She was a great beauty, despite the coldness that radiated off from her.
She took a step forward, pressing her toes onto my starry-night painted fingertips. Sinking her weight into that foot, she ground my finger bones into the stone beneath my hand. I gritted my teeth, grimacing through the pain as she smirked—cold and calculating—as she watched the hints of pain on my face.
“What are you, Little Mouse?”
“I don’t know,” I ground out, clenching my teeth as she crushed my fingers.
She chuckled, a deep throaty laugh that lacked any sort of humor. It was vicious, tinted with evil itself, as if the lack of answers only pleased her. She bent forward, putting more pressure on my crushed hand, then wrapped her bony fingers around my chin and gripped my face with black talons in the same way she had Fallon.
“Well then, we’ll have fun trying to figure it out, won’t we?” she asked, stepping back and turning away to dismiss me.
My fingers twitched with the sudden freedom of not being crushed. They’d only been a moment away from cracking beneath the pressure. I pushed to my feet slowly, stumbling as they fought to remember what it was to have the ground beneath them.
“I am no mouse,” I said, forcing my back to straighten despite the pain in my shoulders.
Mab spun to face me slowly, quirking a brow in something that almost resembled surprise. “That’s odd, because I am the snake, and you look like dinner to me,” she said, dropping her gaze to my bare feet and sliding it up my body.
Whatever she saw, she found me wanting.
“Have you ever encountered a Matagot, Mab?” I asked, tilting my head to the side as a hush filled the cavernous throne room.
Mab’s eyes hardened into a glare at my faux pas, at the lack of respect I showed her in using her given name when I had no right to.
“Be very careful, girl,” she said, lifting a hand when one of her men took a step toward me.
“They’re small. Like barn cats, and most villagers think of them as unassuming pests. But the farmers and harvesters know better than to chase them off,” I explained, pausing as I glanced to the side as if she wasn’t worth my time. I glanced toward the cages, to the people hanging within them who still breathed.
Yet I could not stop myself from pushing the Queen of Air and Darkness, from voicing the first thought in my brain.
“And why is that?” she asked, steepling her hands in front of her.
“Because they eat the snakes when they grow too large and crush the plants beneath them.” My fingers twitched at my side to prove my point, and her eyes fell to the bruising skin in acknowledgement.
She laughed, showing her teeth in something that felt far more terrifying than her boredom. She took a step toward me, staring down at me from her much taller height. “I am very much going to enjoy breaking you, Little Mouse,” she said, turning her attention to the male who had cut me down from the snake pit.
She pivoted to look toward her throne as a hand buried in my hair, gripping so tightly that my arms flailed, and my hands rose to try to get free. The male shuffled me toward one of the stone walls where black spikes protruded, threatening anyone who wandered too close with impalement. A set of iron shackles hung from the ceiling in front of one particularly vicious spike. I thrashed and dropped my weight to the floor suddenly.
“Damn it to Tartarus,” the male cursed, hoisting me up.
I lifted my feet from the ground, forcing him to support all of my weight. It wasn’t a difficult task for a Fae, but it did throw his balance just the slightest bit forward. I reached up, grasping him around the back of the neck and yanking him down. As his body bent toward the ground, I jerked and shifted his balance off until he flipped over my head and landed on his back on the stone in front of me. He vaulted to his feet quickly, spinning to face me as I hurled myself to my own feet and threw my weight forward. Knocking into him, pushing him back a few more steps, I retreated as quickly as I’d assaulted him to avoid the black spike that stabbed through his abdomen.
The Fae male glanced down at it, and the sharp point of it sticking out through his stomach, before he raised his eyes to mine once again. “That hurt.”
“Do not touch me again,” I warned, glancing to where Mab watched with her arms crossed and lips pursed, as if she couldn’t decide if I was a curiosity, entertaining, or a pain in the ass. I’d do my best to be the latter if she didn’t kill me first.
“You do realize that I’ll only add a lashing to your punishment with every moment you spend wasting time, don’t you? I do hate to be kept waiting,” she said, tapping her black talons along her forearm for effect as the Fae male slowly peeled himself off the spike.
He stepped forward, ignoring the hole in his stomach in a way that I never could have dreamt of before I’d entered the realm of the Fae. The spike behind him glistened with blood.
“Stop it. Please,” Fallon suddenly said, as the Fae male approached me. “Don’t hurt her.”
Mab looked at her daughter, considering her carefully. Fallon kept the emotions open on her features, her concern for me showing in every line of her face. But Mab was not the kind to care.
Not for me. Not for her daughter.
All the things Caldris had told me were true. She cared for nothing but herself. That much was clear from a single glance into the emptiness of her eyes.
“Chain her, Malachi,” Mab instructed, not even bothering to look away from where Fallon’s face twisted with remorse. “No child of mine will put herself on the line to protect someone else. You will learn very quickly that it is you or her in this place, Maeve.”
Malachi used my distraction—my dawning horror for the callous way Mab treated her long-lost daughter—against me and grasped me by the front of the throat. He squeezed until my air was cut off, then lifted me from my feet, shifting me until my stomach touched the very tip of the spike.
I struggled as much as I could, pushing back into the wall of his body and trying to avoid the impalement that threatened if I shifted even a hair forward. Grasping one of my arms, he wrenched it above my head and shackled me.
The moment the metal touched my skin, it sizzled with the familiarity of iron. I sagged in Malachi’s grip, all the strength leaving my body quickly, but he used his free arm to wrap around my waist and hold me up as he latched the other wrist into the shackles above my head. Once that was done, he grabbed the end of the chain where it met the wall, yanking it higher until the shackles pulled me up. Only my toes scraped the ground, grappling for purchase and stability.
“I hope you’re good at holding still, Pet,” Malachi murmured as he stepped up beside me.
He touched his thumb to the healing wound on his stomach, gathering blood and reaching up to spread it across my lip. Revulsion slid through me. I only desired my mate’s blood anywhere near my mouth.
He stepped around to my back once again. His fingers brushed against the skin at the top of my neck as he grasped the collar of my dress. There was only a moment of pause, distinctly for dramatic effect and to give me time to realize exactly how this punishment would go. Then the fabric pulled tight against my body, tearing as he ripped it down the back and shoved the scraps to the side to leave my spine open to view.
“How sweet,” Mab cooed, forcing me to glance over my shoulder at her. “She matches her mate.” The scars I’d come to be ashamed of were so publicly on display. Knowing that the woman who had given Caldris the scars—which were so much worse than mine—would be responsible for making us a true matching pair made rage simmer in my veins.