Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,1
and the sounds slip out fast and sibilant, one blending into the next. “Fee-doom-ace-own.”
That’s what it sounds like to my pricked ears, anyway. That’s what it’s sounded like since I realized some kind of magic holds my cage closed and that the word is the key, although it took several attempts before I was sure of each of the syllables. I replay everything I’ve heard my captors say over and over in my head, searching for meanings beyond the obvious that might offer a helpful clue to ending my torment, but that word is the one I’ve returned to the most.
I’m still not really sure of it, or I’d be able to say it properly, wouldn’t I? Just how much does his voice lilt upwards with the “ice” bit? How long does he stretch out the “o” in “own”?
What am I missing?
I might be missing the capacity to work any kind of magic word at all, no matter how well I say it. In the back of my head, I know that, not any flaw in my concentration, could be the problem. Because these aren’t really men, and they have powers beyond anything I understood before they threw me in this cage. He says the word quietly and quickly, but I don’t think he’s all that worried about me overhearing it.
He doesn’t think I could use it. But it’s all I have.
He unhooks the latch. The hinges squeak as the door swings open.
The cage is barely big enough for me. When I’m sitting, I can touch the bars overhead without raising my arm completely. Standing is out of the question. But the doorway is large enough for Ice to squeeze through. There’s just enough space for him to grab me by the back of my neck and slam my face against the floor.
Pain radiates through my skull. He clambers on top of me with his pointy knees digging into my calves and the spikes of his elbows jabbing my ribs. His weight bears down on my back, squashing most of the air from my lungs until I’m on the verge of suffocating. He grinds one of those elbows into the tender spot just below my shoulder blade, and I catch my lower lip between my teeth.
I hate the whimper that slips out of me anyway. I hate his fingers burrowing into the hollow between my cheek and my jaw to press my face even harder against the grubby metal. I hate that he knows exactly how to take me from discomfort to agony in the space of a breath.
I hate the jagged snicker that tells me how much he loves it. There are easier ways they could position me, but this one is more fun for them.
A jolt of adrenaline shoots through my veins, more panic than anything else, and I have to clamp down hard to smother the urge to thrash against Ice’s hold. There is no escaping him. I know that. And the one time I tried, when I didn’t know very much yet, the man on top of me repaid me in spades for the one kick I landed to his gut. He grasped my foot and twisted his hands, and the bones snapped in an explosion of pain.
That pain has never quite gone away. They didn’t let the fractures heal right—a little extra security against me running away. I can’t really walk in this cage, but any time I put weight on that foot, a dull ache spreads through it. Extra security and a constant reminder of the consequences of fighting back.
I have other ways of defying them that they can’t see. I pull all the way back into my mind, into the depths where the pain is only a distant buzzing, into an imagined vision of the world they wrenched me from. It isn’t a part of that world I ever experienced in real life, but one I dreamed about traveling to someday back when I could have dreams that large.
Before me lies a broad pool of turquoise water surrounded by weather-sculpted rock. Brilliant sun beams down to glitter off the ripples. I would drift in that pool, embraced by gentle warmth, gazing up at the clear blue sky…
Cutter lets out a raspy sound of amusement. “Can we have her arm already?”
Ice leans his weight onto his left elbow in a way that nearly dislocates my shoulder. The spike of pain shatters the illusion I’ve formed in my head. As he yanks my other arm