“Alex Avery,” Alex says with some hesitance as he runs a finger along the back of my hand.
“Ah, you’re a Keeper.” She continues to thrum her nails against the table, her eyes moving from him to me. I unintentionally cower back and get disciplined for doing so as a thorn enters the center of my back. “And you? What’s your name?”
I lean forward, pushing past the pain, too worried to reach around and pluck the thorn out of my back. “Gemma Lucas.”
She ceases thrumming her fingers. “So you are, what?” she asks. “The daughter of Jocelyn?”
I nod and then breathe inwardly as Alex reaches around and picks the thorn out of my back. “I am,” I say.
“I see.” The Queen muses over something. “What did you expect exactly? That you’d come down here and demand I give you my best slave all because you asked really, really nicely?” Her hollow mouth forms a pout and it’s unsettling to look at.
Alex reaches for his pocket. “We’ve brought something to trade for Jocelyn’s freedom.”
“I can assure you that you have nothing I want,” the Queen replies with her gaunt chin tipped up in arrogance.
Alex slips the flawlessly cut sapphire out and drops it down on the table. “Not even for this?”
She looks shocked, but then she starts to chortle and the chandelier above us shakes and flickers along with the puddles on the ground. The Queen finally stops laughing, wiping tears from her eyes, and then her laughter rapidly shifts to anger.
She pounds her fist on the table and a few of the chairs topple over while the Water Faeries flee. “You think that you can come down here and make a bargain with something the Keepers took from me to begin with?” She rises from her chair, towering over us as she swishes her dress behind her. “How dare you insult me? You are just like your father. Taking whatever you want and doing whatever you please.”
I want to bang my head against the table. It’s ridiculous how Stephan can haunt us when he’s not even here.
“I have been waiting for the day when I’d see your father again.” She strides toward us and reaches us in only a few steps. “So I can settle what he started a long time ago.”
Alex holds her petrifying gaze. “I understand that you have had some issues with my father, but I can assure you that—”
“Silence.” The Queen tips her head back and roars, making the whole room quake. The walls begin to cave in as she pants ravenously and the roof cracks. The power in her is clearly evident and it makes me nervous of what else she can do. “I don’t want to hear excuses. I always swore that one day I’d get even with Stephan, whatever it took, and here you are. It’s the perfect opportunity. A much smaller version of him.” She makes a pinching motion with her boney finger. “However, it’ll still do.”
“He’s not his father,” I interrupt, but then shrink back when the Queen’s attention focuses entirely on me. “A-And he only came down here because I asked him to, so if you want to take this out on anyone, take it out on me.”
The Queen’s face alters from anger to inquisitiveness. She suddenly calms and walks back toward her chair. “You know, Jocelyn never mentioned having a daughter, so I find it peculiar that someone would show up with the son of one of my sworn enemies and claim to be her daughter.”
“Well, I am,” I assure her in a surprisingly steady voice. “And I want to take her back with me.”
“Take her back?” She throws her head back and laughs. “Oh, I’m afraid there’s no way I can do that because you yourself are never leaving.”
“No, we can leave,” I tell her. “I came here through the Ira, and you can’t keep us here—there are laws that say you can’t.”
Her grin deepens and then she swats her hand through the air. I feel a tug on my pocket and the Ira abruptly shoots out and flies across the room, smacking into the wall where it shatters. Shards of teal glass land on the floor and table and I swear I feel pieces of my own heart join them. I leap from my chair, ready to wring her neck and hopefully kill her, but Alex grabs the tail of my shirt and quickly pulls me back down.
“That’s bullshit!” I cry, flipping a piece of glass off my arm. “You can’t do that!”
“I can do whatever I want.” She smiles before motioning her hand around the room. “Now, let me welcome you to your new home.”
Chapter 27
I want to get the hell out of here. Run. Flee. However the Ira is gone, destroyed back on the table, and I don’t know another way out of The Underworld.
The Queen locks us in a cement chamber that has a single metal-framed bed with a ratty mattress on it. There are bars on the door, which allow light to filter in. We have no water. No food. No toilet. It’s basically jail except for there aren’t any guards, only crazy Water Fey who feed off torment and fear.
After the Queen leaves, Alex and I lie down on the bed, side by side with our feet up on the wall, waiting for whatever comes next. Torture? Death? Something worse? Surprisingly, we’re both pretty calm, but I think we’ve entered some weird state were we’re too shocked to panic.
“Let me welcome you to your new home.” I mimic the Queens tone with bitterness in my voice. I kick the side if the wall. “What a bitch.”
“I’m really starting to wonder just how long the list of people who my father has pissed off is,” Alex says with an exhausted sigh as he stretches out his arms above his head.
“Probably pretty long,” I say, yawning. I’m exhausted—the energy I used to come here took a lot out of me. If it weren’t for the screams from outside, I might close my eyes and go to sleep
“We should find a way out.” He props up on his arms and looks over at me. His hair is wet from the water drizzling from the ceiling and so is the collar of his shirt
“How?” I motion at the room. “I mean, look at this place. There’s no way out except for the door.”
He lies back down on the mattress and turns his head toward me. “Do you have any idea why this didn’t work out like the vision you saw?”
I massage the sides of my temples and shut my eyes. “Because I didn’t finish seeing the vision, at least that’s what I think happened. Nicholas forced me to take us back before I saw the whole damn thing play out.” A screams echoes from close by and I shudder, opening my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say, crossing my arms over my stomach.
“Sorry for what?”
“For messing this up.”
He shakes his head and rotates to his side, supporting his elbow against the mattress and resting his head against his hand. “You didn’t mess this up, Gemma. You were simply taking a risk to try to do something that was right and things didn’t work out.”
“Because I screwed up and didn’t plan things well enough.”
“Sometimes things are kind of out of our hands.”
I turn to my side and face him, my arm tucked under my head. Our faces are mere inches away and it’s comforting knowing he’s close. “But I do it so often and I’ve just barely started actually living my life,” I say. “Imagine how bad my screw up list is going to be in like five years… if I get that far.”
“You will,” he insists, tucking strands of my hair behind my ear. “And you’ll get better—things will get better. I promise.” Once he gets my hair out of the way, he strokes my cheeks with his fingers until I feel like I’m going to doze off.
“What will she do to us?” I murmur tucking my hands under my head.
His fingers briefly stop moving. “I’m not sure.” He’s lying. I can tell by the unevenness in his voice and the way the current of the electricity speeds up.
“Just tell me.” I yawn, forcing my eyes to stay open. “I need to know what I’m in store for.”
“You really want to know?” His fingers delicately caress my cheek in soft, consistent patterns. I nod, letting his touch calm me. “Unbearable pain,” he says.
I feel strangled, hands wrapping around my neck, suffocating me. Pain? What kind of pain? “Oh.”
It gets quiet. Water drips on the mattress and us. Alex keeps touching my face; my chin, my lips, my jawline, as if he’s worried he’ll never touch me again. I start wondering what death is like, too. Whether it’s better than getting tortured. Better than feeling unbearable pain. Better than feeling the burden of my mistakes.
“Look,” Alex says unexpectedly, rolling on top of me, his warm body flawlessly settling over mine. “No matter what happens, you try to hold on, okay? Turn it off.”
“Turn it off?” I open my eyes to find him passionately staring down at me.
“Yeah, just like you used to,” he whispers and tenderly kisses my lips. “Just turn off anything you’re feeling. They thrive on fear and the less they get from you the weaker they’ll get.” He kisses me again and again until I can barely breathe or think straight. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to do. Distract me from my worry. Or maybe he just loves kissing me.
“And what about you?” I say between his breathless kisses. “What will you do?”
He pauses, offering me a sad smile. “You remember all those times I was around you and I was a douche?”
I roll my eyes. “How could I forget? I hated you because you were an ass, but the damn electricity made it impossible to actually hate you for real.”
His smile turns to a real one. “That entire time I hated doing that to you. In fact, I swear to God it killed me, but I did it because I had to.” He slants closer to me, so we strategically touch in all the right places. “I can control what I feel, Gemma. It’s what I’ve been taught to do. The only exception to this is you.”
“Then how can anyone know what you’re really feeling?” I question, gripping his lean arms. “If you’re shutting it off and saying contradicting things.”