At last, the nobleman paused at tall double wooden doors that had been ornately carved and bound with what appeared to be gold. Guards were stationed on either side.
Sid slowed to a stop beside the nobleman and caught her breath. Before she could ask any of her questions, he rapped on one door panel, then opened the door and strode inside without waiting for a reply.
Staring cautiously at the guards, she followed on his heels, stepping into a large, elegant room with high ceilings and tall windows that let in large bars of sunlight that fell across polished, golden oak floors.
Sid looked around, eyes wide, at the brilliant tapestries and paintings adorning the walls, the elegant sculptures, the velvet and mahogany furniture. While she had inwardly railed at the barely veiled prejudice the Light Fae had shown her on the road, the view of the castle in the distance, along with this walk through the interior of the castle, had shown her that she had her own preconceived notions that she needed to shed. This was no provincial demesne. There was serious wealth and culture here and a sense of great, sophisticated age.
A Light Fae woman sat at a large, ornately carved desk, her golden head bent over papers. She was richly dressed, in a yellow gown embroidered with green vines and white lilies, and her long curling hair had been dressed so that it flowed in a profuse mane down her slender back.
The woman barely glanced up at their entrance. She said in an impatient voice, “I’m not having a very good morning, Modred. I have a headache, and I don’t appreciate the interruption. What do you want?”
“I’m so sorry to hear that, my love,” the nobleman replied in a light tone. “Perhaps I can do something to make your day a little brighter. Here is part of the trolls’ tribute. A new musician. Apparently, she has no magic.”
At his words, Sid’s tired mind stumbled. Wait. His wording didn’t sound quite right. She wasn’t anybody’s tribute—she’d been kidnapped.
The woman set aside her pen and stood, looking at Sid for the first time. As she came around the corner of the desk and approached, her beautiful face pulled into an expression of distaste, much like the others Sid had seen throughout the castle.
“No magic?” The woman sounded incredulous. “At all?”
“She didn’t respond when I tried to telepathize with her earlier, so I would say none at all,” Modred replied.
“Why, she’s little better than an animal,” the woman remarked. “Also, she’s filthy and hideous. Look at the shape of her eyes, the pasty white skin, and that awful black hair.”
Sid’s mouth dropped open. For a moment, she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. She had read that some of the Elder Races didn’t think much of those who were magicless, but she had never come face-to-face with such blatant bigotry. The fury that had been simmering over the course of several days began to boil over.
“Isabeau,” said Modred, sounding amused. “She’s human. She’s not going to look anything like a Light Fae, and they chained her up in the stables overnight, so of course she’s dirty.”
Isabeau was a name Sid was supposed to remember. Angrily she shoved that aside. She snapped, “I have never been spoken to like that before in my life.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, girl.” One of the Light Fae woman’s eyebrows rose. “And I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
“I am not a girl or an animal,” Sid snapped. “And your permission means nothing to me.”
“It should,” Isabeau said dryly. “It very much should.” She said to Modred, “Bring musical instruments. Let us see if the girl has any talent. Perhaps it might offset her ugly looks and poor manners.”
Even as the other woman spoke, the pieces came together in Sid’s mind. Isabeau. The ornate surroundings, the rich dress, the guards at the door. This was the Queen of the Light Court.
Then Isabeau took a lock of Sid’s hair and fingered it, one nostril curled, and all thought of caution or of trying to negotiate a passage home vanished in a surge of rage.
Breathing heavily, Sid knocked her hand away. She said between her teeth, “I don’t play music for kidnappers and bigots.”
The other woman’s expression iced over. “Then you are of no use to me whatsoever.” She looked at Modred. “If the bitch won’t play her music for me, then she won’t play it for anyone else. Break all her fingers. Perhaps that will teach her some manners.”
“Consider it done,” Modred said, smiling.
Shock jolted through Sid, followed by a surge of terror so powerful it turned her muscles watery.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait, please. This has all been a massive, nightmarish mistake—if you could just give me a moment to explain how I got here—there’ll be a large reward for my return…”
Suddenly the sound of her voice stopped. She put her hands to her throat and tried to shout, but nothing came out.
“The sound of your voice offends me. I’m done with you, ugly brown-haired girl.” Isabeau spared her one venomous glance then turned away. “Get her out of my sight.”
“Of course, my love.”
As Modred grabbed Sid’s arms, she began to fight, all the while screaming silently. Then the guards came into the room and took her away.
Away from the richly decorated corridors. Away from the sunlit windows.
They took her down a flight of worn stone stairs to a hot, windowless room lit with a fire in an iron grate. There were other things made of iron in the room—chairs, tools, manacles, a cage. A wooden table, along with the floor underneath it, was dark with stains.
No matter how she struggled, the guards who held her were too powerful. One male held her hands to the table, while Modred rummaged through the tools until he found a mallet. Strolling over to her, he smiled at her. “It’s nothing personal, pet.”
He broke all her fingers, and her thumbs too. When he was finished, they dragged her down into a cold place filled with stone. Unlocking one barred door, they threw her into a room, and the door clanged shut behind her.
Light faded as the guards walked away, leaving her behind in deep shadows and a silence so deep it seemed to be alive.
Shaking, in shock, she crumbled where she stood like a broken marionette and cradled her ruined hands against her chest. The pain was so intense it lit up her mind like reddened stars.
After a time, the spell dampening her voice wore off, and she could hear herself scream again until her vocal chords turned raw and she lost her voice. Then there was silence and she lay curled on her side on the uneven stone floor.
The guards hadn’t set the bones after Modred had broken them.
She would never hold a violin again with any kind of dexterity. She would never be able to play.
The result of all the years of constant devotion to her music was gone, her purpose for living destroyed. She would never again create her unique citadel of radiant vibration, which had been exactly what the Queen had intended.
After that, it didn’t matter how long her body managed to survive.
They’ve already killed me, she thought.
Chapter Five
Her cell was chilly, the stone floor gritty with dirt. A cot stood in one corner, much like the one from the first cell where she’d been held, and from the smell, she guessed that a primitive latrine in the form of a hole in the floor was in the opposite corner.
After a while, the intensegray shadows deepened into inky blackness. Then the blackness receded into gray again.
Some distance away at the edge of her hearing, a creature in a nearby cell moaned and cried. The sound was quiet and tired, as if it had been crying for a long time. There were other noises, shuffling sounds, the drip of water nearby, and sometimes a rhythmic scraping, as if something dragged its body over the stones, pacing back and forth incessantly.
When the blackness turned to gray again, a fierce light came, flaring almost unbearably to her oversensitive gaze. The light came from a torch carried by a guard who shoved a tray underneath the bars of her cage and moved on.
Hours slid away, and when the gray began to deepen to blackness again, the light came back. The guard took away her untouched tray and shoved in another one.
None of it mattered. She didn’t move from her fetal position. There was no reason to. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing she could do. It didn’t matter if she was cold. After a while, she stopped shivering. The pangs of hunger had disappeared, leaving her more hollow than before, until her skin felt like an empty shell.
The pain in her ruined hands remained raw and acute, a constant throbbing to remind her of her own stupidity. Her own temper had killed her as much as anyone else had. She had been warned Isabeau was dangerous, and she had disregarded that, allowing her own outrage at how she’d been treated to supersede common sense or self-preservation.
She had always known she had lived a privileged life. She’d had talent, which her parents had recognized when she was very young and had fostered before they had died. She had earned a lot of money in her career, and she’d enjoyed a certain amount of power that money brings.
She’d thought she hadn’t taken it for granted, but she had never conceived that one of the consequences of the life she had lived would be to refuse to accept when things didn’t go her way until it was too late for her to do anything about it.
How long would it take for her to quit breathing? Too long, too long. Through half-closed eyes, she watched the blackness come, then despite the cold and pain, she managed to fall into an uneasy doze.
Something roused her. She resented it even as she tried to identify what it had been. A sound? A movement? A new air current she hadn’t felt before?
Something touched her.
She jackknifed away and tried to scream, but her vocal chords were still raw and it came out as a hoarse croak.
Hands settled onto her shoulders. Large, strong hands. “Shh, quiet! I’m here to help.”
She barely registered the whispered words. Panicked, she fought against the hold. Blinding agony exploded as she tried to knock the hands away, and she cried out.
Then her consciousness snapped out of existence, and she knew nothing.
When she came awake again, she did so all at once, awareness rushing in, clean, sharp, and complete, as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on her. She had been laid out on the stone, and a large, hard hand covered her mouth. A male hand.
Magic! While she couldn’t sense spells, she knew very well what magical anesthesia felt like. She chose it over physical drugs every time she had a dental procedure. Someone had put her under. What had he done to her?
She erupted into fighting again, doing everything she could to break the unknown assailant’s grip that held her pinned in place. She slapped and punched him with all her strength, but she couldn’t knock him away from her, although when she punched him in the ribs, he exhaled sharply as if she had done serious damage.
“Stop fighting. I’m not here to hurt you!” This time the words came out clenched as if whispered through gritted teeth.
The words barely registered as she realized what she was doing. Realized what had happened.
She had been slapping… punching…
With her hands.
With a sob, she clasped them together, feeling frantically at each precious finger and thumb, hardly noticing the hand that still covered her mouth and muffled the sounds she was making.
Her hands were pain free, whole, fully functional. She could barely take it in.
She fell apart, completely and utterly lost it. Uncontrollable sobs wracked her body, while she kept clasping and reclasping her hands. She could barely comprehend the barbarity of what had happened to her, let alone this miracle that had brought her back to life.
The man who bent over her swore softly. Shifting, he came down closer to her, so close she could feel his body heat. He whispered in her ear, “You don’t have telepathy.”
She shook her head as tears streamed out of the corners of her eyes and soaked her hair. Why did everybody care so much about the damn telepathy?
“You need to listen to me,” he said, so softly his words were barely a brush of air on her cheek. She scented mint on his breath. “Try to calm down. You must be quiet, do you hear? I am not supposed to be here, and you are not supposed to be healed. Now, I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. Nod if you understand.”
She nodded, and the hand lifted away from her. After that he didn’t touch her in any way, but she could still feel his body heat. He was reclining along the floor beside her. Another sob shook through her, and she stuffed her own hands against her mouth in an attempt to muffle it.
Her own pain-free hands.
“Crying’s okay,” the male told her, again so quietly she had to control herself just to hear him. “That’s a sound they would expect, but you’re supposed to be alone in this cell. They mustn’t hear us talking, and they have exceptional hearing. Understood?”
With an effort, she managed to clench down on the floodgates enough to grit out, “Yes.”
“Good. Thankfully, I have exceptional hearing too, and I should hear if any of the guards come close.”
“You h-healed me,” she whispered thickly. Her body still shook, and the tears wouldn’t stop. “Who are you? I can’t thank you enough. You saved my life. I thought they had killed me. I can’t live without my hands.”
The darkness was so complete she couldn’t see a thing, yet the soft rustle of clothing told her he had begun to move. The rustle stopped, and for a moment the silence was so intense she almost doubted his reality, her own sanity, until she frantically felt down the length of each of her fingers again and found them whole. Pain free. Limber.
Warm fingers came down over hers and pressed. Turning her hands over, she gripped his hand tightly.
Everything else fell away. Nothing else existed—there was no light, no warmth at all, she didn’t know his name, what he looked like, or anything about him, but in that moment holding his hand felt like holding on to a lifeline.
He allowed it, then gently he disengaged. “Can you sit up?”
She nodded and immediately felt silly. “Yes.”
“I brought food and water. Not the swill they give prisoners. Clean, healthy supplies.”
“A prisoner.” She exhaled a bitter cough as she struggled up. It was much harder than she had expected. She was so shaky, she could barely sit upright. “I guess that’s what I am. Unless—unless—can you possibly help me escape?”
“No,” he said flatly.
The hope had barely been born, and yet that single-word reply felt so crushing she swayed. “But,” she whispered through trembling lips, “but you helped me. You got into this cell, which means you can get out again. Right? You have to leave. You can’t be here when the guard comes in the morning. Won’t you take me with you?”
“I didn’t say I won’t. I said I can’t. I am… constrained.”
She scrubbed at her wet face. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. Just believe this much: I would get you out of here if I could, and I will help you as much as I can. Here, take this.”
Fingers closed over her wrist, making her start. He put something under her fingers. Bringing up her other hand, she felt along a round rim then down the smooth sides. The object felt metallic. “Is this a flask of some sort?”
“Yes. There’s soup in it. It’s not too hot to eat.”
“Thank you,” she breathed.
Opening the lid, she held it close and inhaled the rich scent of something meaty. Moist warmth touched her cheek, and suddenly she was so ravenous she could barely contain herself. Cautiously, she sipped at the warm liquid. He was right. It wasn’t too hot, and it was unutterably delicious.
Hunching her shoulders, she concentrated everything on savoring the delectable liquid. She had eaten at some of the most exclusive, expensive restaurants in the world, but she had never tasted anything as wonderful as that soup.
Something hard and straight pr
essed against her fingers, making her start again. The man whispered, “Sorry. It’s a spoon.”
She whispered another thanks, took it, and kept the edge of the rim against her lips as she spooned chunks of vegetables, meat, and noodles into her mouth. When she had devoured all the pieces of food, she upended the flask and drank the last of the broth.
He didn’t speak while she ate, nor did he move, until again she would have wondered at his presence or her own sanity if she hadn’t held the physical evidence of the flask between whole, dexterous fingers.
When she had finished the soup, he touched the back of her hand, slid a light finger down to the flask and took it from her. His actions seemed so confident, it was almost as if he could see her.
She frowned, not liking that thought. She felt completely blinded by the night and intensely vulnerable, and the possibility that he might be able to see her while she couldn’t see him was disturbing.
The flask was definitely not from here, which meant he probably had other things from Earth. Could he be wearing night goggles?
“I can’t see a thing in here,” she whispered cautiously. “But you seem to be able to.”
“It’s very dark in here, but I have exceptional eyesight too.” His reply was calm and untroubled. Confident. “You’re mostly a collection of shadows to me, but I can get a general idea of how you’re sitting and where you are.”
From everything he said she gathered he wasn’t human, but that wasn’t much of a leap in deduction. She had been in Avalon for days and hadn’t seen another human.
While she pondered that, he said, “Here—I have water, fruit, and bread too.”
As he talked, he set items in her lap, and she identified each one by touch. One was a water bottle. Another was a small loaf of bread. Unlike the hard, unappetizing bread she had been given on the road, this bread had a crust that broke easily as she pinched a corner of it, and the inside was soft and smelled yeasty. He also set a bunch of grapes on her knee.