Page 74 of Renegade Queen
“Rides the same wave,” Maddox responded with a grin, clasping it tight.
They turned back to me, a confidence blazing in their eyes that I wasn’t entirely certain I shared. Clearly, this was some kind of ritual, and I wasn’t about to get in the way of it.
I did, however, need more information than we were currently working with.
Sparking a ball of fire to life in my hand, I lifted it close to the face of the man bound in my vines.
“If I wanted to, I could set these vines on fire and watch you burn,” I told him slowly. “The flesh would melt from your bones before they loosened enough for you to fall free.”
The tears came quicker down his face as he silently watched the flickering flame I held in my hand.
“Do you understand how important your honesty is right now?” I asked him.
He nodded slowly, the fear in his eyes doing absolutely nothing for me.
I sank down into that place inside me that was numb and devoid of emotion. It was the broken part of me that Arik had created that fateful day. And it was the part of me that I’d finally be free of the day he died. Until then, I’d use it in any way I could to do what needed to be done.
“Does Arik know that we’re here?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Is he planning a trap in the cells?”
He denied it again.
I let the flame leap forward, burning the vine closest to his nose. I knew he’d feel the heat and smell the char enough to make him panic.
“I need to be very sure that you’re telling me the truth right now,” I told him as I let the vine catch and the fire slowly spread across the surface vines.
I was at the limit of my control. This could so easily go wrong, and the empty threat I’d made could quickly become a reality.
He started to shake his head violently, quiet screams and whimpers rising from beneath the vines encasing him.
With a flick of my hand, the flames leapt back to me, and I closed my fist, snuffing them out.
I listened momentarily to his panicked breaths as he tried to suck in enough air through the snot now streaming down his nose.
“If you’re not telling me the truth, I will come back for you,” I told him, and I felt his shiver of fear through the vines.
It was only then that I turned back to the guys. I saw a ruthlessness shining in Dean’s eyes and a glimmer of the animals they had inside.
“Let’s go,” I told them, turning back to the path we needed to take.
My vines pulled our prisoner back into the darkness to store him away in case we needed him later. They’d fall apart in a few hours once they’d burned through the magic I’d given them, but until then, he’d be wrapped up tight and unable to tell his people what he’d seen. We’d be long gone before he could report back to anyone.
Hopefully.
The dank, hopeless smell that always invaded prison cells filtered down the corridor to us as we started to close in on the door hidden beneath the stairs. It would bring us in at the rear of the cells and hopefully at an end where there weren’t any guards. It was probably too much to hope that Damon would be in the first cell we looked in. At least they were all in one place, though, and we wouldn’t have to go searching the palace. We could save that for if we didn’t find him.
The door to the cells was rusted shut from lack of use, which had to be a positive sign. At least this wasn’t a route that was often used. That had to mean this was the best way inside, that the guards didn’t bother with the end of the cells.
“There’s no way to open this quietly,” Maddox warned us, running his hands over the hinges as he examined them closer. “We can probably force it open, though.”
“If we had tools, we could probably take out the pins,” Dean murmured, but at this point, he was just pointing out the obvious. Because we didn’t have the means or the time to get in that way.
“Okay, we bust it open, then move fast. The cells all run off one corridor. We check each one. As soon as you have Damon, you two work to get him out while I double-check the other cells.”
I could see Dean preparing to argue, but I didn’t give him a chance.