Shadowborn Royals - G. Bailey Page 0,4
anything. You were not born to be nothing!”
The tears I’ve been holding back spill from my eyes, but they’re not from pain or sadness. They’re from pity—pity for all the magics who think like my mother. She genuinely believes what she’s saying is true and just.
“I’d rather be a slave and free with my shadow magic than a slave for you and your experiments. You’ve changed who I am without my permission and now I’m locked up again! Your plan to get me free didn’t work so well, it seems. If anything, you’ve made everything worse. Good going, Mother.”
She sighs at my words and crosses her arms. We are both as stubborn as each other, but it seems one of us is on the crazy train and the other is never getting on board. The sooner she realises that, the better.
With a nod, my mother steps back. “Eva’s army needs training and I have no doubt you can hold your own in here. Besides, we need you alive and safe so you are better off in here than out there.”
I humorlessly chuckle, walking to the door as a flicker of memory comes back to me from when I was injured. Turning back, I catch my mum’s eyes. “Why did you tell Gold and Luke that you should take me to the light fae king and he would heal me?”
“That’s just one more thing I lied about to keep you safe. I’ve lied my entire life to make sure you could live, and I don’t regret it. I never will regret one moment.” Her own tears fall as I try to make heads or tails of what she just told me.
“Tell me the truth, Mum. Help me understand,” I whisper and she goes to speak when a loud buzzer shrieks somewhere in the distance. Its presence seems to make her remember where we are.
She wipes her eyes and straightens her back. “This prison has similar rules to the old one, but this is a private room and corridor for you away from the others. Stay safe and I will see you tomorrow.”
I almost scoff at that. A private room and corridor in a prison she’s helping to keep me locked up in? Gee, thanks. I step out of the room so she can follow me out.
“You’re really just leaving?” I ask when she starts to walk away. But then she turns on her heel and pulls me into a tight embrace.
“I love you, Izora. This is all for you. Please remember that,” she whispers in my ear. “And don’t trust Gold. He is only out to protect himself now.”
Before I can reply, she lets me go and rushes away, her clicking heels ringing in my ears while I’m left wondering what my next move is. I look up at the glass ceiling above the corridor as light brightly beams down on me, warming my skin. The glass flickers with magic and I know there is no way I could just break it and escape without magic. One thing is for sure, though, I’m getting out of this place.
I’ve had enough of the lies and secrets.
And like hell am I going to be a test subject for Eva.
Despite what my mother said, I need to find Gold, because if anyone can make a plan to get us out of here, it’s my gold dragon.
The layout of my new prison is strangely like the last, and I’m not talking about a few similarities. Almost everything is exactly like Shadowborn Prison. The only difference is that this place is blindingly white. Not a splash of colour anywhere apart from the steel gates and doors, yet still they are equally bland. Even the solitary confinement boxes are made of glass, except they’re in a huge hallway now instead of in the mess hall for everyone to see. I feel like whoever blew the prison up just plucked it out of Zorya and dumped it here in Vasili.
Déjà vu creeps over me as I follow the guard down the confinement hallway. The prisoners inside each of the transparent cages are all light fae, though I can’t tell who was born that way or turned into one like me. I do recognise some familiar faces from the last prison, including Tyler, whose eyes cut into me like I’m a piece of meat.
At the end of the hallway, we emerge into an echoing hall that reminds me of the arena. My eyes immediately land on Gold, slouched in