Callie
I calmed my breathing.
I needed to form a plan. Where would I go after I left the dungeon? The only room I’d seen was the blood chamber, and I certainly didn’t want to go there if Alistair wasn’t there. Maybe I could open the wall panel he had exited through? The probability of that leading to anywhere outside was unlikely, and I needed to avoid falling into a maze of castle rooms. I would just have to figure it out as I went.
I stiffened at the sound of something moving behind me.
I knew next to nothing about magic or the creatures that wielded it, had the bog not really been dead?
“Where are you going? Oh my—” His startled, squeaky voice echoed off the stone. A small gasp escaped him as he passed the full gore of the bog’s smashed head and walked to the center of the small cell. “Glad I’m your friend and not foe.”
“Are you my friend . . . shifter?” I turned to face the small creature, my chapped lips pressed together in a sharp line.
I really could trust no one, and I struggled to remember that.
Brown rat, which felt like a good name for him right now, stood on his back legs just out of the shadows.
“Yes, and likely the only one you’ve got,” he bit out in his squeaky rat voice.
I wondered if it sounded like that normally.
“Tell me then, if you wanted to help me as you say, then why not shift into whatever it is you are and set me free,” I said angrily.
I didn’t know who to trust. It seemed like everyone wanted me dead. Why would he be different? Everyone in this place was so full of danger and hate.
Everyone.
“Who spilled? Another rodent in the dungeons I should worry about?” he asked playfully, even though his deep brown rat eyes held a bit of sadness in their depths.
“A certain nine-tailed cat told me. He—”
“You saw Lord Alistair?” The rat raised his body in alarm as he scanned me from head to toe. “You couldn’t have, you’re still alive,” he said in awe.
“I promise you that I did, now shift into something useful or leave,” I bit out, angry that I had found even a small bit of comfort in him only to be deceived.
“You cannot leave this cell, Callie,” he said with a warning tone from the floor. “I don’t know how Lord Alistair didn’t tear you to pieces, but I assure you that was a fluke. As much as it upsets me that you are in the dangers of this realm and court, it is far more dangerous outside of this cell without a way to get you to a portal.”
“He didn’t kill me for what I believe is the same reason you are here now. I understand it even less than you, but animals have always been kind to me and I to them. Maybe it’s some sort of karma, I don’t know,” I rambled, beginning to grasp the oddity of all the animals’ behavior to me over the years.
I didn’t have time to worry about that now. I needed to get out of here before the guards returned.
I pressed the now hard bone key into the iron lock and tried to turn it with no luck.
It wouldn’t catch.
I pressed harder, careful not to snap the end off in the lock. Sweat droplets beaded across my forehead as my panic began to flare.
“Shit!” I cried.
It wasn’t working.
“Callie, please! You cannot leave this cell yet. It is not safe for you out there! I am doing what I can to convince him—”
“Convince who?” I paused and felt the blood drain from my face.
I turned to look down at the small creature.
“You know who,” he stated. “I’ve known him longer than most, and he can be reasoned with. I just need to convince him to return you to the humans. I’m close, I know it. He will listen to me.”
“Return me to the humans so I can be a part of the genocide when you destroy us and take over?” I said bitterly.
It all began to sink in. I had fallen into something much larger than I could have ever realized. Even if I managed to escape, for how long would it be? Was I even escaping them once I returned home?
A cold sweat sent chills down my spine
They would annihilate everything and everyone in the human realm if I didn’t find a way to stop them.
I fell back against the iron bars. My body slid down limply until I sat with my knees pressed to my chest on the musty stone floor. The distant rhythm of dripping water somewhere in the dungeon was the only noise.
“I can’t let him take over the human world,” I whispered more to myself than brown rat.
What about Cecelia? Earl? Cliff? They would all die. Everyone would die.
“There is something different about you, Callie. I can convince him to keep you alive. I just need more time. He’s not as horrible as most think. Please give me time, do not leave the safety of this cell.”
I stood back up on shaky legs as I heaved out a long jagged breath. I removed the key, wiped the bone on my dress, then re-inserted it into the cell’s keyhole. I needed away from these bars, away from this place. It was doing something to me.
I looked at the heap of green bog on the floor.
I pressed the bone key up, this time putting pressure on the top.
Clink. It had hit the tumblers.
The cylinder shifted, opening the cell door.
My mouth hung open.
I turned to make eye contact with Brown rat, his tiny mouth slacked wide as we looked at each other, shocked it had worked.
I bolted as fast as I could to the other side of the iron bars. The free side. I was at the end of the long hallway. Cells lined the left side while torches hung on the right.
Silence.
Everyone was either asleep or dead. I took my first breath of musty freedom. I was so close. I would get out of here and find the ring of destroying angel mushrooms—the portal. They would send me home so I could alert the humans. Tell them . . .
I stilled.
Tell them what? That there was another world full of magical faeries? That in that world, the evil Unseelie Fae fought against the good Seelie Fae for possession of our world? No one would believe me.
Was I really that sure I wasn’t lying in a hospital with a head injury dreaming this all up?
I ran for the stairs I knew would be around the corner at the end of the hall, the same stairs the prince had dragged me down.
A hard body slammed into my side, knocking the wind out of me.
“Please let me convince him to spare you, Callie. If he or anyone else finds you now, you are as good as dead,” the tall brown-haired man spoke as he grabbed my arm and looked deep into my eyes.
Brown rat’s eyes stared back at me from the large man.
I stepped back to stare at him. In this form, he bore no resemblance to a rat save for his dark brown hair and eyes. Easily six foot three with similar broad shoulders to the prince, though not as muscular. He still looked athletic and lean with well-defined abs visible under his tight tunic. It wasn’t the same warrior body of Prince Mendax though. I scanned his features in shock as the recognition hit me.
“It was you. You were the guard they pulled from my cell!” I shoved free from his grip to take a few steps back. “It was you who stood and whined at my cell to get in and kill me!”
Pain filled his eyes. “I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to protect you. I had just come from battle with the shadow army. I had fought in my wolf form, which tends to be a bit more . . . primal I suppose. When I returned, my wolf found you, and I was overcome with the blinding need to protect you.” He shook his head slightly, shaking his brown hair into his eyes before he brushed it back. “I only shift into a few forms other than wolf, rat is one of them. I just needed to do what I could to keep you as safe as I could until I could get you away from here.” He shook his head and looked down, hurt and confusion marring his handsome face.
“You didn’t keep me safe from Mendax or the bog,” I retorted, trying to fight off a feeling of hurt. “Where were you when your precious prince dragged me down a flight of stairs to see Alistair?” I bit out angrily, my eyes no more than slits as I watched his face fall.
Were all these Fae so handsome? It was unsettling.
I stepped around him. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not your responsibility. Tell the rest of the Unseelie animals to save themselves and stay far away from me.” I walked toward the stairs.
“I will escort you out. They will kill both of us if we are caught, but you stand no chance of making it out of here alive otherwise,” he stated, grabbing my hand in his large palm as he guided me faster down the hall.
“Tell me your name. Brown rat no longer suits you,” I said as I pulled my hand free from his, forgetting the name rule.
“I will not tell you my name now, nor ever for that matter. I want to protect you, but I don’t trust you if the prince doesn’t trust you, especially not with my name, but you may call me Walter,” he said, gently grabbing my hand again.
He continued to pull me down the aisle of the dungeon. He was going to help me escape.
“What if they catch you?” Though I was upset with him, the thought of him getting killed on my behalf sat heavily on my chest.
“Then I will die, I suppose,” he murmured as he pulled me behind him.
“Please don’t do this, Walter, just tell me where to go,” I pleaded to his back as he pulled me along.
I expected the stairs to be farther away than they were. They had felt a lifetime away from my cell when the guards had moved me.
We tore up the stone steps and out onto a small landing. It was obvious Walter was no stranger to the castle. What did he do here that afforded him so much knowledge of the layout?
“What do you do here? What is your position in the Unseelie court, Walter?”
Did he have ulterior motives, perhaps, and he wasn’t actually helping me at all? He could be the court’s executioner for all I knew. He had already lied to me once.
“Quiet. Stay in the dark as much as possible,” he ordered after I saw his features tense momentarily.
I listened and pressed my back to the stone wall. His task of staying hidden seemed like an easy feat when all I could see was darkness in the crevice of his back.
His broad, tapered body concealed me as he tucked me closer behind him and through a large iron and wood door. The air shifted, no longer smelling musty. Only then did I realize we had left the dungeon.
It was instantly brighter, though darkness still settled around us. It smelled luxurious with various almost spicy scents. The air even felt rich and warm in contrast to the dungeon’s stuffy moist air. My feet felt the contrast as well. Smooth black marble with thin veins of white and gray slapped coldly against my feet. Walter stopped and turned his head to scowl his liquid brown eyes at me.
“If ever anyone believed you an assassin, they ought to listen to you walk, be quiet! We will never escape with the sounds of your troll feet clapping for attention,” he scolded.
He was so tall he had to bend to whisper. Had I not been a prisoner in an unfamiliar realm, I would probably have looked at Walter quite differently. He was beautiful. All the Fae seemed to be—even the prince was uncomfortably attractive.
We were taught as kids that evil is ugly and crass and beauty is honest and good, but that is a dangerous lie. It’s so much more unsettling for your villain to be ungodly good-looking. It made it even harder to decipher the obscure feelings they elicited from your mind and body.
I rolled my eyes at his words. Troll feet. I was too distracted by his nearness to come up with a retort. He was so different from a rat now.
Thinking of the rat reminded me of the fox. My curious mind forced me to ask in case I did die before I could leave the castle’s walls.
“Have you ever seen a red fox that shimmers gold in the sun?” I whispered at his back.
He still held my hand as he guided me down yet another dark hallway, and I felt a sharp squeeze before he abruptly stopped. He turned to face me.
“Why would you know anything about that?” he asked me, and for the first time, I saw cold anger in his eyes, not unlike the horrible prince’s.
His jaw stiffened as he inspected me as though if he looked closely enough, I’d give a secret away.
“I saw one back home . . . and here. I think it may have tried to stop me from going into the circle of mushrooms—the portal. And when I was dying in the forest here, I saw two. I think the one was the same possibly? I-I think it saved my life after the prince’s men stabbed me. It cried on my wound, and-and I just came back with a fire in my veins,” I whispered.
Saying it all out loud felt so very different from what I heard inside my head. I still held solace in the thought that none of this was real, that I’d surely wake up in the hospital with a head injury any day now.
Walter dropped my hand. His eyes widened, and his mouth was open so wide I could see the back of his throat. Obviously, he knew about the fox.
“That can’t be,” he murmured as he stared at me with open shock. “You saw the fox in the human realm and in the Unseelie realm? You are certain?”
Goose bumps trailed my skin at the harsh look he gave.
“Is that bad? What is it?” I asked.
The fox couldn’t be that bad. It had saved my life and presumably had tried to keep me from the portal to the Unseelie realm.
A loud creak from the floor down the hall broke the silence that surrounded us.
Walter shoved me back the way we had just come as he grabbed my hand once more and began running us down yet another corridor I hadn’t even seen. He pushed me into what looked to be a linen closet filled with laundry. The room was small, the size of a nice human bathroom. Darkness cloaked the room as he pulled the black door closed behind him. There was a small light that softly illuminated the wall. Did they have electricity?
The black marble floor’s polish gleamed in the flickering amber light. The walls looked modern with a hint of a more traditional influence. All painted black with wainscoting trim and high ceilings. Almost too modern to be considered gothic, but a malevolent feeling hung in the air, something that shrouded everything, making it feel much more gothic than it initially looked.
Walter pressed in, holding the large black door closed. I stepped back to allow more space between our bodies, but a rack of fabric shoved into my backside. I opened my mouth to ask about their technologies upon seeing the light. At a squint, though, I realized it was a giant lightning bug that sat on a small bench upon the tiny gold platform where a lightbulb would have been. It was ten times larger than the lightning bugs at home. His face held a more sentient appearance. Of which I got to inspect further after it turned its head to me and held a finger to its mouth in the universal sign to be quiet.
I gaped at the fact that a lightning bug wall sconce had just told me to be quiet.
I looked up to see Walter chuckling as he watched me with glittering eyes. “I forget what a culture shock you must be going through,” he whispered.
“Tell me about the fox,” I whispered, not having forgotten.
I needed to know what was going on. Why would the fox seek me out? I couldn’t form a plan to get back home if I didn’t know all of the variables involved, and I had an odd hunch the fox was very much involved.
He immediately looked angry and stared at the wall opposite us.
“I tell you this as a friend.” He stiffened, and I swear I heard a small growl from inside his chest. “The only thing I know that can shift into a fox is an old line of Fae that I promise you want nothing to do with. I don’t know why they would have an interest in you, but I can assure you, it’s not a good thing,” he stated through a jaw clenched so tightly it looked painful.
Whoever the line of Fae was, it was clear he hated them.
“Why would Fae be in the human realm? It doesn’t surprise me that they showed up here, this is their home, but in the human realm?” I asked, still struggling to put the pieces together. It felt like a big piece was missing.
He moved from the door to step closer to me in the small room. Linen and soap fragrance wafted toward me with his move. It was a pleasant change from the musty dungeon scent.
“Quite the contrary. It’s significantly more unsettling that you saw them here, in the Unseelie court. They frequent the human realm as they were given passage. The fact that they set foot on Unseelie soil uninvited and then used their powers to heal you is unsettling, to say the least. It seems they have forged a plan that involves you in some way, which is far more dangerous than anything your human mind will comprehend.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he telling me these Fae walked around with the humans?
“I can hardly believe there is anything more dangerous than being a prisoner of the Unseelie prince,” I whispered.
Something in the air seemed to shift. It was unsettling and caused my stomach to tighten.
“Oh, but there is. The only Fae that shift into fox are the royal children of the Seelie court, and by Seelie law, you are now tied to one of them with your life. You’re at their command until they decide to kill you,” he said before he shook his head softly. “Those bastards will never let you free. It doesn’t matter what realm you go to now, the Seelie own you. The only solace you have is that they did it on Unseelie soil, which violates a lot of rules.”
I clamored back as I tried to get my bearings and accidentally knocked a glass jar off the small table behind me. It crashed to the floor and shattered, quickly ending our hushed conversation.
I looked up at Walter, knowing I had just doomed us.
