Eventually, we leave the curious eyes behind, descending down the same staircase we took only hours ago, back when Des released the bog.
The two of us stop at the familiar hammered bronze door.
With a brush of Des’s magic, the door swings open, revealing a long hallway that descends into darkness, the wall sconces not quite able to beat back the shadows.
Inside, armed soldiers (these ones not possessed with the unholy desire to bash in as many brains as possible) somberly escort us down the hall.
By the time we arrive at the dungeon proper, we’re deep beneath the castle. I can feel the walls of this place pressing in from all sides, the sensation reminding me of when I was Karnon’s prisoner, trapped in one of his many subterranean cells.
I take a deep breath. Pretty sure that experience has given me claustrophobia for life.
The sleeping soldiers are crammed into dozens and dozens of cells, and even though hundreds of them were killed, there’s almost not enough room for the ones that remain.
As we pass by the cells, I note that the fairies are still caught in the hold of my glamour. They stare straight ahead, their faces impassive.
Don’t know what’s creepier, their true nature or this catatonic state they’ve fallen into.
In the last cell, a single soldier is housed.
She stands inert in the middle of the chamber, her flame red hair falling in spirals down her back.
Des, our escorts, and I all pause in front of the cell, taking in the fairy. She’s oblivious to our attention.
The Bargainer’s hand falls to the back of my neck. His face is impassive, but I can tell he’s not thrilled with this little plan of mine. He doesn’t, however, try to talk me out of it.
“Open the door,” Des commands the guards, not looking away from me.
The iron bars screech as the door opens. The red haired soldier doesn’t so much as glance at the door before I slip inside.
I stare at her for a long moment before I let my siren surface.
“I release you from my glamour.”
I expect the soldier to attack me, but she doesn’t. For several long seconds nothing happens.
Then the redhead’s eyes slide to me.
My muscles tense; I’m waiting for her to strike. Instead, she begins to pace, back and forth, back and forth, her gaze growing distant.
“What is your name?” I ask, my voice melodic.
“I don’t have a name,” she responds.
“Everyone has a name,” I insist.
“I don’t. Not anymore.”
Losing a name is such a tiny injustice compared to everything the Thief has done, and yet, it’s what gave her an identity, and he took that from her.
“What did it used to be?” I ask.
She pauses for so long, I’m sure she’ll never speak.
“Mirielle,” she finally says, the magic coaxing the answer out of her.
“And do you know who I am?”
Mirielle pauses, then slowly nods. “You’re the enchantress. We are allowed to hurt you, but we are not to kill you. Not yet. He wants you alive.”
My claws sharpen at that. They weren’t allowed to kill me? I remember how hard I fought and how vicious my assailants were. None of them seemed like they were holding back.
“Who wants me alive?” I ask, even though I damn well know.
“My master.”
Fucking Thief.
The cell darkens. Apparently the King of the Night is not too happy about that either.
“And is … your master … the one who woke you from your sleep?”
“He called and we answered,” she says, continuing to pace back and forth, back and forth.
“Why did you attack your comrades, Mirielle?” I ask, my voice lilting.
She frowns when she hears her name on my lips.
“I don’t know.” She keeps pacing.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I get that this woman’s mind has been fucked three ways to Wednesday, but surely she has a better explanation for all this carnage than I don’t know.
“We do our master’s bidding,” she says. “Nothing more.”
“And what does your master want?” I probe.
“I don’t know,” she says distractedly.
Getting nowhere …
“Who kidnapped you?” I start again.
Can she remember that far back? Some of these women have been sleeping for years.
“My older brother,” she replies coolly, still walking back and forth, back and forth.
Her brother?
I don’t think I heard that one correctly.
“He’s been dead for well over a century,” Des says from the other side of the cell.
My eyebrows rise and I spare my mate a glance. He knew this woman’s brother?
The soldier’s eyes wander to the Bargainer, and there they rest. Slowly, she tilts her head, like recognition is upwelling from the depths of her memory.
“You,” she breathes. “You held me once … long ago.”
Come again?
My skin flares with agitation. I glance between the two of them. Is this broad seriously admitting to what I think she is?
“You made love to me then, under the stars …”
My claws elongate.
She is.
Let’s eviscerate her slowly, my siren says. It will be fun.
It’s a strange feeling, to be jealous of a woman who, in all probability, slept with your mate centuries before you existed. A woman who’s now nothing more than a shell of herself, her mind and body commandeered by the Thief of Souls.
And yet, I still feel the hot burn of it.
Des folds his arms, looking unamused. He doesn’t try to explain himself to me, which is probably a good thing—doing so would make him look guilty as fuck, and it wasn’t like he cheated on me—but damnit, I want a little groveling. Is that wrong?
He will grovel, the siren insists.
Alright, if she thinks groveling is kosher, it’s probably wrong. But that doesn’t mean I disagree with her.
I force myself to refocus on the task at hand.
Des had mentioned that Mirielle’s brother died a little over a hundred years ago. It takes me a moment to do the math (not my strong suit), but once I do, I realize that the timeline doesn’t work. Female soldiers started disappearing a decade ago, not a century.
“How could your brother have kidnapped you if he was dead?”
Janus had a twin, a twin who died, the Thief had told me in the Flora Queen’s woods. The first time you met him, you were really meeting me.
Mirielle’s vacant eyes focus on the ground. “I don’t know.”
This vexing answer again.
“I had hoped …” Mirielle begins, then she falls to silence.
“Speak to me freely,” I command her.
Slowly, her eerie gaze shifts to meet mine. “It’s dark here. Very dark.”
The back of my neck pricks. “Are you in the Night Kingdom?” I ask.
“Yes and no.”
I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It is very dark here,” she repeats. “I want to rest. Why can’t I rest?”
“Do you know where the Thief is?” I press.
“You’ll never find him.”
So everyone keeps saying.
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I ask.
“Secrets are meant for one soul to keep.”
I sense rather than see Des stiffen at her words.
The corner of Mirielle’s mouth curves up. “He’s watching you, enchantress, always watching you. My master has developed a taste for slaves.”
My siren pushes through. “You can tell your master I’ve developed a taste for evil fuckers,” I breathe, the words harmonic as they roll off my tongue. “Have him come find me. I’m eager to see him again. I’ll teach him then what it means to be my bitc—”
I wrangle my siren into submission and regain control of myself. I walk a fine line, using my glamour and trying to keep her worst tendencies at bay.
The cell darkens again, and suddenly, Des is in the cell with us. “Interrogation is over,” he says.
Before I can protest, the iron door swings open, and I’m whisked out. I swivel back to face Mirielle just as it clangs shut.
One final question. “If I let you out now, what will you do?”
Her eyes fall on me. “Conquer.”
Chapter 7
Des broods next to me, the hallway we walk down darkening with his presence.
“You could’ve let me finish the interrogation,” I finally say. I mean, he’s not the only one who’s in a ripe mood. I have blood caked in my hair, I’m running on half a night’s worth of sleep, my bones want to give out from post-battle exhaustion, and I needed coffee hours ago.
“You walk on thin ice right now, Callie,” the Bargainer growls.
I swivel to face him, his words riling me up. “I’m the one on thin ice?” I say, my voice rising. “You’re the one who screwed the prisoner.”
Brought that up sooner than I intended.
“Two centuries ago,” Des says. “Do you expect me to give you a formal apology for every person I’ve slept with? Because if so, I damn well better receive the same from you.”
“You are insane.”
The Night King disappears from my side only to reappear in front of me, his body blocking the way and forcing me to stop.
“You goaded him,” he growls. “You goaded the Thief of Souls to find you.” He runs an agitated hand through his hair, the movement exposing one of his pointed ears. “Can you not see, this is the same reason I stopped taking you on my bargains when you attended Peel Academy.”
I’d glamoured a man back then too … a man who, ironically enough, knew information on the Thief of Souls. He’d been willing to die rather than share his knowledge, and still I made him talk.
I still flush at the memory. And now the Bargainer is essentially saying that in all that time, I haven’t changed.
I take issue with that. “I’m already in the Thief’s line of sight. I will not let that monster provoke me without provoking him back.”
A muscle in the Bargainer’s face ticks. He steps in close. “You want to know a secret, cherub?” he asks, his voice dropping low. “Earlier this evening, when I tried to stop all those sleeping soldiers back in our chambers—it didn’t work.”
There was that moment in his bedroom when I thought he’d bleed into the darkness and end those sleeping soldiers just as he had Karnon and his men. But he hadn’t been able to.
“Do you want to know why that wouldn’t work?” Des asks. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “The darkness is loyal to its own—it won’t hurt another fairy that wields its power.”
I feel the first thread of unease at his words.
“That means the Thief is one of my kind—he’s a Night fae.”
My knees go a little weak. A Night fae? One who is impervious to Des’s magic?
He is not impervious to ours, my siren whispers, her voice seductive.
The King of the Night cups my face. “I am mad with fear for you,” he says, his voice pitched low. “It feels like the wheels of fate are pushing you closer and closer to the Thief, and nothing I do can prevent it. That terrifies me.”
To hear Des admit to being afraid … it’s like that moment as a child when you see an adult cry for the first time. Like the person you depended on to have their shit together really doesn’t. It’s the kind of thing that shakes your world.
“I am sorry you had to hear about my … past … the way you did,” he says hoarsely.
I think this is an apology.
He leans in close, his lips a hair’s breadth from mine. “But I will admit, I greedily drank up your reaction.” With that confession, his lips press against mine.
It’s stupid how fast his kiss can banish my frayed nerves. He kisses away our discussion, his taste and touch consuming my thoughts. And even though the day is a mess, and I’m a mess, and the Otherworld has gone to crap, for a few blissful seconds, everything is as it should be.
All I want right now is a shower, coffee, and bed—preferably all at the same time. Don’t tell me it can’t happen; I’m in the Otherworld, impossible is this place’s middle name.
But am I going to get what I want?
Nope.
Instead I have to freaking adult it, which means hauling my butt into some random room in the castle and making sense of the clusterfuck that is the present state of affairs.
“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.” Temperance Darling, my best friend, colleague and fellow troublemaker, calls out as soon as we enter.
She sits alongside Malaki and several fae officials, her ankles propped on the table in front of her. Her eyes move over me. “And damn girl, looks like the cat didn’t just drag you in, it had a little fun with you too.”
My relief at seeing Temper alive is quickly eclipsed by her words. I spare my bloody battle leathers a glance before I take in Temper. She wears a white jumpsuit, and that outfit is pristine.
Next to her Malaki looks stern, his scar especially stark beneath his eyepatch. He keeps opening and closing his hands, and I get the distinct impression that he wants to hurt something.
As soon as he sees Des, he stands and crosses the room in a few quick strides. He brings his friend in close, slapping him on the back.
I move to the seat next to Temper. “You could take a few tips from him,” I say.
She waves the comment away. “Hugs are for pussies.”
I let out a little snicker, grabbing the cup of coffee resting in front of her and taking a sip from it.
“Hey, bitch, that was mine.”
“Awww,” I say, giving her a precious look, “does someone have trouble sharing?” I take a long drink from it.
Temper’s eyes narrow. “Careful I don’t hex that coffee to splash you in the face every time you drink it,” she says.
I smile over the rim of the coffee. “Careful I don’t glamour you to tell Malaki how you really feel about him.”
To be honest, I don’t even know if my magic works on humans anymore. But she doesn’t need to know that.
Temper shakes her head. “That’s low, Callie.”
The two of us fall to silence, watching Des and Malaki grip each other’s shoulders and make all sorts of man-oaths about dying by the blade to protect one another and yadda, yadda, yadda.
“Malaki is just being excessive,” Temper says. “We heard hours ago that you two were okay.” She nudges my shoulder with her own. “Heard you can now glamour fae.” She puts her fist out, and I bump my knuckles against hers. “Fuck yeah, my girl.”
Des and Malaki speak in low tones for a little longer. Something the Night King says causes Malaki to chuckle, and something the general says draws Des’s eyes to me, his gaze intense enough to make my stomach flutter.
He pulls away from his friend and heads over to the table, taking a seat next to me. His hand falls to my thigh as he nods at each of the advisors seated at the table who’ve also been waiting for us. A few of the advisors cast me and Temper curious looks. I doubt they’re used to having humans (former or otherwise) at these meetings.
“I’m glad to see everyone alive and well,” Des begins as Malaki takes his seat. “Let’s get straight to the matter: the Night Kingdom fell under siege tonight at the hands of our own people. What do we know about the situation?”
And thus, the talks begin.
The group of us rehash what we already know—a bunch of sleeping soldiers woke up from their long slumber, each possessed with the need to kill and maim and conquer. Then we tally up the dead and wounded, then note the damage wrought to the kingdom.
“We were not alone,” one of the advisors says. “We received reports from the other three kingdoms that they too were attacked.”
My dream
floods back to me in all its vividness. Of the Thief standing amongst those poisoned oaks as they splintered open. I don’t know where the line between fantasy and reality is anymore.
“The Kingdom of Flora fell,” the advisor continues.
The Kingdom of Flora … fell?
The phrasing conjures up images of those giant cedar trees toppling to the ground, of the earth swallowing up the palace whole. It doesn’t do the truth justice—
An entire city was likely cut down. All those people just … gone.
I can’t process that sort of devastation. Not when we were just there. I danced and drank and reveled alongside Flora fairies. They might not have been my favorite people, but now knowing the deadly task those sleeping soldiers set out to accomplish …
“How many died?” I ask.
The room is silent, and the advisor looks helplessly at me while another shakes her head.
Too many.
All those sleeping men … the kingdom never stood a chance.
Malaki tosses a sheet of parchment into the middle of the table. “We’ve heard rumors that Mara got out in time, but the same cannot be said for the rest of Flora’s citizens.
Des flicks his wrist, and the parchment slides his way. The Bargainer’s eyes skim the notes.
“Fauna is gone as well,” Malaki continues. “Though from our reports, few died. There was no resistance for the soldiers to crush.”
There wouldn’t even be a palace to invade. All of that was wiped clean when Des rescued me from Karnon.
“The Kingdom of Day has defeated its foes for the time being,” another advisor adds.
My gaze moves to the table in front of us. Painted onto it is a map of the Otherworld.
The mainland has been completely captured. The only places left unconquered are the Kingdoms of Day and Night, those that float in the sky.
Temper leans forward. “How did that pretty boy king manage to defeat them?”
Malaki frowns, and it might be my imagination, but I’m fairly sure it bothers him that Temper thinks that Janus, the King of Day, is in fact, pretty. Particularly when it’s so obvious that Malaki isn’t pretty, with his eye patch and scar.
Clearly, he doesn’t realize that his ferocious beauty is just as appealing.
Dark Harmony (The Bargainer Book 3) Page 4