“Touchy,” he rasps, eyes bulging.
I toss him aside and he stumbles before righting himself. He rubs at the bruises on his neck and all I can see are the bruises on Verity’s body. “Don’t test me,” I breathe, voice dangerously soft. “I have little patience for you.”
“Little patience?” Sadal quirks a brow. “You think I care? I have the rest of my life to spend in your dungeon, Altair. Imagine the breadth of my patience.”
We stare at each other, waiting for the other to break. Sadal is the first to speak again, picking at his nails with disinterest. “Where is Cleo? I can smell her.”
“You’ll never touch her or Verity again,” I growl.
“Cleo? No, I doubt I ever will,” Sadal agrees easily. His wicked eyes gleam in the darkness. “Verity is another matter. You’re too foolish to realize this yet, but Verity is special. Her ancestry makes her the most powerful Bloodbane in history, although she doesn’t know it yet. I won’t give her up so easily. They won’t give her up so easily. Least not because of the word of a Fae.”
“They?” I narrow my eyes at his words, ignoring his snide insults.
Sadal cuts his eyes towards me, turning away as if he’s divulged too much. “Don’t you have something more important to be doing?” He huffs.
“The reason you’re still alive and sitting in my dungeon is because one of your own has given us information,” I say, stepping back so I don’t strike him again.
“Oh? What might that be?” Sadal asks lazily.
“The Shades.” I stare intently at the dark god.
His eyes flare for an instant and he stiffens at the word. I watch his reaction carefully, judging the way his shoulders hunch imperceptibly and his mouth pinches. He’s afraid. A smile ghosts across my lips at the pleasure of seeing my enemy afraid. The smile quickly vanishes when I consider what horror could put the dark god to fear.
“What do you know of them?” I demand.
“They,” he says, stressing the word as he did earlier, “Were made in the ether.”
My thoughts flash to Verity’s familiar. “Are they dangerous?”
“Dangerous?” He laughs. “You think I posed a threat? I’m nothing in comparison to these creatures. The Shades were born from the raw power of the ether. They were nothing for a time, but they watched, and they waited until they went mad. And then that madness became something else entirely. They’re evil, Altair. Pure evil.”
“You say that is if you aren’t,” I say, curling my lip.
“I’m a different sort of evil,” Sadal snaps. “Evil that makes sense. Evil that comes from Fae hearts and minds.”
I feel a chill slip up my spine. “What do they want?”
“To get out. To leave the ether,” Sadal explains. “They can’t leave without help. There were only two people in this realm who could help them accomplish this. And now there’s only one.”
My eyes widen at his words and my mind flashes to the fluttering red cloak I watched disappear through the gates. “Verity.”
Sadal grins. “The Shades have been pressuring me for eons now to set them free. I held off as long as I could. I let Maaz play her little games. But now that I’m out of the picture, where do you think they’ll turn their sights?”
I curse silently, wishing I had never let Verity out of my sight. My gut clenches when I think of Verity, ignorant to the dangers. I chew the inside of my cheek, debating whether or not I should send for her. She would resist. I know exactly why she left the fortress. Why she left me.
“Little cats come out to play, make the mice all run away,” Sadal sings under his breath.
I glance at him, brows furrowed. He meets my gaze, but his eyes are faded and empty. “Sadal?”
He laughs under his breath. “Far, far away when the shadows lay.”
Nerves taut, I try once more to get his attention, but he doesn’t respond. I back away, feeling guilty when I know I have no reason to. Whatever is happening to him now, surely the dark god deserved it for what he did to my people and what he did to Verity.
I leave him in the dungeon, his laughing echoing up the stairwell. At the top of the stairs, as I push out into the hall, the old witch shuffles towards me. I see an indentation in a window cushion where she had been sitting and I know she was waiting for me. I offer her a tired smile as she falls into step behind me.
“How is he?” She asks.
I study her wizened face curiously. “Why? You abandoned him.”
“Some memories don’t fade,” she says simply. “Now, how is he?”
“Strange.” I frown. “He was coherent until I left him. After that, I didn’t understand him.”
The witch nods. “I suspected something like this would happen,” she sighs.
We round the corner, where I see Erzur pacing outside my office. I scowl at the sight of her. “What do you mean?”
“Eons of aging will catch up to him now. His mind will be lost first before his body crumbles to dust,” the crone explains. “It will be slow at first.”
Erzur hears the witch’s remarks and snorts disdainfully. “We should have killed him. He’s useless to us mad.”
“He knows about the Shades,” I say bitingly, hazel eyes narrowing at her.
Erzur curls her lip. “Surely he answered your questions? Then his purpose has been served. I’ll make it simple and kill him myself.”
I snatch her wrist as she strides past me. I wrench her towards me, glaring down the bride of my nose at her. “Don’t touch him. He lives until I’m certain he has nothing more to say.”
She stares at me, as if debating arguing further but she relaxes in my grip. She eases into me as if it was nothing more than foreplay and looks at me through her thick lashes. “Anything my love desires,” she purrs.
I
