Page 23 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

As usual, the elevator ride was impossible to read. Up or down, he couldn't tell, and he suspected the clan had engineered it that way on purpose to keep him disoriented.

That was an illogical thought because this place had been built long before he'd been captured, but blaming Annani and her damn clan for everything was his default.

When the elevator doors opened and Daniel released the brake and pushed him into the corridor, Navuh was surprised that it looked nothing like the word dungeon implied.

Someone had made an effort to make it look pleasant. The floor was the same polished concrete as the clinic level, and the walls were painted the same cream color, but they were covered with large prints of famous paintings, the kind of art hotels put in hallways to impress their guests. Fake plants stood in ceramic pots at intervals, and if not for his immortal senses, he might have been fooled into believing that they were real. They were obviously of good quality, but they lacked the fresh smell and vibrancy of live greenery.

Still, admirable as the effort was to make it look like anything but a dungeon, the doors gave it away. Each one had a small window set low, near the floor rather than at eye level, and looking through the glass of the nearest as they passed it, he estimated the door to be at least a foot thick, strong enough to contain immortals, the low window clearly meant for passing trays of food through rather than for looking out. A small glass panel was set into both sides of each door, and he wondered if the mechanism was the same as the double clinic doors. Only one side could open at a time to prevent the prisoner from trying to grab whoever was delivering or collecting the food tray.

Daniel stopped at a door that had no window at its base, lifted his phone, and directed it at the keypad. Something chirped, and then the door released with a pneumatic hiss and started to swing outward.

Inside was a small living room, the kind one would expect to find in an upscale hotel suite.

A couch upholstered in a soft gray fabric, two armchairs, a large-screen television with a console below it, containing three boxes of various shapes and sizes. Pictures hung on the walls, all of the same stunning woman, all done in charcoals. They weren't reproductions, and Navuh suspected who was the musefor the art. He remembered Areana telling him about the former Brotherhood commander who was now the mate of Annani's youngest daughter.

The one who was an artist.

They had stayed in this dungeon suite, and those portraits were probably of Annani's daughter, done by the former soldier's hand.

Grudgingly, Navuh had to admit that they were very good. He also had to admit that the daughter was beautiful enough to turn the head of even the most devout follower of Mortdh.

Nevertheless, her mate was a traitor. A defector. A worthless piece of trash.

"This is so nice," Areana said, and he heard the effort in her voice to make the sound cheerful rather than simply surprised. "It's so pretty and cozy."

"It's a cell with a couch," Navuh said. "I'm surprised that those portraits were left behind."

Areana turned to look at the one hanging over the couch. "Oh, they are so beautiful. That is Amanda, Annani's youngest. Isn't she stunning?"

"She is. But she's mated to a traitor."

A talented traitor, he added silently. He wasn't going to give the scum any compliments out loud.

Areana walked over to the bar and opened the doors of the upper cabinet.

"It's fully stocked." She turned to him with a smile. "I can make you cocktails. Provided that Bridget approves."

He ignored her suggestion and pointed at the interior door on the other side of the television screen. "That's the bedroom, I assume?"

"It is," Daniel said. He walked over, opened the door, and then returned to push the wheelchair through.

The bed was large, big enough for two, and it was the first good thing to look forward to in a long time.

Navuh would sleep beside his mate again. This might be a dungeon masquerading as a hotel suite, but it gave him back that much.

"There's no kitchen," Areana said, still in the living room. "Not that we need one. What would we do with a kitchen? I can't cook." There was a note of relief in her voice, as though the absence of a kitchen had solved a problem rather than created one. "I'll have food delivered instead. The guards in the lobby can collect it for me, and I'll get it from them." She came to stand in the bedroom doorway, looking in at the bed with a soft smile. "It's not as fancy as what I had in the harem, but it's nice."

Navuh agreed. "It is considerably smaller, considerably plainer, and considerably better guarded."

"But we can be together again," she said. "I've missed sleeping next to you."

"I missed that too." He reached out his hand, and she clasped it and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"We will make it work," she said.

Yeah, they would, because they had no choice, and there was no escaping this dungeon even if he didn't have locator cuffs on both wrists that prevented him from trying anything. Theinnocent-looking things that could be mistaken for wide silver bracelets contained a mechanism that would inject him with a paralyzing neurotoxin if he did something he shouldn't, and he had been warned that it would be excruciatingly painful.

Still, he scanned the suite out of habit. There was just one exit, which was the door they'd come through. There were no windows because it was underground, but a large television screen displayed a stretch of landscape, mountains under a soft morning light, filmed from a drone. It was the sort of thing hotels put on screens to simulate a view they couldn't provide.