Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
It was some sort of flask.
Useless to defend myself.
But as my wet dress clung to my body, I had an idea.
I flipped off the cap, lifting the flask to sniff inside. Smelling nothing, I drew up my dress and lowered to my knees on the dirt floor, then carefully started to squeeze my lake water out of the material and into the vessel.
Once the material was wrung near dry, I squeezed out my long hair as well.
I didn’t know how long I was going to be kept captive, or when my next opportunity for escape might appear. But I did know that with each day, each hour, each minute spent away from my lake would slowly start to sap my life force.
It wasn’t a big flask.
And it wasn’t a lot of water.
But even just a drop could keep me from completely fading.
I had no idea what this was, but I did know I needed to have my wits about me.
Not wanting to have my flask seen or taken from me, I carefully ripped the lower few inches of my dress off—ignoring the screaming pain in my wrist when I tried to use it—and carefully tied the flask to my upper thigh.
Awkward? Yes.
But safe.
Hopefully.
Finished with that, I got back to my mission to find a weapon.
As I drew into the deepest, darkest parts of the cellar, I heard voices drifting down from the floor above.
I recognized the voice of the redheaded fae as I stretched up to my tiptoes to try to hear better.
“Stop fidgeting. We got the job done, didn’t we, Vrad?”
Vrad had to be the troll.
“It’s about damn time,” another, unfamiliar, voice said just a second before a door slammed. He sounded different from the other two fae—more polished, sophisticated. “We have to leave within the hour—where is she?”
My heartbeat thumped harder as a chill coursed through me.
Leave to go where?
I wouldn’t claim to know much about the world outside of my lake and its immediate ecosystem. But I did know that my water teased the edges of both the Light and Dark realms. And that in the Dark, terrible things happened—the kind of things that would keep you awake at night, a chill in your soul at just the thought.
Work camps full of horrific abuse.
Black markets where lesser fae were sold to powerful families.
“We threw her in the cellar. Didn’t know what you wanted to do with her.”
“Can you two do anything right?” the man snapped. “Get her and bring her up here. We have to prepare her.”
Prepare me?
For what?
I swallowed hard, trying not to panic.
This was good, wasn’t it?
There was only one exit in the cellar.
If I was brought upstairs, there would be doors, windows. And, possibly, weapons, if a clean escape wasn’t an option.
I was no heroine, but I was as good as dead anyway if I couldn’t get back to my water.
I made my way across the filthy floor and toward the stairs. The last thing I wanted was to be manhandled again. Better to seem resigned to my fate than end up with another busted-up wrist.
The door creaked open.
Golden light streamed in.
And I was pulled out.
To what fate, I had no idea.
And even if you gave me my unending lifetime to think it through, I never could have guessed what was about to happen to me.
CHAPTER TWO
Jet
The fucking redcaps were following me everywhere.
“Fuck off,” I snarled, grabbing a rock and hurling it at the closest one.
There was a crack as the rock collided with the man’s cheek. It probably said a lot about me that the sound was satisfying, as was his yowl of pain, and the blood that crept down his cheek.
But watching his comrades step forward to catch the blood in their hands and rub the fluid on top of their heads—how they got their name—reminded me that these creatures were more beast-born than fae.
Turning away, I continued my walk into the woods, listening to the crunch of their blasted footsteps a few yards behind me the whole way.
For the record, I was entirely too old for babysitters.
But my father (rightly) believed I would do just about anything to get out of the spectacle commencing in just an hour’s time.
I’d already gagged and bound the officiant and stuck him in a storage closet and accidentally set part of the kitchens on fire.
Fate had been on my side the past three times my father found me the ‘perfect bride.’
One of them conveniently ran away. With an enslaved dragon shifter, of all things.
The second one had poisoned herself into a coma. Bit of a kick to the ego, that one. But, fuck, I could understand the sentiment.
And the third, well, she disappeared. Though the word I heard while eavesdropping on the servants was that she’d had a lover in her father’s employ and he’d helped her escape out of her bed on the eve of our wedding.