Gil was loyal to me now, just as I’d hoped… and I was equally loyal to him.
The thought of someone harming him was abhorrent. In the same way I was willing to die for Damon, or Emma, or Matthew, or Finn, so I was for this stranger. Shaken, I removed my fingers from Gil’s torn flesh and moved back. The pocketknife rested on the floor between us. I was too dazed to pick it up.
I understood, suddenly, how I’d still been connected to the Unseelie Court even after my bond as their queen was broken. That had been the Tongue’s spell. His intentions and incantations. But the entire time I was amongst them, I was weaving one of my own. My blood had soaked the very dirt of that place. They’d spilled their blood for me, too. Somehow, with magic I didn’t fully understand, I had bonded to certain individuals within the Unseelie Court, like Daratrine.
“What did you do?” Gil asked shakily. He pressed against the wall as if I were the monster in this room. His hands were flattened against the floor instead of his wounds, acting like he didn’t even notice them. He stared at me with eyes that were entirely brown. “What did you do?”
My nostrils flared. “I protected myself. You would’ve done the same.”
The vampire shook his blond head, and his expression shifted from horror to bewilderment. “How? You’re not a witch. You shouldn’t have been able to—”
“I drew the magic from our blood. I think.” Dragging myself backward, I slumped against the wall. Even my bones felt tired. “In a similar way to how I was bonded with the Unseelie Court, now you and I are. With your vow of fealty, practically written in blood, it will go against all your instincts to hurt me.”
“You took away my free will,” Gil spat, his eyes flashing.
He was probably right to be furious, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with it right now. I closed my eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
Just as the last word left my mouth, the door opened again. I jerked to attention, forgetting my weariness in an instant, and I saw Gil do the same. Belanor walked inside yet again, followed by the same Guardians as before. Not one of them had a hair out of place or a dull spot on their armor. Looking at them, I had a flash of intuition. They’re all dressed up. They have somewhere to be today.
An inexplicable sense of dread gripped me.
That dread only worsened when a Guardian spotted the pocketknife. He blurred across the room, grabbed it, and returned to his sovereign’s side. Just like that, the knife was nowhere to be seen.
Belanor ignored Gil completely, putting his back to the vampire to focus on my face. His eyes were like molten iron. His color was high and a vein stood out in his forehead. He looked like a child on the verge of a tantrum, I thought.
“Has it occurred to you that all of this could be for nothing?” I drawled, knowing my apparent lack of fear or pain would niggle at Belanor like a beetle through the dirt. “That you’re just wasting your time trying to undo what can’t be undone?”
“What kind of spell did you just perform on that abomination? And how? Before you answer, you should know that my patience wears thin, Fortuna Sworn,” the faerie prince said. There was a warning in his voice.
By abomination, I knew he meant Gil. I blinked, pretending to be astonished. “Are you saying this has been you patient?”
Gil made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. I grinned at him, just to piss off Belanor.
It worked.
His eyes blazed now. He snapped his fingers at the guards, a golden pinkie ring flashing. “Bring her. She’ll need to be properly dressed for the Games.”
The Games? I glanced at Gil again, hoping he’d explain. But he was frowning, too—he didn’t know what Belanor was talking about.
The faerie saw our confusion and smiled. The Guardians had already started moving toward me. I tensed to run, but of course there was nowhere to go. “I promised you a full day, didn’t I?” Belanor said, staying near the door. “Did you think it ended here? Oh, Miss Sworn. You’ve truly been a disappointment… but perhaps my expectations were too high.”
The faeries grabbed onto me with grips like handcuffs. One of them yanked with unnecessary force, nearly pulling my arm out of its socket. Our gazes met, heated with hostility. Maybe I’d killed one of his cousins, or maybe he just loathed humans. Well, the feeling was mutual. “I would love to insult you, but I’m afraid I can’t top what nature has already done,” I told him sweetly.
The male’s eyes narrowed. He raised his fist to strike me, just as Lyari had when we first met.
Gil bellowed.
The sound didn’t seem possible out of that underweight body of his. Two of the Guardians holding me blurred across the room, pinning Gil down with breathtaking efficiency and brutality.
He fought them with the full strength of a newborn, and in that instant, I realized where I was getting my own rush of vitality. Of course. The bond. That was also where Gil must’ve gotten his newfound control.
Gil struggled so hard that two more guards left Belanor’s side to intervene. He kept fighting them. Any second now, these empty-eyed faeries would start breaking Gil’s bones to subdue him.
“Stop,” I said. Then, louder, “Gil, stop! I’ll be okay!”
He stared at me, his chest heaving. I could feel Belanor watching us, so I kept everything I felt from my face. But I sent those feelings toward Gil, willing him to keep any surprise from his expression when he sensed it. Sensed the warmth that emanated from my soul to his. The bond was… beautiful, I was surprised to note. I could see it now that I’d deliberately tried to communicate with it. There were tiny lights floating between us, like a cloud of glitter. When I focused on the bond, Gil himself faded, as if he’d stepped back into shadow.
He could see the bond, too. His lips were slightly parted, his eyes dark with awe. His fangs gleamed gold from the magic, as though it were a visceral thing.
Then the Guardians pulled me out of the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My shackles jangled like Christmas bells.
I walked blindly. A golden mask had been secured against my face, and over that, someone had put on a blindfold. As Belanor promised, I’d been dressed for the part… whatever that part was. No one had bothered to explain in the hours that had passed since I was separated from Gil.
After they had pulled me out of that blood-stained cell, Belanor walked off in one direction while I was forced down the other. Gil shouted my name as if he’d said it every day. As if we’d been in each other’s lives for years instead of hours. The sound echoed off the walls.
Then the door whooshed shut behind us.
Quiet pressed in from all sides. I found myself being led through a long, white hallway, with doors evenly spaced and directly across from each other. Not a single sound came from beyond those doors, and none of them had windows to allow glimpses inside. It was like a setting out of a dystopian novel. Somehow, I preferred the cells at the Unseelie Court. At least they were honest about what they were.
I left a trail of blood on the white tiles as two Guardians led me to the very end of the hall, where an elevator stood. The mean-faced one—the male who I’d insulted in the cell—stepped forward to press the button.
Within a moment, we could hear the approach of the elevator. Beep. Beep. Beep. The three of us stood there in a stilted silence, keeping our gazes on the closed doors. I considered asking them how they liked working for a psychopath, but I’d already taunted the mean-faced one today and he tried to beat me for it. I didn’t want to add a broken jaw to my list of problems.