Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,25

entrance room, with even more orbs beaming along the walls and across the vaulted ceiling. A red-and-gold rug spills across the floor to the broad wooden door striped with reinforcements of gleaming brown metal.

Bronze, I think. Like my cage. Faeries are supposed to be repelled by iron, aren’t they? I guess that must be true, and they use whatever other metals they have available instead.

I shuffle along the rug, wincing inwardly at each muffled tap of my crutch. The hall is quiet; no one’s around. There’s no one here to see me grip the handle on that door and tug.

It doesn’t budge—not when I heave it up and down, not when I haul it toward me or shove at it. The door is locked in some way I can’t see the mechanism to, which means I can’t unlock it.

Of course Sylas wouldn’t leave it up to me and my accepting of his orders. He gave me those orders, and he also made sure I can’t leave whether I want to or not.

I swivel around to make the trek back toward dinner. I’ve only taken one step in that direction when a lean figure skulks out of the hall, stopping at the edge of the entrance room.

Kellan’s silvery eyes glitter as they settle on me, and every inch of my skin prickles in alarm. “What do you think you’re doing all the way over here, little mousey?” he asks.

“Sylas—Sylas said I could explore the keep,” I stammer. “I was just taking a look around.”

“Were you now? Such a coincidence you immediately looked at the front door.”

I cling to my crutch, a tremor racing through my legs, but I manage to raise my chin. “It was just a coincidence. I don’t want to go out there and get caught by the monsters who had me before.”

There’s enough truth to the statement that it comes out with more confidence than I’d even hoped for, but Kellan doesn’t look convinced. He stalks toward me, baring his teeth in a grin that’s nowhere near friendly.

“We aren’t stupid, pipsqueak—me least of all. And let me disappoint you now. There’s magic binding that door and the one at the back, more power than a dung-body like you could ever contend with. You’re stuck with us.”

He looms over me, still grinning, and I can’t stop myself from cringing backward in a cower. His grin stretches. His eyes spark. For a second, I think he’s going to say or do something worse. Then he flattens his mouth and whirls with a snap of his flowing vest.

“August went to call you for supper. You’d better come quickly. Who knows how much time you have before we make a supper out of you.”

8

Talia

The next morning’s breakfast is an even quieter affair than the first one, mainly because Whitt doesn’t make any appearance at all. With Kellan eyeing me ominously from across the table, I gulp down a small portion of juicy bacon and hash browns with an unusual licorice-like flavor as quickly as I can and then excuse myself.

On my way back to the stairs, my eye catches on a movement beside me. A small mirror hangs on the wall in a gleaming frame, the wood so polished it could almost pass for brass. My face stares back at me, my eyes too big in my pale, sunken face, my hair a dark bird’s nest around it. I look like a wraith from one of those horror movies my friend Marjorie started cajoling us all into watching when we were ten.

Does Marjorie still love freaky thrillers? What is she even doing now? She must have graduated high school, maybe college too. She could have a job, her own apartment. She could be married for all I know.

All those possibilities feel as distant from my reality as if they’re a movie in themselves. As if I’ve been stuck in suspended animation, the rest of the world moving on without me while I drifted unknowing beyond time itself.

Maybe that’s not totally inaccurate either, but I hate looking like the prison escapee I technically am. If I could wash every trace of the last eight years away with the gurgle of bathwater down a drain, I would. Leaning on my crutch, I tug at a particularly stubborn clump of knots with my other hand.

August comes out of the dining room and catches me at it. “Having trouble with those?”

“I don’t know if they’re ever going to come out,” I admit. The comb one of