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It was only the frantic prodding of the fairies that roused Iris the next morning. She opened her heavy eyelids as they pulled her into a sitting position, moaning at the waves of burning pain shooting through her body. She would have fallen back against the mattress if they hadn’t caught her. They pushed and pulled her out of bed, half-carrying her to the dressing screen and a bath full of lukewarm water, where they undressed her, washed her, dried her, and dressed her again. She was too weak to either protest or help.
The door flew open just as they finished.
“Good morning, Iris.” Micah cast her an appraising glance as he walked into the room, his voice light and pleasant. He took a seat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside him. “Bring her here. I’ll have my breakfast with her today.”
The fairies had no choice. Iris knew that. They were in less of a rush, though, careful to jostle her as little as possible while they escorted her to the sofa and set her next to the monster who had them all dancing to his tune. A few flitted around to her back to ease her against the cushions while the rest zipped out of the room. The ones that stayed huddled against her thigh opposite from Micah. Hiding.
“Is this what you were like when you woke up last time?”
She couldn’t even turn her head to look at him as she answered in a hoarse, raspy voice. “No.”
“Hm. Likely due to the timing. When did you wake up then?”
“Morning.”
She heard something scratching across paper. A pencil or quill, she realized. He was documenting his findings, studying her like he’d studied all his previous test subjects, monitoring the aftereffects of an experiment. Because that was all she was to him.
“I’ll have to do something about your screaming. I already take precautions to protect my hearing, of course, but it still gets tiresome, and if your friend Char were to visit before your voice had time to recover, things could get …complicated.”
Tiresome. Her screaming was tiresome. Never mind the reason she was screaming, the intense pain that still lingered in her body whenever she tried to move.
“How did you feel last time when you woke up?”
“Stiff, sore, achy.”
“And now?”
The latch clicked in the door. She lifted her head a fraction of an inch to look at the fairies zooming into the room with trays of food, and the simple motion sent fire through her neck, making her whimper.
“Pain on movement,” he muttered.
The fairies brought her a tray, propping it up on little wooden legs over her lap, but they hovered in front of Micah with his, afraid to get closer.
“Well?” he demanded.
They darted in, setting the tray up in haste and zipping away as fast as they could to join the rest, hiding on Iris’ other side.
He chuckled. “My, they have become fond of you.”
“I don’t hurt them.”
“And you have offered to take their punishment. There is the matter of that book.”
Punishment? What more punishment did she need? Everything he’d done to her was punishment. He’d destroyed that book, made her tolerate his advances, tortured her—wasn’t that enough?
A fairy lifted a hot cup of tea to her lips. More came up behind her head, helping her tilt it back so the soothing liquid could flow down her throat.
She hated this.
They treated her this way in private. She didn’t like to be so helpless, but even worse than that was the discomfort of Micah’s gaze as he watched them care for her. He would use it against her—against them. She knew that, and so did they, and there was nothing any of them could do about it.
The teacup left her lips. She heard him chuckle again.
She had less than a second to wonder what he thought was so funny.
His hand seized the back of her head, jerking it around to face him. The pain made her gasp and squeeze her eyes shut. Then his lips were on hers, and his tongue was inside her mouth, and it was nothing like Char’s kisses at all. It was cold, dispassionate, aggressive—and cruel.
His fingers dug into her scalp, twisting her head as he changed the angle of the kiss, drawing another cry from her. He bit her lip hard, hard enough it would have hurt even if she weren’t in this state, and he tilted her head again, drawing the tortuous kiss out until tears streamed down her cheeks and she was lightheaded from pain and lack of air.
And then he didn’t release her. He shoved her.
The fairies caught her. She was reeling from the cyclic waves of burning pain shooting down and through and up her head and neck, and he was laughing.
Laughing.
The fairies helped her sit upright again, resuming their tender ministrations with a soft, cool cloth to wipe the tears from her face.
“I’ll do worse to her the next time you misbehave. Now get back to feeding her.”
Bite after bite of food came to her mouth for her to choke down. Another sip of tea. The fairies tending to her were gentle, slow, patient, and the rest huddled against her thigh, quivering in terror, little trembling bits of warmth that sought her protection and her forgiveness.
They had both, but she couldn’t tell them that. Not now. Not yet.
Not until he was gone.
“I have encountered an interesting problem on the battlefield,” he said. “Your magic has increased my power, but only regarding the creation of barriers. Now, why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t been interfering from here?”
“No. I haven’t used or felt any magic.”
“Hm. Many mages have an area of specialty, and yours seems to be protection and healing. Perhaps the magic I extracted yesterday will be from a more offensively minded past bearer of the amulet.”
Iris had no answer for that. She knew little about magic, and she hadn’t felt his characteristic snapping and crackling once since the last battle she fought to protect the dragons. She didn’t know if he was hiding his signature, or if she was losing her ability to sense it.
“Why… don’t I feel your signature anymore?”
“You only felt it because I wanted to see your reaction. A truly great mage can hide it.” He smirked. “Given the chance, you could have done it, too, but now you never will.”
You already are, Iris.
The whispers caught her attention and emboldened her to ask another question.
“What is your plan after you take all my magic? What next?”
“I’m already working on that. You see, I have studied all the magical creatures in this area, and I want to study dragons next. Once they fall under my control, I will have all the test subjects I could ask for. Of course, I may have one sooner rather than later, thanks to you.”
Her blood ran cold. Char. Micah wasn’t just using Char against her; he was counting on the time coming when she couldn’t hide the truth, and that was when he would strike.
Had he started this war?
She didn’t know which side had instigated it, human or dragon, but she’d heard the king’s mage was also the king’s most trusted advisor. It wasn’t hard to believe Micah had manipulated the king into initiating the conflict to fulfill his selfish purposes.
“Dragons are a novelty,” he continued. “Their magic differs depending on their form. The human form’s magic is unlike ours, and the dragon form’s magic is unlike any other magical creature I have studied. Two separate sources of power, much more innate than ours, and I have found it impossible thus far to harvest either.”
He sighed and set his tray aside. A handful of fairies darted over to whisk it away at a snap of his fingers, and then he leaned back against the sofa, reaching out to catch a lock of Iris’ hair.
“Although the question of what I’ll do after I take your magic may now be irrelevant. I believe you tolerate lengthy extraction sessions so well because you heal yourself instinctively throughout the process. If I’m correct, you may be a limitless supply. At the very least, I expect you to remain a viable source for a few months, possibly years.”
She hadn’t thought her hopes could sink any lower. She already knew she would spend the rest of her life with him unless she escaped, but for that to last for months? Years?
He twirled her hair around his fingers. “It would take careful management, of course. It would be all too easy to extract too much magic, forcing you to use the remainder faster than you could replenish it, resulting in death during the recovery phase. But I can be patient.”
She couldn’t eat anymore. She had no appetite when she woke up, and every second she spent in his presence, every word he said, made her more and more nauseous.
“That’s enough,” he ordered the fairies.
They took her tray away, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders, easing her back against the sofa. Her sense of discomfort increased tenfold. He was as careful not to cause her pain as the fairies, but she much preferred his blatant cruelty to this false affection.
She could learn more if she could keep him talking, though, and that could help her escape.
“How do you know when to stop?” Her voice was a little less raspy after the soothing herbal tea the fairies had made for her.
He smirked. “In simplest terms: when you stop screaming. But you want a more technical explanation, don’t you? So you can understand.”
He brushed her hair behind her ear. She felt her skin crawl as his lips brushed against her cheek.
“The initial release is like breaking through a dam. The magic rushes out in a torrent, but the subject can’t handle losing too much too quickly. If I don’t check the flow, they will expire before I can harvest it all. So, I’ve learned to direct it into a steady stream that the subject can better handle. It takes longer, but I can harvest nearly all of their magic before they die. And for the rare few I want to keep alive, I’ve learned to recognize the signs of impending death so I can stop in time.”
Her stomach was churning. His flippant disregard for life sickened her, and his nearness made her feel more trapped than ever.
“I assume there would be long-term consequences for you, of course. But it is highly likely I can create solutions to reduce or eliminate the negative effects, especially with increased power and the thousand years of knowledge held by the past bearers of the amulet. I’ve never needed to investigate such things before.”
Her ears perked up at that. “So you could make it less painful?”
He chuckled. “I see no problem with rewarding good behavior. And you will behave, won’t you? To protect your precious fairies and your dear, devoted dragon.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as he kissed her cheek again. She hated this. She hated letting him touch her, and she hated her inability to stop him.
“But you plan to kill Char anyway, don’t you? To… to use him for your… tests.”
Micah hummed. “Not necessarily. Any dragon will do. There will come a time when I have to deal with him, but I could simply kill him outright and save him the agony of experimentation. Or if I gain enough power, perhaps I could alter his memories to make him forget you. Then he could live out his days in blissful ignorance while you submit yourself to me, knowing doing so has saved a life. That is what you want, isn’t it?”
She didn’t dare nod for fear of the pain, but it was hard to squeak the word past her lips. “Yes.”
“Sweet little Iris.” He leaned around her to place a soft kiss on her lips, careful not to make her move. His cold blue eyes and his smug smirk lingered before her as he caressed her cheek. “While this has been fun, I have research to do, and you need your rest. I’ll stop in later to see how you’re progressing.”
Then he left.
Iris’ breath left her in a rush as the door closed behind him. A swarm of fairies came to her, wrapping her in a warm embrace.
“It’s okay. You were trying to help me, and you didn’t mean for that to happen. It’s okay,” she reassured them. “He was looking for an excuse to do that, anyway.”
A fairy flitted toward the door. It hovered by the keyhole for a moment, and then it went to her bureau, opening a drawer and diving into the clothing. A moment later, it emerged with a book. A book that looked, at least on the outside, identical to the one Micah had destroyed.
“How did you–no, you couldn’t have.”
The fairies held the book in front of her and turned the pages. Name after name, line after line, dates found, birthdates, every note, every Bible verse, written in Father John’s distinctive cursive hand.
“You made a copy?”
One shot straight up and dropped straight down in a nod.
For the first time that day, Iris smiled. “Thank you. Thank you for everything. But you’d better hide it again, just in case.”
They whisked it away, one burying it under her clothes again and pushing the drawer shut while the rest propped the throw pillows up at the end of the sofa and helped her lie down.
“I will get us out of here. I don’t know how, but I know I can do it. We just need to hold out a little longer. But I need you to promise me something.”
The fairies tucked a blanket around her and settled on top of it, giving her their full attention.
“If I tell you to go, I need you to go. Even if that means leaving me.”
They all rose and zipped a single horizontal line from side to side. No.
“Please. Magic is all new to me. I can't focus when I'm protecting somebody. Can you fly with a dragon? Or tolerate being carried by one?”
One gave a hesitant signal for a nod.
“Then that’s how we’ll do it. Char can take you when he comes to visit, and then he can come back for me after I’ve dealt with Micah.”
The fairies came to rest on top of her again. She knew they didn't like the thought of leaving her, but one had already died because of her. She couldn't bear to lose more.
When she closed her eyes, the whispers came.
“Soon. Somehow. Soon."9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDEsMc2OMMT
