That became her daily routine. Mina would sleep on the straw and then spend hours talking to herself, pondering aloud what had happened to her friends and family. Was Teague leaving the human plane alone? When he didn’t come to torment her, that was its own special torture—she assumed he was destroying her plane as she sat there helpless.
Her plane? There was a good part of her that wanted to go and explore the Fae world and learn about her mother’s family. She had learned all she wanted to know about the Grimm line, but she desperately wanted to know about her mother’s parents. Were they still out there? Did she have cousins, aunts, uncles?
Only twice did she give in to her sadness and cry over the loss of her mother and brother. She missed them terribly, and after days, even wished for Ever’s company. When she thought she’d been in the dungeon over a week, she almost began to miss Teague and his temper.
Mina amused herself by creating a game of sorts with the straw. She would bend a piece around and around creating a ball, which she would hold between her finger and thumb on her left hand and then flick with her right at a brick on the far wall. She even scratched a round target onto the brick.
She flicked the ball at the target.
Teague appeared and caught the ball midair.
“You know that almost hit me.” He looked at the crumpled straw in his hand.
“Oh no, you were almost impaled by a piece of straw and died,” Mina said. “Too bad.”
“It wouldn’t have killed me.” Teague frowned and discarded the homemade ball.
“Oh, bad sportsmanship, minus two points.” She picked up another straw ball and took aim at the target. She flicked it, and it hit low on the target.
Teague stood off to the side, watching her as she played her game. She didn’t ask him to join in, even though she kinda thought he wanted to. He seemed really interested in just watching her. He even made a chair materialize, so he could sit comfortably. He didn’t speak.
After an hour, he disappeared again.
He appeared again the next afternoon when she was scratching another target on the wall. She turned around, and he was next to her with his own pile of straw balls—his were green. He picked one up and flicked it at her. It bounced off her forehead, and she flinched.
“Two points.” Teague grinned and reached for another ball.
“I’m not the target.” Mina pointed at the second one, higher up the wall. “That is.”
“Could have fooled me. I’m winning, two to zero,” he crowed.
“My game, my rules.” She kneeled in front of her stack. She’d had a feeling he would appear today just as she was setting up the game. “Zero-zero.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. But she could see the challenge light up his eyes.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she was excited at the prospect of beating him.
“And no cheating,” Mina remembered to add at the last minute.
Teague’s shoulders wilted a little at the reminder.
They took turns aiming and flicking their balls at the targets, and since she had never played the game two-player, they had to argue the change in rules extensively and loudly. Teague frequently demanded that he was right, but Mina reminded him she made up the game, so choosing the rules was her prerogative.
“You want to decide the rules, make up your own game.”
His eyes flashed a darker blue.
“Maybe tomorrow will be the day I take your life,” he warned before he disappeared.
He didn’t come back the next day, and Mina didn’t feel like picking up her straw game again. She even broke up all the balls she’d made into smaller pieces of unusable straw.
Sleeping on the straw was getting tiresome. It was itchy, uncomfortable, and it gave her a rash, but she’d never tell Teague that. At least the straw kept her inches away from freezing to death. Still, it poked and prodded and kept getting under her clothes.
Frustrated, she finally decided if she froze to death, she froze to death. She wasn’t going to ask Teague for help. She moved to sleep on the stone. At first, she was fine and fell asleep easily without the poking and prodding of the straw, but sometime during the night, her teeth started to chatter. The Fae light dimmed and relit, but she didn’t stir.
She vaguely remembered the sound of bricks scraping against each other. Someone lifted her and carried her up stairs. She didn’t open her eyes to see the warm person who carried her. Instead, she might have snuggled against his shoulder.
She heard a curse and received a nuzzle in return. He placed her on something soft and laid a blanket over her. Bricks scraped again.
When she awoke, she studied her new prison. It still lacked a door and window, but it had a bed—a real four-poster bed with a sapphire blue coverlet. There was even a pillow. Mina squealed in delight and hugged the satin pillow. The bed was so wonderful that she couldn’t hold back the tears. She looked around the cell and noticed more. There was a small, square table with two chairs and a chess board, another end table with a bowl of water and a glass, and even a few books.