was.”
“You never noticed the runes or questioned the random injuries to his hands?” I probe.
“The scars on his fingers showed up after we were attacked by another nest. It’s not unheard of for lamia to get injured and scarred in a battle. Most supes know what shifter saliva does to us. They’ll coat weapons in it or carry vials of it to use against us in a fight. His injuries weren’t unexplainable. There was never a reason for me to see him with his clothes off, so I had no way of knowing.”
“Do you know why Adriel is so obsessed with Sentinels?” I ask, hoping he has this confusing missing piece that helps explain why all of this happened in the first place.
“We were trusted with assignments, but we were never in Adriel’s circle of confidants. I’m not sure of his exact reasons or how he even knew what Sentinels were, but it fits with what I do know about him. He’s power-hungry and insatiable. He’s obsessed with being the biggest, baddest being on the planet, and I’m not just talking when it comes to lamia. He wants to rule every supe and non alike. The scary thing about him is that he can convince you that you want the same thing. When he talks to the nest, pumps us up, we walk away feeling like gods, like we own the world and rightfully so. It’s taken me a long time to see the manipulations for what they are. He’s a being that gets what he wants, one way or another.”
“Not always,” I counter. “My mother held out against him.”
“True, as did the two other Sentinel females he captured before her. But every time he fails, he still learns something new about your kind, and he gets that much closer to getting what he wants from the next one he catches.”
My eyes widen in surprise at that admission. “He has other Sentinels?” I ask, my heart pounding harder and faster in my chest.
“He had other Sentinels. I’m not sure if he acquired more before the ones I know about. Like I said, I’m not in his confidence, and it’s not the kind of place you can just go around asking questions about Adriel and what he’s been up to.”
“What happened to the ones before?” I ask, even though I already know.
“The first he killed within a week. He lost his temper. The second lasted longer but died in an interrogation with one of Adriel’s enforcers. Adriel had the most patience with your mother, but by the time he found her, there’d been almost a hundred years between his last capture and hers. Plenty of time for him to improve at getting what he wanted.”
“Does he ever find male Sentinels?” I ask, finding it weird that he keeps stumbling upon only females.
“That’s what the hunt order is for, females.”
“Where does he hunt them?”
“Everywhere. He has teams dedicated to looking for your kind.”
I grow quiet as I think about that. I have so many questions about how Adriel’s finding Sentinels and where. Does he just let the males keep it moving? I mean, he has to have come across at least one, you’d think, in all the time he’s been doing this. I’m nervous about meeting this big bad lamia, and yet at the same time, there’s a thrill of excitement working its way through my nerves. Does Adriel have answers to the thousands of questions that sit in my chest? Can I get him to tell me what he knows about Sentinels before I rip his head off?
“So we know what the plan is once Adriel has me, but exactly what are we telling him about how you’re handing me over?” I ask, realizing that we never really worked out that part of the plan.
“I’ll tell him that you’re there to trade yourself for the two paladin we captured.”
“And he won’t find that suspicious?”
“He’ll be so focused on the fact that you’re there, I doubt he’ll question much,” Siah tells me, his tone confident and dismissive.
The road we’re on winds to the right, and we drive into an area that’s cleared of trees. The road splits the man-made clearing, and we drive deeper into the dark. I spot something that looks rock-like in the distance. We drive closer, and the rocks turn into some kind of ruin. The remnants of some ancient crumbling castle-like structure loom in front of us, and I’m instantly confused by what’s clearly our destination.
“What is this