The room was dark. As much of a cell as those ancient stone holes for all it smelled better.
She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Not this time. She had her crack under the door.
And then…
…in the distance, so faint she thought she heard it because she wanted to hear it, a howl.
Rolling back up onto her side, Danika pressed as close to the crack as she could. Nothing. Nothing but the barely perceptible movement of the air against her cheek. Just when she’d begun to think she’d been imagining it, she heard the howl again.
Young. Male. Terrified more than defiant.
“Hush. I’m here now. We’ll fix this.” Danika blew the words out under the door and waited, sending her presence on every exhale. When the howling finally stopped, she hoped it was because he’d heard.
Rolling over on her back, she wrapped a hand around the curve of her belly. It seemed there were more Pack here to save than those she’d come with.
The roses in the border had clearly needed deadheading for some time. Danika had no idea why she’d left it so long. She pulled the faded blossoms toward her, one by one, barely managing to snip them off the canes before the next rose wilted and then the next. This was rapidly becoming more complicated than her small gardening ability could deal with. She’d have sent a message to Tylor, the second level Earth-mage who oversaw the estate’s flower gardens, but the air was so completely still she was afraid to disturb it.
The air was never that still naturally.
Turning to call, she realized that the house had moved again and she was staring down the west lawn toward the pond and the rough land beyond it. She heard a bird and then Ryder came over the hill, running toward the pond. Highlights danced over his fur and his tail looked unnaturally fluffy. He changed as he dove in, and stayed on two legs as he climbed out of the water, having swum across to the nearer side. His dark hair hung down into his eyes, the water made the muscles of his arms and shoulders gleam. She drew her gaze down the line of hair on his chest, over the flat planes of his stomach, between his legs…He’d obviously caught her scent.
She smiled and stepped forward.
He ran toward her, but ended up farther away.
The light behind him grew brighter until she had to raise a hand to shield her eyes…
Staring up at the tiled ceiling, Danika blinked and remembered. When the distant howling had finally stopped, she’d made her way to the bed. It had been comfortable enough, certainly more comfortable than anything she’d slept on since being taken, and her body had almost convinced her she could die of tiredness. But her mind hadn’t allowed her to rest. Fear for the others had chased its own tail around and around her head. Jesine and Stina would manage, but Annalyse was very young and something had been broken in Kirstin. She’d suddenly realized warm water and food and a bed did not translate into her ever seeing the other women again. This was a better prison—and the thought of going back into the dark, into that hole with its patina of old death and fear made her feel like throwing up—but it was still a prison. They should have fought. Screamed. Struggled.
Died free?
No. As clichéd as it was, where there was life there was hope.
Eventually, her body had won and she’d slept.
Her body had won because it was no longer only her body. She could feel tears prickling behind her eyelids and wished she could give in to a prolonged bout of sobbing but was afraid that if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop.
Taken from her husband. Taken from her home. Her family would be frantic. All their families would be frantic and, for all that their families were high in the leadership of Aydori, Danika doubted they’d be able to count on anything as civilized as diplomatic recourse. There was no one country left in this part of the world strong enough to stand against Leopald’s armies. Should the news of their kidnapping reach the international community, the action would be weighed against the chance of losing Imperial trade and then ignored. Leopald, she’d told Ryder at dinner nearly a year ago, had begun to conquer with his purchasing power as much as with his armies—and although Ryder had laughed to hear it put that way, he’d had to agree she was right.
The five of them would have to free themselves.
Danika rubbed at the tears running into her ears and then scrubbed her nose with the sleeve of the nightgown. She had no idea how long she’d been in Karis. How long in the hole in the dark. How long asleep in a bed. No idea if it was day or night.
“RISE!”
The voice filled the room and pressed against her as if it needed the space she filled as well. The nightgown twisted around her legs, Danika nearly fell out of the bed but managed to get a foot free at the last moment. An Air-mage could have sent such a message, shoved it in under the door as she’d slipped her messages out under the door last night, but Danika would have recognized the use of the craft. The voice had not come from an Air-mage. Trolls and giants were creatures of myth. Therefore, in order to achieve that volume, the voice had come from a machine. She searched for a speaker and found a small circular grill set almost invisibly into the tiles of the ceiling. Without the net she could have followed the air currents back, if not to the speaker at least to the machine. As she understood it, machines were delicate. She wouldn’t have to be.
A thought occurred and she searched again, finding no lenses. They might be listening, but they weren’t watching.
“Use the commode!”
Not quite so loud this time and identifiable as a woman’s voice. Older. Embarrassed by her failure to use the machine properly the first time. Angry at those who’d made her feel embarrassed. She was trying to hide both, but words were air given form and Danika had been…was the most powerful Air-mage in Aydori. It could have been the woman from the wet room.
Why would their captors believe they needed to tell five expectant women to use the commode?
Danika had barely finished when the sound of the bolts slamming back announced the opening of the door.
Perhaps it had been a time warning rather than a command.
She didn’t recognize the two guards who stepped into the room. They weren’t the two who’d taken her to the cell, but they might have been the two who’d taken her from it. The uniform, the hair cut short, the cap pulled low on the forehead, all worked to obscure individuality.
They reminded Danika of a line in The Governing of Reason by Gregor Mertait, a politician from Talatia in the Southern Alliance. Safe within the obscurity of the mob, many deeds are performed that would not be countenanced by the individual. If Leopald had read the book, she could only assume he thought no one else had because Mertait went on to say: The mob cannot be reasoned with and will sweep all before it, but divide the mob back into individuals and it loses its power.
The guard on the left had a mole under his right ear. The other man had a black thumbnail, the edges still red and swollen enough the accident had likely just happened.
They both held pistols pointed at her and black batons thrust through loops on their belts. Clearly, Leopald was taking no chances on two grown men being unable to physically overpower one pregnant woman. More evidence that Leopald didn’t trust the net. Nor did he know exactly what he’d taken. If the net failed this moment, this very instant, they’d have no time to pull the trigger before they were slammed against the far wall of the corridor hard enough to splatter their brains over the stone!
Danika took a deep breath and let it out slowly, knowing they’d see the trembling of her hands as fear rather than reaction to the sudden violence of her thoughts. She’d killed once. She didn’t want to do it again.