you could not conjure into your imagination if you tried. You have fallen down the rabbit hole, little one. This nightmarish world of courts, of light and dark, play dangerous games with each other, and ifyou are not wise, not willing to still yourself and listen to the whispers of the Great Mother through the sighing trees and the crashing waves, to open your eyes and see without the opinion you cast in iron the moment you woke colouring your vision, you will not last long nor will you find a path to a future far beyond your dreaming.”
She leaned closer, and hissed.
“Look between the cracks.”
More riddles.
“Between what cracks?” I stilled as the hairs on my nape rose.
Chilling darkness swept along the corridor and then it receded and he was there, a towering wall of graceful wickedness.
His sensual lips curved into a parody of a smile, practiced to perfection, with no warm emotion behind it, only a dark brand of amusement. “Little lamb.”
I stood on trembling legs, denying him the pleasure of looming over me and making me feel small.
Weak.
Although, the son of a bitch had to be bordering on seven foot tall, because my eye level was the broad expanse of his chest. I wasn’t the only one who had been given a change of clothes. Rather than the black armour he had been clad in when we had met, he wore a fitted black tunic decorated with silver thread that hugged his honed physique, soft black leather trousers, and knee-high boots.
“King Kaeleron the Wrathful.” I mocked him with a curtsy.
