Imprisoned Heir

by River Starr

  I had only a moment to take that statement in before he pulled my lips to his and kissed me deeply. There was no gentleness, no slow start to his kiss. I didn’t care. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled us closer together as his tongue dove into my mouth. He explored me in ways no one ever had as his free hand found purchase on my hips. His fingers dug in before sliding down my left leg, pulling it around him. He rocked forward, his hard length pressing against my core. Even with clothes on, Zavian’s kiss and touch ravished me in ways I’d never experienced. His magic ran wild, sliding over me with a lover’s touch.

  Zavian ground himself against me as he adjusted the angle of the kiss, deepening it even more than I thought possible. I moaned into his mouth, my hips moving against his until he hit me just right and I let out a cry of pleasure.

  That was when Zavian pulled back and literally held me at arm’s length. My breath ran ragged and my lips were swollen.

  His hooded eyes found mine and hardened into a glare. “This won’t happen again.”

  A loud knock came upon the door.

  “Are you in there, cousin?” a voice asked from the hallway. “We’re missing an inmate for this very important trial, and I do wish to make sure you haven’t taken her for yourself.”

  I swallowed hard. Zavian very nearly had, although I doubted the man on the other side of the door meant it that way.

  The door handle jostled and Zavian straightened himself up. He pulled me from the desk as the door swung open and the tattooed fae who’d watched our first trial walked in.

  The tattooed fae lifted an eyebrow at the sight of us in here and smirked. “I do think it’s time to leave your plaything to the ocean, don’t you?”

  Ocean? What did that mean?

  “Move,” Zavian said as he yanked me toward the door. “Your trial calls.”

  All semblance of the man who’d just kissed me so thoroughly was gone, replaced by the guard who hated my guts no matter what fate had in store for us. The emptiness from his magic pulling away from me, from his very presence now gone from my side, shattered me in that moment. All that remained was the guilt I’d felt for what Eos had done. For the broken heart she’d gifted him.

  “Fine,” I said and walked toward the tattooed fae. I swore I saw Zavian’s fingers twitch toward me.

  The tattooed fae smirked as I passed him by. “Just down the hall, dear. Zavian will join you momentarily once my cousin recovers.”

  Never in my life had I heard of a sea fae being so jovial. Yet here this guy was. Ugh.

  I followed directions from other prison guards into a ready room of some sort, where four wetsuits had been placed on a table. I joined the others at the center of the room as we stood around the table, and picked up one of the wetsuits.

  Zavian entered the room then with a locked jaw and a scowl on his face.

  I held up the wetsuit. “Are we going swimming? We didn’t have these the other day.”

  Zavian stood with his arms at his sides, his huge biceps bulging in his tight-fitting prison guard uniform. I recognized now that his uniform was made from the same fabric as these wetsuits. Damn. The guards were already ready in case an inmate tried to swim away from the prison. That was the only explanation, and I had no doubt that Zavian would chase me down until the end of his days.

  “Your second trial begins shortly,” Zavian said, continuing to ignore me and everything that had just happened between us.

  “Great, and?” Frost asked as she held up a wetsuit about her size. “Last I checked, the ocean pressure around here will kill anyone trying to go diving. So why the suits?”

  Zavian spoke evenly, as if his next words should have been obvious. “We’re not cruel. We wouldn’t send you out to die without a chance of survival.”

  Frost barked a sharp laugh, and I couldn’t help but join in.

  “Right.” I clutched my middle as I laughed. “Sea fae not being cruel. That’s a great one, Zavian.”

  Zavian shifted where he stood, clasping his hands behind his back. His jaw locked tight.

  He hadn’t been cruel a few minutes ago. In fact, his actions had been the farthest thing from cruel.

  “You would know,” Zavian said to me before directing his stare back toward Frost. “There’s a magical barrier over part of the prison that protects anyone directly outside of it from the ocean’s pressure. Today, you will be collecting fragments of artifacts located on the ocean floor in this area. You’re looking for pieces to a particularly powerful stone.”

  Well, that was certainly interesting. And also weird. “That’s not very much of a trial.”

  “It is one nonetheless,” Zavian said as he gestured to the sea stone wall behind him. His eyes flashed blue for a moment and then magic shimmered over the wall like waves over sand.

  An image appeared in its wake, a spherical stone with writing on it that looked like an old fae language. I couldn’t understand the language, but I recognized the runes from our first trial, as well as the design that I’d learned about from my family.

  “This is what you will be going after,” Zavian said. “We believe this powerful stone fell here during the destruction of Atlantis centuries ago and broke upon impact with the sea floor. We have almost recreated it, so we know there are only a number of pieces left thanks to previous trials. Your unit will be collecting as many as they can before time runs out.”

  Titus scowled. “We’re your trash collectors.”

  Frost lifted a finger. “Timed trash collectors. This is bullshit.”

  “No, it’s another game,” I said, already several steps ahead of them. “The sea court loves collecting mementos of the original city. It makes them feel connected to a culture they now appropriate and disrespect.”

  This was part of the reason why my mother had left Alexandria behind and married a human man. A man who didn’t have the cruelness in his heart that the fae of the sea court did. Nor the burden of serving a court he hated for being a hollow representation of what it at one time was.

  Zavian’s hard glare felt as though he were burning me alive. My blood sang beneath his examination. “I would expect someone like you to be interested in recovering what was lost—as all rebels do.”

  It was my turn to laugh sharply. “You think I’m a rebel?” My mouth fell open in shock. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Zavian charged forward a step, unclasping his hands. “You, like all the other rebels, attacked under the cover of night while your own people were minding their own business in their homes. You stabbed them through with iron knives and pinned them to the wall like paintings.” His fists balled, white-knuckling, and the magical image behind him disappeared as water slid off the wall, finding a new home circling around his fists.

  I should have been terrified. A full-blooded fae was dangerous and more adept with their magic than a half-blood like me. Instead, I lifted my chin in defiance of my mate’s threat. Our kiss hadn’t changed anything, it seemed. Except it had. Everything was different now that I knew Zavian felt the pull, too. “Trust me. If I wanted to kill one of our kind, I wouldn’t need iron to do it. Only a coward does that.”

  A coward like Eos.

  Frost gave a low whistle. “Okay. That’s enough. No one here wants to die to the Deep One today.”

  Dax’s presence fell away, as did the rest of my unit’s and the other guards’. For a moment, it was only Zavian and me and the chaotic, fire-lit energy between us. I wanted to keep meeting his challenge but also wrap my arms around his neck, mold my body against his, and kiss him again until our breaths ran ragged and nothing, not duty or crimes or clothes, stood between us.

  As if he knew what I was thinking, he inhaled a shuddering breath. His fists unclenched, his fingers reaching toward me. Then he recoiled, his shoulders tightening.

  Dax appeared beside me, a dark presence in a fiery situation that was morphing into something else entirely. It snapped me out of Zavian’s magnetic pull. “Nyx.”

  I relented as Dax sa
id my name and backed up a step. “When does the second trial start?”

  Zavian lifted his chin. “Now.”

  14

  Nyx

  Once we changed into the wetsuits—again without privacy, yet another game of the sea court’s—the four of us were led through the prison and into the docking area on top. The exterior looked familiar, with the dome keeping air inside and the water beyond out. The darkness of the ocean made it nearly impossible to see a far distance. However, a few curious whales swam close to the magic dome. I smiled as I watched them glide through the ocean more gracefully than any sea fae ever would.

  Two guards stood next to the wall of magic on the far end of the docking area. Zavian led our unit toward them and gave us the last bit of information we’d need to survive this.

  “You’ll be allowed out into the ocean and have access to a water-breathing spell,” he said as we walked. “As I said before, magic will keep you from being crushed. You will have twenty minutes to scour the ocean floor at this part of the undersea mountain for pieces of this stone. Each piece may be anywhere from a few inches to a foot in length. If the twenty minutes are up and you return empty-handed, you fail the trial.”

  Frost scoffed. “Twenty minutes to find something that could be just a few inches long or die. That hardly seems fair.”

  “Need I remind you are in prison?” Zavian asked as he turned to Frost, sounding not the least bit amused. “Nothing is fair. Especially not the fate the victims of your various crimes endured. Find these artifact pieces, or face the Deep One. The choice is yours.”

  Titus stopped walking. “No. This is ridiculous. You can’t imprison innocent people and then make them do your bidding.”

  “Yes,” I said, realizing how serious Zavian was about something so innocuous-seeming. “They can, and they have. The sea court doesn’t care, as long as they get something out of our suffering. Although usually it’s entertainment, not powerful, ancient Atlantean stones.” I had to admit, that was curious enough to make me want to find every last fragment of this artifact that existed on this ocean floor.

  I knew the sea court prided themselves on a false sense of respect for our ancestors. But why they were so focused on these powerful stones so as to make this exercise part of the reformation process made absolutely no sense. Unless… it was a weapon of some sort, or a magic source.

  I hadn’t spent enough time in Alexandria to know the state of things. But I was confident this was no simple artifact they wanted us to retrieve pieces of. It also wasn’t something they themselves wanted to go looking for—this was what truly made me worried.

  “Oh, I assure you.” The deadly serious tone of Zavian’s voice froze me to the spot. “I will find this as entertaining as I have found every other instance of your collective discomfort and discontent.”

  A part of me wondered if that included the lack of privacy we endured while receiving our rune tattoos. Especially mine. I was just happy to have kept Dax’s bite mark hidden by my hair when changing into my wetsuit earlier. I could only guess at what Zavian’s reaction would be once he saw what I’d done to keep my fellow inmate alive. Surely, the guards assumed someone would let Dax feed on them.

  “Great,” I said dryly. “I hope we don’t disappoint.” Although I somehow assumed we already had and always would, as far as the sea court was concerned. Reforming us was their attempt at breaking us enough that we didn’t want to fight back once in Alexandria.

  Unfortunately for them, I would always fight back. There was not a single force in this world that would keep me separated from my sister for long.

  Zavian ignored my comment and pointed over my shoulder to the prison guards standing along the magical wall separating the prison from the ocean. Both were dressed in the same water-resistant armor as Zavian. I wondered if that meant they’d be joining us out there to make sure none of us tried to escape or something. This far below the surface, it would be relative suicide. Not to mention the Deep One lurking somewhere nearby.

  “Go to them,” Zavian said. “They’ll let you out into the ocean to begin your search. Your twenty minutes begins as soon as the last one of you steps off the prison.”

  Titus stiffened beside me. “This is absurd.”

  “You’ve already said that,” Dax commented as we approached the guards.

  Titus stopped walking. “You don’t understand.”

  I studied his expression, hoping his reluctance wasn’t what I thought it might be. His eyes were wide, his chin lifted, and his fists were balling and opening at his sides. This wasn’t defiance coming from Titus. It was panic.

  “You go ahead,” I said to Dax and Frost. When they both gave me questioning looks, I waved them off. “Seriously. Just give me a minute with Titus.”

  Reluctantly, they did and began getting instructions from the prison guards as soon as they approached. Zavian walked away, although he kept an eye on us from a distance.

  When they were out of earshot, I turned to Titus and gingerly placed a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t know how to swim, do you?”

  Titus’s jaw locked tightly. He’d never admit such a weakness, not in a place like this and under the circumstances in which he’d apparently been imprisoned. Framed, I guessed, if what he’d said was true.

  I let my expression soften and leaned in. “I’ve got you, okay? I’ll get your piece for you. All you need to do is hop off the prison and float down enough that they can’t see you standing there not doing anything. Swimming and water are second nature to me.”

  The glowing of Titus’s scales seeped through his wetsuit a bit. “I’m not going to look weak in front of these bastards.”

  “You won’t, I promise. They won’t even be able to see you.” I placed my free hand on his other shoulder and stared him down. “You’ll look weaker for not trying at all.”

  Titus scowled, but his heart wasn’t in it. I would know by now. All Titus ever did was scowl. “This is exactly the type of bullshit I’m growing tired of dealing with.”

  “You and me both,” I said. “We’re both innocent, too. We don’t deserve to be dealing with this bullshit.”

  A hopeful look overtook Titus’s eyes. “You believe me?”

  I bit my lip and nodded. “I don’t know you at all. But I know that no one this angry giving this much protest against a sentence like regicide is guilty. Usually if you’re mad enough to kill a king, you want people to know it was you.”

  Titus only nodded. A man of few words. I appreciated that in a place like this.

  “Are you ready then?” I asked him.

  “Sure.”

  “Good.” I clapped him once on the shoulder and then headed for the prison guards.

  Frost and Dax were already outside the magic dome, still inside the secondary magic wall keeping out the ocean pressure. Frost waved at us from the outside, her silver hair floating in the ocean currents, making her thin face appear even narrower.

  I couldn’t wait to be in the water and see how much of my magic I still had access to. Dax could make illusions, and that gave me hope. The same with Titus’s glowing scales.

  The guard set Titus up with a water-breathing spell in the form of a rune placed onto his throat with magic paint. Once the guard had finished the spell, Titus jumped off the platform and into the water.

  When it was my turn, I stepped right up to the guard and smirked. “If you want to temporarily remove this magic-muting rune on my neck, I’ll gladly give myself the water-breathing spell. I’ll even let you put the muting spell back on.” I gave the man a wink.

  Unamused, he stared back at me in disgust. “As far as I’m concerned, you should have to complete this task for as long as you can without any assistance at all. You’re a disgrace to your family, and to the entire sea court.”

  I chuckled. “The entire court, eh? My mother would be so proud.”

  I knew she would be. My mother had left the court behind because of how disgusted she’d been by its practices and life
style. I couldn’t say she’d be proud at me for getting myself imprisoned in Atlantis Prison, but she’d sure be happy about me fighting back.

  Sneering, the guard painted a water-breathing rune on my throat as well before he spat, “Get in the water.”

  Without a second thought, I jumped through the small shimmering hole in the wall and rejoiced as my body became bathed in ocean water for the first time in too many weeks. It was like drinking a full glass of cold water after a scorching summer hike. Refreshing, rejuvenating, and full of everything I ever needed in life.

  I closed my eyes and swam in twists through the water. Even with minimal magic, I glided through the ocean as though I had been created with this exact purpose. I swam with the currents, my black hair falling around me, and slowly felt my magic return to me. Not fully, not like it was on the surface when I only used my power to aid in thieving jobs. But enough to aid my movements with grace and speed, and a whole lot less motion than my friends required to swim.

  I rotated so I could look for Titus, who was, as I suggested, clinging to the bottom portion of the prison beneath where we’d entered the ocean. From the outside, I finally had a full picture of what the prison looked like. The structure itself dove so far down into the ocean that I couldn’t see the bottom. It had been built out of the remnants of Atlantean civilization. I counted at least five separate floors, denoted by rows of windows, which meant the cell blocks had to have been limited to the center of the tower, as they had no windows.

  Far below into the darkness, light all but disappeared. An eerie, dread-filled feeling washed over me the longer I stared into the ocean shadows. Although the tower had been built by some structure that settled far deeper than I could see, an undersea mountain stood next to it. This was where we were meant to find the pieces of this artifact the sea fae here were looking for.

  Tearing my gaze away from the shadowed sea floor seemed impossible to do, even as time ticked by. The depths of the ocean called to me, a siren’s song singing on the currents. For a moment, I swore two dark eyes appeared in the inky darkness and sent tendrils reaching toward me.