Nada.
This couldn’t be right…
I clawed at the oily blackness and kept coming up empty-handed.
I began to panic.
“The medicine he gave you took it away,” Narissa said. “They give it to all of us.”
I looked into her big welcoming eyes.
They were kind eyes, somehow managing to survive the ordeal they had been through.
I peered over at the others and found each of them wearing the same smile.
Friendly but sad.
“Let’s get off the cold floor,” Narissa said.
No.
I refused.
I decided to never do a single thing anybody in this place asked of me.
I wouldn’t stand.
Not ever.
And then I got to my feet.
“There,” Narissa said. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
She dusted the dust, dirt, and grime off me.
Was she magic?
How had she managed to get me to stand?
I could be as obstinate as an old mule when I had a mind to be.
“I need to get out of here,” I said… at least, I intended on saying it.
Instead, no words formed on my lips.
What the hell is going on here?
“You managed to escape?” Narissa said.
I nodded and still words escaped me.
“Wow. You’re going to have to tell me the story sometime. Come sit down.”
Narissa ushered me to a chair.
I didn’t want to sit in it.
I didn’t want any part of what was going on here.
And then I sat down.
Narissa turned the chair around so I was facing a mirror.
She began running her fingers through my hair and moving it from one position to another the way a hairdresser might to find the perfect style.
“I need to get out of here,” I wanted to say.
The words were never born.
Narissa sprayed something in my hair that made it shiny and smooth.
She ran a comb through it, turning it even smoother and cleaner.
Take the comb, I ordered my hand. Take it or I swear I’ll put you on ass-wiping duty for the rest of your days.
Not a single muscle twitched.
Okay… So move a single finger.
I focused on my index finger.
Just a twitch.
That was all I was asking for.
But it was no use.
I couldn’t move any part of my body.
I was a living mannequin.
Narissa sighed and shook her head.
“Try as hard as you might, there’s no escape from here,” she said. “Serve your duty and learn to live with your reality. It’s the only happiness we have now.”
There must be a way out of here, I thought
There must be.
“If there were a way out, someone would have found it already.”
Could Narissa read my mind?
It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that some alien species had that ability.
“And now, it’s too late for us,” Narissa said.
She shifted her dress aside, pulling it so it tightened over her bulging stomach.
She was pregnant.
And as I peered past her at the other captured mates dotted around the room, I noticed they each possessed the same bulging stomach.
These were the breeders, I realized.
And my destiny was to become one of them.
Vai
The moment I saw the creatures lying prostrate on the cold ground I knew Emma had been the one to do it.
I couldn’t explain how I knew that, I just did.
The same way I knew she hadn’t yet been claimed.
I focused my attention on that glowing pulse in the center of my chest.
It seemed even more fragile now than it ever had before.
And closer.
Its origin tugged at me from the opposite direction I expected.
I heard footsteps.
They approached me from behind.
I checked over my shoulder and beat a hasty retreat.
Arms protruding from the bars in the upper windows retracted into their cells.
The footsteps hurried faster than I was, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt they would find me before I could get out of there.
I still had a long way to go before I reached the door opposite.
They could fire on me and I would never find Emma.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I turned to the long row of cell doors and focused on them.
I reached back into the black tar-like shadows behind me.
I seize a handful of thick whips that writhed in my hand.
They could have been the tails of multiple snakes.
I set my stance, pulled my arm back, and threw my arm around in an arc.
In my mind, each of the whip-like appendages had a soft waxy material at the end, and so they did.
They each slipped inside a lock.
In my mind’s eye, they expanded and took up the entirety of the space.
I focused, using every skill of Shadow Weaving I’d developed over my lifetime.
Locks were not intricate things, especially down in the belly of a building as old as the Citadel.
It shouldn’t take long to—
Click!
I immediately wrenched my arm back, snapping the unlocked door open.
Now I had successfully picked one lock there was no reason I couldn’t do it with the others.
I repeated the motion and, one after another, the locks clicked open.
The last door opened on squeaky hinges.
And no one emerged from the cells.
I thought they would have been desperate to escape.
I thought they would bolt the first chance they got.
But that was forgetting how badly they must have been treated in recent days.
I imagined them standing at the back of their cells, timid, thinking the worst thing in the world was about to happen to them.
They think I’m here to take them to the arena.
They needed to know different.
They needed to know I wasn’t like their captors.
“I know things haven’t been easy for you,” I said in a soft but booming voice. “I’m not a Shadow. I’m not your fated mate either. But I am here to rescue her. She was captured, just like you. I came here to help her escape. The same way you can too. But you’re going to have to work for it.”
My ears perked at the heavy footsteps right outside the door.
The guards were here.
And my plan was failing.
“If you want to escape, you have to fight. Attack the prison guards when they arrive and you can earn your freedom. If you don’t, if you stay inside your cells now, you’ll end up staying there the rest of your
