Page 2 of Dark & Dreadful Brutes

“Don’t boil the water,” Gora warned, grabbing the bucket and dragging it away from me.

I scowled at her before looking down at my hands.

Steaming already—just my damn luck.

My magic was absolutely uncontrollable. I radiated heat constantly, up until I felt any kind of strong emotion. When the emotions hit, I turned into a walking campfire.

It was lovely. Very, very lovely.

If one appreciated being on fire, that is.

Which I didn’t.

Because of my magic, our beds were stone.

Our walls were stone too.

The books we’d been given to entertain ourselves were hidden beneath a thick, plastic sheet that was meant to protect them if I caught on fire. It didn’t happen often, though the steaming hands were damn near constant.

I heaved a sigh.

“I’ll get the soap off your dress. Jern, want to read for her?” Gora looked at her lover. Err… betrothed? They planned on getting married the moment we were free, though none of us knew if that would ever happen.

“As long as you’ll move faster than she does.”

The couple exchanged grins.

“Stop being so nauseatingly adorable,” I mumbled.

They laughed together, and Jern grabbed the book we were partway through. I wasn’t allowed to hold the books, to make sure I didn’t accidentally destroy them, but my friends didn’t mind reading aloud for me.

As much as I complained about them, they kept me sane.

Jern started reading. I only heard a few words before I got a strange feeling.

My hand lifted to my chest as my heart started to sort of… hum.

I looked around the room, but saw nothing except our usual stone beds and dirt floors.

“Do you feel that?” I asked the others, interrupting Jern rudely. My hand was still pressed to my chest—and the humming in it seemed to grow louder.

“No…” Gora looked slightly concerned.

All of our heads jerked toward the thick stone door, and we all went silent as we watched something that looked a lot like ice crawl over the surface of it.

The ice spread and spread—until it shattered.

All of us ducked, throwing our arms over our heads as chunks of rock and ice flew everywhere. A few of the sharp bits hit my exposed skin, but none of them hurt too badly.

When I lifted my eyes, my body went still.

I was steaming—definitely steaming—but there was a man in the empty doorway.

The biggest man I’d ever seen.

He was tall and strong, made completely of muscle that looked chiseled from stone. His eyes glowed an angry violet color, and his light skin was covered almost completely in sharp-looking shards of ice. His blond curls were wild, and the tops of his ears were pointed.

He was a fae.

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