Imprisoned Heir

by River Starr

  I needed no more encouragement. Zavian’s words sent me over the edge, my body convulsing with pleasure beneath his touch and embrace.

  Zavian’s arms tensed and he drove into me in short, quick bursts until, with one final thrust, he came too, crying out my name.

  We laid there for several long minutes, breathing heavily and our brows drenched with sweat even at the bottom-most level of the chilly prison. When Zavian finally pulled out from me, I felt as satisfied as I did hallow without him within me.

  He rolled on to his side beside me and brushed a lock of fallen black hair out of my face. “You are beautiful.”

  I smiled as emotion welled within my eyes and in my heart. Warmth and happiness. Joy. “Zavian, I need to tell you something. I—”

  A harsh series of knocks came upon the door. “Open up! It’s time.”

  Zavian startled and jumped up from the floor immediately, cursing under his breath. “Get up.”

  I touched his hand while I stayed on the floor. “Can it wait?”

  “No.” Zavian hurried to pull on his uniform. “I shouldn’t have stayed so long. Dammit!”

  My brow furrowed, sadness sweeping in. “Hey. They don’t need to know—”

  Zavian shrugged out of my touch and zipped up his uniform. “They won’t come in right away. You’ll have time to clean up.”

  “Okay.” I stood now and grabbed for my uniform too. Going from sixty to zero had left me feeling whiplash.

  Zavian turned to me once more and took my face in his hands. He leaned in and kissed me deeply. As he spoke, he lovingly ran his thumb over my cheek. “Today is the day. You need to be ready, and I’ve distracted you because I can’t control myself.”

  I’d hardly call what just happened a distraction. It’d been a necessity.

  “The day for what?” I searched his eyes for the answer. I wanted him to stay here. Hell, I wanted to stay here. With Zavian in solitary with me, I feared nothing. Not even the Deep One and its shadows.

  With a seriousness in his eyes that betrayed the very intimate moment we’d just shared, he said, “Your final trial.”

  Another knock sounded.

  Shock washed over me as he left my side and, with one last glance my way, exited the cell with the blue-lit magical lantern in tow. Darkness welcomed me once more.

  26

  Nyx

  This was it. The final trial. I had no doubt that they’d made it more deadly as a real punishment for everything we’d done yesterday. From escaping to injuring guards, not to mention our previous attempts at escape and learning how the runic teleportation circles worked. Maybe it’d be less of a trial and more like facing a firing squad.

  Maybe we didn’t deserve any.

  I dressed quickly after drawing a small amount of water from the air to wash my face and body. If I was going to die today, I’d die with what dignity I had left.

  At least I’d gotten to spend time with Zavian before I died. We’d known each other as the mates fate had intended for us, even if just for a short time.

  Time passed slowly as I waited for Zavian or other prison guards to return. The darkness pulled my thoughts and tossed them around wildly. I kept thinking of Cyra and where she was. If she was safe and still alive. If Dimitri had returned to be with her in my absence. Of how even if Cyra was safe, without me, she may never get the cure to her death curse.

  Shadows grew darker in the room. Inky black darkness swirled and breathed to life. I inhaled sharply as tendrils reached across the sea stone floor for me.

  “Eos?” I asked. I hadn’t felt her trying to take over. The Deep One, then.

  The tendrils snapped forward. I backed up against the closest wall. The Deep One’s tendrils followed and wrapped around my ankles.

  “No! Leave me alone!” I shouted.

  Pinpricks split my skin like a snake bite. Freezing cold magic slid into my veins and images overtook my mind. A sweeping ancient fae city. A tidal wave destroying it. Eos dying, a murderer standing over her and ripping her soul from her body with their bare hands. Faces and fae slipping by so fast that even if I recognized them, I wouldn’t know who they were. The images slowed as some became clearer. The current queen of the sea court. Her predecessor. Her sons. Some nobles I didn’t recognize. The two Eos had killed. And Zavian.

  “What does he have to do with this?” I breathed, terror quivering through me. I didn’t need this right before my life was about to end. The Deep One had to sense that my death was near. Why bother showing me this now?

  The magic in my veins constricted as though the tendrils were dragging my power out through the pinprick bites. I convulsed and fell to my knees, the room spinning again.

  A slopping, slithering sound echoed from the middle of the Deep One’s dark presence. I glanced up into the inky shadows and nearly vomited, a headache bursting into my mind, at the very image of a creature whose appearance I could not make sense of. It had a head like an octopus, its seven eyes wreathed in shadow tendrils that pulled its form toward me with long, galloping movements of lurching flesh. The entity had a long, probing beak-like structure, but it didn’t look hard like a bird’s. I couldn’t tell how large the creature was, but I wasn’t sure if that was because the shadows disguised it or because every time I tried to look at the Deep One, pain splintered through my mind.

  A deep, snarling, bubbling-like voice impressed in my head the following words: “Atlantis rises. An heir must rule. You house our preferred heir. But another will suffice.”

  I gulped. “I told you that you can have Eos!” Every word this entity spoke felt like an ice shard had been slipped through my eye and into my brain. As if I were never meant to hear its voice, let alone actual words forming from the dissonant, horrifying melody.

  “You have one more chance to escape and make that so before we choose another. As our deal stands, you will not survive long either way.”

  “No!” I screamed as I pressed my palms against my ears. I wanted its voice out of my head. To forget what the dissonance sounded like. I wanted out of this cell. I wanted to see my sister and know she was okay and then run away from everything. “We had a deal!”

  “You will not survive the soul-pulling.” The shadows breathed and shuddered before pulling back to the far corner of the room. “Ensure our heir survives, and we will give you time to say your goodbyes.”

  The shadows receded fully, leaving me once more alone in this cell in which too much had happened. Both horrifyingly bad and overwhelmingly good.

  I curled into a ball again against the wall. It sounded like I would die either way. A knowing dread settled low in my belly. Tears pricked my eyes.

  Maybe death was better than living forever in a prison of Eos’s making.

  27

  Nyx

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, rocking myself with my knees pulled to my chest, when the door to the cell finally opened again. I didn’t move at all, not until an unfamiliar guard yanked me from the floor and began dragging me out of the cell.

  “I’ll stand!” I shouted.

  The guard dropped me to the floor. I cried out as my shoulders slammed into the smooth sea stone. “Then walk. It’s your execution.”

  I stood and glared at the young man. Unlike Zavian, this sea fae wore his armor, as though he were afraid I’d hurt him. Maybe I would right now. “What about reform? Is that not a thing anymore?”

  The guard spat at my feet. “Not after what you assholes did yesterday. Let’s go.”

  He grabbed my arm and dragged me behind him. For someone so worried about what I might do to him, it was strange that he hadn’t handcuffed me. Or that I hadn’t been handcuffed inside the solitary confinement cell, either. Knowing that the Deep One had manipulated the guards before, I wondered now if this must have been the Deep One’s design as well.

  The guard led me from the cell to the runic teleportation circle on this floor. It was only as we walked past opened doors to other cells that I realized I hadn’t he
ard Dax or Titus screaming for a while now. Had they heard me call Zavian’s name in pleasure? Did everyone in this prison know about us now?

  Would Dax and Titus hate me and accuse me of making a deal to escape as Frost had?

  Frost. She’d used the circle to escape. There’d been a flash of light. I wasn’t sure where she had gone, but I wondered if she’d managed to fully escape or if they’d followed her somehow.

  Through the teleportation runes we went, materializing on another level of the prison. I recognized this one. Sure enough, the guard led me into the huge, spartan sea stone room in which our unit had had our first trial. Instead of the room being divided in half by a wall of magic, it was more three-quarters split. Dax and Titus had been lined up several feet apart from each other, both also unbound. They stood inside runic circles on the floor and shrunk themselves away from the magic that surrounded them.

  “There,” the guard said as he shoved me into the third runic circle on the floor. As soon as he stepped back, a magic cylinder flashed around me.

  I pulled my arms close to my sides. If the guys were afraid of touching it, then I was okay not knowing what that magic did. I’d been hurt enough lately.

  “Have a good night?” Titus called from the other side of the room.

  Dax stood between us in his circle. When he looked my way, his lips pulled down into a frown, and he crossed his arms. So either they had heard Zavian and me, or had been told what had happened between us by someone else.

  “I’m glad you’re okay.” I had no interest in buying into his arguments right now or egging him on. I truthfully was glad both he and Titus were fine after the screams I’d heard. Besides, there was every chance we’d still have to work together as a team in order to pass this trial.

  Dax scowled, a habit he must have picked up from his cellmate. “Frost was right. I don’t know why I agreed to protect you from someone you clearly didn’t need protection from.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “None of that matters if we die here.”

  Dax nodded across the room as the guard shut the door behind us. Magic flashed across the walls, sealing us in. There was no turning back now. “Some of us will die. Look.”

  I followed his line of sight to the other side of the partition and gasped. Three figures stood in black clothing, their hands bound before them and black fabric bags over their heads. Behind each of them stood one prison guard. “What the hell?”

  An arrogant yet playful male voice barreled into the room. An all too familiar one. “Welcome to your final trial! For some reason, we’ve decided reform might still be possible for you because, well, frankly there are those amongst you we’d love to see continually punished for the remainder of their days for killing our brothers and sisters.”

  I glanced up to the window where Zavian and other guards had watched our first trial. Sure enough, a cocky-looking sea fae with short brown hair, an intricate forehead band, and regal-looking armor stood in the window. The same fae who’d interrupted Zavian and me that one time in Zavian’s office. To his side was Zavian, who wore an entirely stoic expression on his face, even when our eyes met. His neutral appearance betrayed absolutely none of his thoughts, and that terrified me to the bone.

  The brown-haired fae stepped closer to the window. Only then could I see gold tattoos across his tanned skin, curling around his eyes and traveling down along his neck. “The task is simple. You all want something, but getting what you want means your friends here don’t get what they want. Only one of you will walk out of here alive. You’ll have to kill the others to get that prize—as well as our guests here. Guards!” The fae man clapped his hands to the side of his face with glee. “Remove their coverings. Oh, this will be so fun.”

  Never before had I ever seen glee on a sea fae’s face. Especially a man’s. It was horrifying to see a sadist grinning from ear to ear. Now I understood why Zavian remained so stoic. Whatever they were about to unleash on us would break me. I just had a sense of it, a knowing deep in my soul. My mother had left the sea court for a reason, and this kind of delighted cruelty was it.

  The guards behind each of the figures removed their face coverings, starting with the individual directly across from Titus. Before us stood a tall, broad-shouldered man with red-orange hair and fire licking across his form and shining in his eyes. He looked like a being of flame with unbridled power.

  As soon as Titus saw who it was, he lurched forward and banged his fists against the magic wall holding him in place. Lightning crackles arced from the magic wall and sparked against Titus’s skin. He cried out as his body convulsed for long moments before easing the pain.

  The tattooed fae clapped gleefully again. “I just knew you’d be excited to see him! This lovely firebird is indeed the man who framed you for regicide. I figured you’d love a little reunion to figure out your feelings. I wish we had captured the correct criminal, but as it turns out, there are plenty of your people who would love to see you rot in jail. And they paid us so handsomely.”

  “I’m going to kill you slowly,” Titus growled in a deadly low tone. “I’ll rip you limb from limb, bone by bone, until there is nothing left of you, you coward.”

  The man lifted his chin. “They won’t let you kill me.”

  “Unfortunately, little firebird,” the tattooed fae said, “you are incorrect in that assumption.”

  My heart leaped. Firebird. Like… a phoenix? My mouth dropped open. No. These shifters weren’t supposed to exist anymore, except for one Dimitri had said the sea court had imprisoned. Phoenixes had all been hunted down and killed as far as I knew. If this was real, maybe they’d been hiding out in the draconic court all along. Or maybe this was the shifter the sea court had imprisoned within their halls all along.

  That man’s magic could heal my sister. It could remove her death curse. It could save Cyra.

  Oh no. My stomach dropped as I glanced at the other two figures standing with coverings over their faces. Both were shorter than the phoenix shifter and about as thin. Please, gods, no. Don’t let one of them be her.

  Titus roared and beat the cage again until the lightning forced him to his knees.

  “Calm down. You’ll have your turn,” the tattooed fae said as he clapped once more. “Next we have an equally exciting reunion.”

  The guard behind the middle figure, standing directly across from Dax, unveiled his captive. Judging by the red eyes and pale complexion, this young man must have been a vampire. Dax’s snarl and barring of his fangs backed up my guess.

  “Why are you here, brother?” Dax asked. “Did they capture you as well?”

  Brother? On second glance, Dax and this man did look strikingly alike.

  “Brother?” The tattooed fae laughed. “This man has betrayed your sibling trust and ruined your life. I wouldn’t be so happy to see a man who made a deal with dragons to expand your empire. The same empire that he’s taken over. This man orchestrated your capture and imprisonment and has led your empire for weeks now.”

  Dax’s eyes filled with rage. “What?” he hissed.

  “You were going soft,” his brother said before pointing to me. “Because of her.”

  Dax seethed, but the fire in his brother’s eyes didn’t shine as brightly. “I knew something was off. I shouldn’t have been caught that night. Only a few people knew I’d be there.”

  Had the sea fae kidnapped these people specifically to watch us lose our minds? I wouldn’t put it past them. Actually, this totally fit their cruel personalities. Everything with the sea fae was always a twisted, cruel game. So why did I feel like the worst was yet to come?

  “Better even yet,” the tattooed fae said as he giggled cruelly. “I’m fairly certain this vampire could get you reinstated, Titus. He has the power to clear your name! But in doing so, he’ll strengthen his bond with your court and see to it that your vampire friend here will never see his empire again.” He laughed again, doubling over as if this were the funniest thing in the entire world. “Oh, b
ut wait. This all gets better. You’ll all love this part, trust me.” He clapped Zavian on his shoulder. “You especially, cousin. Just watch.”

  Zavian’s lips pressed together into a thin line. It was the only reaction he had to his cousin’s words.

  Wait a minute… Cousin.

  This tattooed fae, he looked familiar. The more I watched him begin to ruin what little of our lives we had left to life, the more easily I recognized him. This man’s face was one of the ones the Deep One had shown me in that montage. This man had Atlantean blood running through his veins.

  Gods. What had I gotten myself into?

  The tattooed fae clapped again and squealed. “Go unveil the last player in today’s game. She’s sure not to disappoint!”

  She. My heart stopped beating. Tears pricked my eyes. “No,” I whispered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dax glance at me. But nothing else existed the moment the fae guard slipped the face cover off the last individual in the room.

  My sister stood there with wide, terrified eyes. When her gaze met mine, I nearly leaped forward into the magic wall before remembering what it had done for Titus. I didn’t want that sort of weakness to deal with if we had to fight. And that must be what they wanted us to do: fight to the death. Last man standing. Why else put us in here with our respective deepest desires?

  “Nyx!” Cyra cried. “What’s going on?” Her voice broke on several words, her face pale. The inky black veins on her neck had sprouted up across her cheeks. Her death curse had grown worse. She was still standing, though, which was a good sign. Even if I could see her legs shaking from here.

  “I’ll keep you safe,” I swore. “I promise you that.” How had they found her? How had they even known about Cyra? The only person who could have told them was… Zavian. Had he betrayed me in the most cruel, unforgivable way?

  The tattooed fae man looked up to Zavian with a wild grin. “Isn’t that precious? She wants to save her sister. Too bad she killed your brothers, so it’s only fair she loses her sister.”