Cynna bit her lip, frowning.
Lily looked at her watch, considered her options, and nodded. “Okay. Cynna, having you in the other room makes sense.”
“You’re going to do it, then?”
She’d try. Whether she could do it or not remained to be seen. “It’s nearly eleven.”
“Which means you’ll still have another hour to wait once you get that thing open.”
“I’m not sure waiting is a good idea.”
Cullen chuckled. “What will it be? You had your fingers crossed when you agreed to wait for midnight?”
“That would be childish.” She paused. “We didn’t say midnight in this time zone, though, did we?”
ARJENIE’S heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She leaned against the rough stone beside the cell and thought about fear.
Terror was the top of the fear scale. That’s what she’d felt when she saw everyone dropping around her even as a wave of vertigo swamped her, sending her to her knees. She’d fought off the dizziness by the time she heard people coming. The terror had taken longer to go away. It was probably the sheer passage of time—or exhaustion of her adrenal glands—that muted it to simple fear.
She’d followed the elves here and watched as one of them opened the barred gate to the cell by pressing his palm to a silver plate where you’d expect to see a knob or handle. She’d watched as they laid her friends and her lover in the cell. Then she’d gone exploring, creeping around the walls of the cavern like a frightened mouse.
Arjenie looked at the blue-haired elf standing guard fifteen feet away. He never moved, just stood there watching the cell, his thin, lovely face as still as a statue’s. She looked past him and to the right, at the dark mouths of the tunnels separated by about twenty feet of tumbled stone. Then she looked at the far end of the cavern. That’s where Dya was, curled up in a nest of exotic bedding. They’d put a collar on her with a long leather lead clipped to a ring in the wall. Tethered her there, like an animal.
Working out how to talk to Dya without being noticed had taken longer than it should have. Fear might be great for helping someone run faster, but it sure fogged the brain. Fogged her brain, anyway. Finally she’d realized she could hunker down behind one of the trunks—the elves were messy, leaving their stuff all in a jumble—and let go of the pull on her Gift.
Dya had not been glad to see her.
Her lord—the black-haired Rethna—was punishing her. He knew about the call she’d made to Isen—Arjenie had guessed that much—and when it was time for Dya to take the tears, they’d given her only half what she needed. Enough to keep her from permanent damage. Too little to keep her from going into withdrawal.
It had taken several minutes for Dya to calm down enough to tell Arjenie this. Then she wasted several more minutes trying to persuade Arjenie to leave, get out. When Arjenie finally persuaded her she wouldn’t, Dya had wept and asked Arjenie to get the tears for her. She knew where the rest of her dose was—in the blue vial sitting on another trunk. It was two feet beyond Dya’s reach with her tether stretched as far as it could go.
That, too, was part of the punishment.
Arjenie had given Dya the vial. She’d left her sister passed out in a pile of fur and silk and crept carefully back to the cell. An endless time later, Rule had woken. Then Lucas. Then Benedict. When Benedict opened his eyes and looked right at her, for a moment she’d known they would be okay. She’d been able to touch him, to reach through the bars and touch his fingers with hers.
A few minutes ago, that black-haired elf had come up. Rethna, who’d tied her sister up like an animal and left her to suffer. Arjenie had discovered her adrenals had managed to restock all those shriek-and-flee hormones. Elves were more resistant to magic than humans, and he was an elf lord. She’d been sure he’d notice her sitting only a few feet away.
He hadn’t. He’d spoken only to Rule. And then he’d hurt him.
She’d thought about creeping up behind Rethna and hitting him over the head, but what if she didn’t knock him out? She’d never hit anyone over the head. She didn’t know how hard you had to hit. Besides, that wouldn’t get Benedict and the rest out of their cell, so she’d eased back in front of the bars so she could see if Rule was okay.
He said he was. He was sitting up, talking about the bars with Benedict. Her heart hadn’t gotten back to normal yet. She watched as Benedict, Rule, and the one named Paul crowded up together. What were they—oh, they were testing the bars. After a minute Rule said, “We’ll break our hands before we bend these. You were right, Brian.” Then he did something with his fingers down low. Sign language. Why hadn’t she ever learned to sign?
Benedict scooted over to where he’d sat before and put his hand where she could touch it, so she did. “If only I knew where my sweetheart was,” he said, looking right at her. “It would help to know she was safe.”
What did he … oh. She pulled hard on her Gift and whispered, “You want me to go to Lily, tell her about Rethna.”
He hummed a soft, approving sound.
“There are too many tunnels.”
He lifted both brows questioningly.
“While you were unconscious, I snuck around and—and looked. There are three tunnels leading out of here. I know which one we came in from, but there are two more, and they’re close together. You can see one of them from in there, I think. The other’s about twenty feet away. One must go to Friar’s house. The other must be the one on the USGS map. But they’re too close to each other. I don’t know which is which. And they’re both warded.” She paused. “Really strong wards.”
His fingers stroked hers, then he turned away and signed something to Rule. She couldn’t see it, but she supposed Rule signed back, because a moment later he looked at her and mouthed one word: wait.
Wait? That was it? She had to bite her lip to keep from giggling hysterically. She was good at waiting, but this was not the time for that. Surely there was something she could do.
He mouthed two more words. She couldn’t quite tell …
“The bond,” he whispered very softly, hardly moving his lips at all. “Rule will know.”
Oh. He meant that Rule would know which tunnel Lily was in, because of their mate bond. She nodded and … uh-oh. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered, and eased away from the comfort of Benedict’s touch so the dark-haired man in the long white dress—it was sort of like an Arab thobe only more loose and flowing—wouldn’t stumble over her.
FORTY-SIX
RULE was examining the way the bars had been fitted into the rock when their next visitor arrived. He was a husky man with black hair streaked dramatically with white near one temple. His long white robe looked striking next to his deeply tanned skin.
He was most definitely not an elf.
“I do hope this isn’t a bad time,” Friar said, smiling.
Rule barely glanced at him. “That’s a new look for you, Robert. You’ve grown quite daring in your fashion choices.”
“I would have dropped by sooner, but I’ve been preparing for the ceremony. They’re almost ready for me.” He bared his teeth in another smile. “If you crowd up to the bars, you’ll be able to watch.”
“What ceremony is this?”
“One in which I am consecrated to her.”
Friar sounded suddenly different—fervent and sincere, like a bridegroom aching for his wedding night, or a jihadist yearning for martyrdom. Rule stopped pretending interest in the bars and looked at his enemy. “She’s converted you, hasn’t she? Or rather, messed with your mind so you have no choice but to serve her. You’re no longer your own man, Robert.”