Thea Harrison - Dragon Bound

He gave her a heavy-lidded smile. “Well, you see, one of these days I’m going to finally succeed in killing Cuelebre. You just got in the way. Unfortunate, but all of that is in the past now.” He waved a hand. “I think we should consider you more as a conscripted employee, rather than a guest or prisoner. I can see a lot of uses for you. So many people have so many things I want.”

“I didn’t know this was a job interview, or I would have put on a suit,” she said, fury making her reckless. Whoa, throttle back there, filly. He’s not torturing. Remember, that’s a good thing.

He threw back his head and laughed. “I do like you, Pia. This is very simple: you will do as you’re told. If you do you will have, comparatively speaking, a very comfortable life. If you don’t? Oh, I don’t recommend that one. I really don’t.” He stood. “Conversation’s over. Piran, Elulas, see her to her room and make sure she stays put. Remember to pat her down for anything she could use to pick a lock. Oh, and find her something to eat. Poor thing has purple circles under her eyes. She looks like she’s ready to pass out.”

Her kidnappers approached. Her own personal Thing One and Thing Two. She stood and went with them. What else was there to do?

They let her use the bathroom on the ground floor. She was relieved to find that the house wasn’t too medieval. At least it had running water and a flushing toilet. Then they took her up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway to a bare room with nothing in it but a narrow bed and two folded blankets and a barred window.

Then Thing One gave her an infuriatingly thorough search while Thing Two watched. The Fae felt along the seams of her clothes, ran his hands up the insides of her legs and squeezed her crotch, probed between and underneath her breasts and made her take off her shoes so he could inspect them.

She gritted her teeth and suffered through it. She was able to hold on to her rage only because it was obvious from the Fae’s flat, bored expression that the search had no sexual undertones. There was no way she could have sneaked a thin, flat lock pick in with her if she’d tried.

They locked her in the room. She shook out a blanket on the bare mattress and fell on it, listening as the two Fae spoke to each other in their Celtic-sounding language. One set of footsteps walked away, hopefully to bring her some kind of sustenance. She was going to have to choke down whatever they brought her so that she could stabilize and get ready for the next steps, whatever those were. She hoped it wasn’t meat.

It looked to be evening outside, gray and leaden with the promise of rain, which left the room shadowy. Her gaze tracked across the bare walls as she rested. Dragos? she tried. Are you there?

Nothing but a deadened silence. What did that mean? Cautiously she expanded her awareness. She couldn’t feel anything, no land magic, no other Fae, nothing but the chill heavy blanket of Urien’s Power. Was he able to suppress magic in his vicinity? If so, that was a pretty handy self-defense mechanism.

Her eyebrows rose as she looked down at herself. She wasn’t glowing. He must be able to suppress magic but not undo those spells already in place. Whatever the specifics, she was guessing he could sense any nearby upsurge in Power.

She went over her story again. Hey, peanut, get me under pressure and I rock.

But the story wouldn’t hold up for long. For one thing, she didn’t know the extent of Adela’s knowledge about her or how deeply the witch was involved with the Dark Fae. If she knew anything of the truth, sooner or later Pia had to assume she would tell Urien.

And about that Elven connection. Ferion knew of her real heritage, had spoken to the Elven High Lord and Lady and had been present at the teleconference. Did she dare hope that Urien’s Elven contact was not Ferion? He had treated her with such warmth. Did that mean he would not have spoken of her to the Fae King?

She tried to remember what Ferion had said aloud at Folly Beach and what he had said during their private telepathic conversation. She couldn’t. That was worrisome. But at least it looked logical that Ferion was not Urien’s Elven connection.

There were too many unknown variables, and not least among them was the fact that she didn’t have truthsense. Urien could well have been playing her or lying for his own reasons. So the only thing she dared hope for was that she had bought herself a little time.

Footsteps approached. She sat up as a key grated in the lock. Thing Two took a step inside. He set a tray down on the floor. He stepped out and locked the door again. She checked the contents of the tray.

Half a loaf of plain dark bread, apples and more water. Score.

She fell on the food. The bread was maybe a day old as it was just beginning to go stale, but it was still chewy and grainy and delicious. The apples were wonderful. They had a quality that made her think they were from an Other land, perhaps even this place. She ate everything, drank half the water and felt an immediate energy surge. Way better.

Now what? There were two ways out of this room. She pushed the tray against the wall so she wouldn’t knock over the last of her water. She went to inspect her window.

She stared, hardly daring to believe her luck. The bars on the window were on the outside of the glass pane. They were two simple vertical metal grills with supporting crossbars at top and bottom. They were hinged on either side of the window and secured with a padlock and metal chain wound around the end bars. What they looked like were replacements for old-fashioned window shutters. Someone had prepared this room for her arrival.

She eased the window open as quietly as she could and then paused to listen. Her two Fae guards continued to talk, undisturbed.

Urien might be able to suppress magic, but her mother had always said that magic versus intrinsic natural ability was a tricky thing to define, and in her demonstration Dragos hadn’t been able to feel her do anything. She took hold of the padlock and pulled. It fell open.

She slipped the lock off and unwound the chain. She hefted it, considering. It was nice and solid, more than a good yard in length. She doubled it, wound one end around her hand and swung it to get the feel for its weight.

It wasn’t a bad weapon for someone low on options. She dropped the padlock on the bed, drank the rest of her water and eased the metal grill open a couple of inches as she tried to peer down at the ground surrounding the house.

Either Urien or whoever was in charge of his security was clever enough to keep the area around the house free of shrubbery. The landscaping wasn’t very attractive, but it also didn’t give anyone a place to hide. She pulled back as a guard came around the corner and walked by underneath. Her luck only went so far, it seemed.

She watched for a while, counted to estimate the passage of time and kept track of the guards. The fifth guard was the original one, so there were four outside guards, one to a side, as they patrolled in a circle. Four plus Thing One and Thing Two, the inside guards at the windows in the meeting hall and no doubt some she hadn’t seen. Maybe Urien had a total of twenty men with him, a reasonable number if he wanted to move fast and quiet.

The way she looked at it, she had two choices: She could lock herself back in and bide her time, which was dicey. Or she could jump out the window, take out a guard fast and run like hell was after her. Extremely dicey.

She had no defenses or options if she stayed. She would be at the Fae King’s mercy and the story she had spun had its own built-in time bombs. And she didn’t dare come under any closer scrutiny. She couldn’t bear to think what would happen if he discovered she was pregnant with Dragos’s child.