Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
The holding cell was as he might expect, a ten-by-ten space made of cinder blocks, cold and dank. Blood spatter coated a few of the walls, and large, dark stains spread out over the ground. This cell had seen a lot of use.
He wondered if it was Momar’s or the Guild’s.
He wondered if they would trade Nessa for Jessie. Was this what inevitably led to his betrayal of Ivy House?
It had been a vision of his, half-cocked and distorted, as they always were. A feeling more than anything. A dreamscape. He’d gotten a slice of the seer gene that ran in his family; he had visions occasionally, and they always came true, often with a lot of bloodshed. By now, he’d learned to just go with them, to find the quickest path and somehow make it work.
Momar would give a great deal to have Jessie and Austin delivered to him. Jessie, they’d repurpose, probably, even though she was an animal by their standards. They wouldn’t want to waste her awesome power—assuming Ivy House would stand for it and not kill the compromised heir itself.
Austin, they’d torture. They’d show his broken body to the shifter world and heft his head on a spike while systematically taking out the rest of his kind.
Sebastian would get repurposed as well, of course. They wouldn’t waste him any more than they would Jessie.
Jessie and Austin, however, would have a chance to break out. Slim at the moment—Sebastian had intended to build them a bigger force—but they were resourceful and powerful. Determined. If anyone could beat Momar, they could. Serving them up to Momar with himself was the only way to directly get them an audience. Those were the rumors all over the mage world, and that was the distorted, strange vision he’d been sucked into.
In order for Jessie to get her chance at striking the elusive mastermind of the mage world, she’d have to be a captive, and Austin and Sebastian with her. She’d have to be betrayed.
He’d have to be the one to do it.
They would win and rightly kill him, or Momar would. Either way, it would be Sebastian’s end.
Was this his end?
No, not yet. First, there would be pain. Great pain. Elliot Graves had caused this magical outfit a lot of effort and humiliation, and they’d want to get their shot at hurting him. At breaking him.
Minutes passed into hours. He kept count in his head. Keeping time when there was no sun, no day and night, staved off insanity, he’d heard. Even if it didn’t, it had helped the last time he was in one of these types of cells.
Somewhere, water dripped. It rhythmically splatted on the floor.
Belatedly, he realized there were no spells draped in front of him. He didn’t think there were any coating the walls, either. The sheen he’d expected wasn’t present.
They couldn’t be so stupid as to think he couldn’t do magic without his hands, could they?
In another hour or so—his count surely wasn’t accurate—he heard something metallic. A shining metal disk on the teal-painted door spun in time with the grating sound. The door opened slowly, and someone prepared to come in.
He shot magic before he could see the face.
It hit off a shield and was absorbed into a female body. He’d never seen that happen before. What spell was that?
And then he felt faint.
“It soaks down into me and then filters through the connections to my army,” Jessie said as she walked in. Redness lined her eyes, and disappointment creased her features. “It takes the magic from the enemy attack and fortifies my shields on my people with it. Ingenious, isn’t it? I found it in one of the Ivy House books.”
“Jessie,” he said on a release of breath, sagging in his chair. “Why…”
He didn’t know what to think. How to feel. Their environment registered: the lack of spells, the tension in her shoulders, and the regret in her eyes. She’d been pulling away. She’d been betrayed.
The strength went out of him. “Please, Jessie, don’t torture me. I deserve it, but please—it’ll strip away my feelings for you. You’ll deaden me if you do this. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, and you can kill me after. Please, though, spare Nessa. She’s only involved in all this out of love for me and my sister. She never wanted any of this for me or for herself. Blame me, not her. She’s of no value to you.”
He was babbling. He’d never babbled with a captor, but he felt like babbling still. Begging.
Niamh walked in with a plain wooden chair. The legs were painted red in the exact way the Guild did it. He remembered that vividly because when the chair appeared, the pain started.
“What…” He looked around again. All of these stains couldn’t have been from the cells Austin had prepared. They couldn’t have been done by Jessie’s people. Some of them were surely older than the length of time she’d had magic. They couldn’t be another shifter’s, either. Their type didn’t torture—they killed you face to face. Gargoyles, too, with plenty of warning besides.