He stood up and walked over with Candra to Veronica where she was waiting nearby. “We have a lot of work to do.”
XV
Alina paced outside of the underground stone cell in complete darkness other than the slight flicker of a candle she carried with her. When she looked inside, she couldn’t see her prisoner, but she knew that he could hear her and talk to her. Only days after they’d taken him, he’d been weak enough that he was always in his human form, and by a few weeks later, he was turning into quite the sickly thing. They sustained him just enough with force-fed jolts so that he wouldn’t die.
It had been almost a month since she’d received the news about Coren’s death, and every day she became more and more eager to exact her revenge. Fortunately, she was the new Speaker of the Council, and the authority to take that revenge was entirely hers, along with the authority to deal with all those who had been a part of what had happened to her Speaker lover. Once Alina got even the tiniest bit of proof that Teresa had contributed to Coren’s death, she had grandiose plans for killing the pathetic bitch.
“So. Feel like telling me anything today, Demon?”
Orlando made no move to answer, and didn’t even look up to make eye contact with her from where he was hanging in the cell. When they took him, they had wrapped him head to toe in a thick rubber casing and had grounded him thoroughly for the entire drive to his final unknown destination. Now he had electrical cords wrapped around his arms and legs like chains, holding him spread-eagled in his cell, which was entirely lined with the same rubber casing. There was thick glass between him and the new Speaker of the Council, and he had tried too often to breach it in his early days in captivity. He knew it was no good. He couldn’t even tell what day it was anymore.
“Actually yes. You’ve gotten uglier since I saw you last.”
She smirked at his comment, since the fact that he said anything about her at all meant that he still wasn’t giving up. He was still fighting somewhere on the inside, and she needed that. “Well, I have news for you. News you’ll be very excited to hear.”
He answered in the driest voice possible, which was easy, since they didn’t give him much to drink. “I’m on the edge of my seat. Please, the tension is killing me.”
“It seems that a pack of Fireborn have your girlfriend.” She leaned in against the glass. “And we have some big plans for you. Today is just a wonderful day filled with good news.”
He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing his worry at the news of Candra, and so he focused on the last of what she’d said. “You didn’t have to throw a party for my birthday. I’ve had just about enough of those, I think.”
“Don’t worry. The party will come later but it won’t be for you, I’m afraid.” Just as she finished speaking he could feel that he was being taken down by hulking wolves who had their arms covered in rubber gloves. They made sure to drop him a few times and to hit the wall on their way out of the cell before they dropped him in front of her, still wrapped up.
“We’ve got a new home for you. Once we get you all nice and situated, we’ve got places to be, people to kill. You know the drill.” She bent down to hover over him, her dark grey eyes trying to meet his. “Also, I forgot to mention…congratulations. I hear that you’re going to be a father any day now.”
That finally did break his nonchalance as he looked up at her, but then he started laughing and just rolled on his side. “Okay, unless you had me in some kind of sedated coma for a while there, that’s not likely. Candra’s a hell of a wolf, but even a goddess can’t bake ‘em quite that quick.”
Alina just grinned even brighter. “I wasn’t talking about your Lightborn lover.”
It took her comeback a moment to sink in, but when it finally did, the smile on his face died and he just shook his head. “You’re getting desperate for material now, Pebbles. Maybe next you’ll tell me she birthed six Lightborn puppies and they all came out asking for me by name. And that they’re actually bears. That’d be a good story.”
She shrugged and then nodded for the guards to pick him up again to take him to his newly constructed prison. “You were the last one to give it to her right, it seems. Zara told us.” Alina had used the truth of Zara’s treachery relentlessly over the last few weeks. “All Aura could ever think about whenever she saw you was the truth.”
“The truth.” Orlando laughed once as he said it, then started coughing for a few minutes before he managed to stop again. “That would be the subject you failed in the one year of primary school you actually attended, right?”
“How does it feel?” She continued on as they started to carry him away. She walked just in front of the guards, leading the way with Orlando bound behind her. “Knowing that you left her, you left your puppies, all for a slave girl?” A few stones shifted overhead as they walked through the tunnels and pelted only Orlando as they fell. “Not to mention your disappearance started a war that left your rusted heap of an ex-girlfriend all alone. So alone that we may just have to go check on your puppies for you. Maybe we’ll even bring a couple home for you. How does that sound?”
He managed to sigh, but he hoped they didn’t have any Heartborn around to know how he really felt about what she’d said. “Are you
