Page 53 of A Fate of Wings
“Yes.” She eased off the floor and stepped out of the shadows. Clutching her head, she inched closer to me into the small amount of golden light thrown from the torches hanging on the walls.
“If you’re in here too, then I’m right. I almost hoped I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?” She sank back to the ground and rested her back against the bars.
“Melanie is pretending to be Thea.”
“Oh,” she said. “That makes sense.”
“In what way?”
“I left Thea to get her gown and when I returned, she took it from me, but she wasn’t herself. She refused to let me help her with it. I asked her what was wrong, then she hit me over the head with her staff. I woke up here wondering what I did to make her so mad at me that she’d put me in the dungeon.”
She cried as quietly as she walked, but I could hear her tears tracking down her cheeks and plopping onto the stone floor.
“Raelin.”
She lifted her chin, showing the salty tracks of her tears smeared through the dirt on her face.
“Thea said you were the only one she trusted. That’s why you’re here. You would have seen through Melanie. She realized that, too.”
She wiped her cheeks, smearing the dirt into a dull black over her cheeks. “Melanie has always been jealous of Thea. I figured it was sibling rivalry.”
“This is much worse than sibling rivalry.” I dropped to my haunches beside her on the other side of the bars. “My brother and I have a healthy dose of it, like when we arm wrestle. He’s a king too, and I’d never entertained the notion of doing away with him to be king myself.”
She gasped. “You think Melanie killed Thea?”
“I’m hoping against hope that she didn’t.”
Fresh tears shone in her eyes, but she said, “Wouldn’t you sense if she was dead since she’s your mate?”
“If she’d claimed me too, then yes, I’d sense her. The fated mate bond only works when both mates mark their claim.”
She scrambled to her feet. “I’m going to kill Melanie.”
I rose to my impressive height, towering over the small siren who’d muttered such angry words. “You need to get behind me for that.”
She ran her gaze over my horns. Not in the way Thea did when she wanted to grab hold of them so she’d drive me wild with passion, but in a cold, calculating way, as though they might be our answer.
“Can you get us out of here with those?”
“No, my horns are good for ramming and other things.” I winked because I was sure Thea had talked to Raelin as close as they were. They were more sisters than her actual twin sister. Now I saw why. Her sister was evil. Rotten to the core. A thorn in Thea’s side I’d be more than happy to extract. Once I did, I’dend her existence with my rage. “But someone magically imbued the bars.”
“So how do we get out of here?” Her voice was quiet, yet full of determination.
Perhaps Thea was right, and I hadn’t given her handmaiden enough credit. Between the two of us, we might figure a way out of the cells and out of the dungeon of the Autumn Court.
“I’m working on it,” I ground out through my tight jaw.
After three enormous steps back and forth, I paced the tiny cell. There had to be a way out. A way to bypass the secure bars. A way for me to find my mate.
Chapter twenty-five
Thea
Earth
The days blended intoeach other. My memory didn’t return the next day. Nor the day after. Months on Earth had passed, helping Cara and Seamus in the fields, taking the crops to the weekly market in the village, and returning with fresh fish for dinner and enough goods to see us through until the next week. With each week and month, my stomach grew to a roundness that had nothing to do with food. I was pregnant. Who by was the question? Was the father of my baby looking for me? Or was he the reason I had no memories and lived in a world of constant confusion? The questions never left my mind.