Page 74 of Royal Hunt
“Fae … executed,” he pushed out.
Viana snorted. “Well, obviously I’m going to execute them. I understand you’d want to be there for it, but I think you need to get to work here. I’ll write a letter with all the gory details. Will that suffice?”
I put my arm through Ellis’s, intent on getting him back to his rooms.
“Thanks, Viana,” I told her with complete sincerity.
She shook her head at Ellis and me. “I don’t have the patience for him. You’re a saint. Toodles.”
We parted ways at the barn: her to see about the final supplies and me to get Ellis back into his rooms. My eyes scanned the small party of Eastern Realm soldiers milling here and there, readying horses and what meager supplies they had gathered. The large prison wagon in the middle was hard to miss: made out of solid iron, and just short enough that the two prisoners inside couldn’t stand.
I headed over, keeping one hand on Ellis. Cassus and Ferar watched me approach intently, but kept silent. This would be the last time myself or Ellis would see either of them, if all went according to plan.
“How’s it hanging?” I asked them sarcastically. Ferar gave me a feral smirk in reply, but Cassus looked as though he’d rather tear open my throat than look at me.
“That good, huh? Must suck being without your powers. You’re just like us lowly humans now.”
Cassus moodily stared in the opposite direction, but Ferar laughed. “You foolish, pathetic, little thing. You only wish you were us. Is that why you cling to the half-breed so tightly? Do you honestly think you are equal to one of them?”He sat back and leaned against the iron bars, as if they were an accessory to his aesthetic and not the material imprisoning him. “Enjoy your delusion while you can.”
Anger burned in my throat, and I half-turned to walk away.
“What do you mean ‘while I can?’ ” I demanded.
Ferar cocked one red eyebrow at me. His red hair was like a beacon in the sunlight. “You’re not entirely stupid, I’ll give you that.” He shot a glance at Cassus, but the other fae was either nearly catatonic, or steadfastly ignoring the world around him.
Ferar leaned in toward me, wrapping his fingers around the iron bars. “Your half-breed friends don’t know how to control the wild magick burning their veins. It will consume them from the inside out. They will die, and when the last traces of magick and fae are gone from here, we will forget you. The rain will not return, your fields will wither, and all of you will starve. Your skulls will litter the landscape like grains of sand on a beach, and no one will care. Your people will carry on only in the slaves that serve and pleasure us in the realm of the fae.”
I took a step back at the vivid picture he painted. My heart pounded in my chest, and Ellis’s empty, dead gaze filled my mind, right there on top of the heap comprised of the rest of his dead family.
“Enough.” Cassus’s voice was raw and broken like he’d lost it screaming. I tried not to think about how that might have occurred.
Ferar rolled his eyes, then flopped down on the floor of his cage, staring moodily up at the ceiling.
“Come here, human.”
I was drawn to him against my will, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he still held some of that fae charisma in his voice, or it was a trait that was innately him.
“You care for the half-breed.”
It wasn’t a question.
I nodded, unable to help myself. I clenched my hands into fists.
“If you want to save your little world and your little prince,fix the bridge between our worlds.”
I blinked at him. Fix the … what?
Ferar snarled at him. “Don’t you dare—”
“I dare because I will not die before I see my daughter’s face!” Cassus roared back, jerking forward as if he’d strike Ferar. He didn’t. And Ferar hadn’t flinched. For a moment they stood nose to nose, neither refusing to back down.
Ferar’s muscles relaxed, and he slouched back against the bars again. “You know I don’t give a fuck about anything. This is no different.”
Cassus’s eyes narrowed. “Your price?”
Ferar flashed his fangs in a deadly grin.
Cassus huffed. “You’re utterly predictable.” Those silver eyes pinned me with an intensity that rooted me to the spot.
