"All your questions will be answered in time, but nothing is what you think. You have been deceived by the ultimate deceivers. The princes and their kind cannot be trusted."
The dungeon warden said something similar to me the day I arrived here, and while I certainly don't trust most of them, I think the Fae are wrong to judge them all. Still, the princes have my mother's soul, and I can't leave her at their mercy.
"I have to go back!" I say, my voice urgent. "My mother is their prisoner. If I don't fulfill my contract, her body on earth will die and her soul will be trapped in their dungeon forever." I can't sacrifice her like that. Fen would try to protect her, try to argue I was taken against my will, but demon contracts are not so easily violated.
"Your mother is not our concern," the tall man says.
The woman frowns at him. "What Gerard means to say is we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of your mother, but our first priority is getting you safely home."
Home. I know they don't mean earth. And they clearly don't mean the Kingdom of Inferna. So where is home? "You've got the wrong person. I'm just a normal girl trying to save my mom. I'm not your leader, or whoever you think I am."
They say nothing as our stone elevator moves faster.
I don't know how long the journey takes. My mind is still muddled with drugs. But at one point something changes, and I begin to float. We all do. My stomach turns, and I vomit. Bits of food glide in front of me.
I try to grab the wall but there's nothing to hold onto. The three Fae flip around so their feet point up.
"Do as we do," the woman says. "The gravity will shift in a moment and you will land on your head if you remain as you are."
I turn myself upside down just in time. When the gravity returns, we fall on what was once the ceiling. Now, we are moving up. Or down? Or... I don't know what just happened.
"Our kingdom is on the other side of this world," the woman says. "I would say bottom, if you imagine you've been living on the top. But really there is no bottom or top. It's all gravitationally irrelevant. We are now halfway home."
None of the maps I looked through indicated there was anything on the 'other side.' It looked like a floating island in the sky.
But if the woman is correct, and the princes don't know, they are in danger. They think the rebel Fae are isolated to the Outlands. They have no idea there's anyone living on the other side of the world.
I sit on the floor, my back against the stone, and try to process all my thoughts. My wrist is throbbing and my bandage is bleeding through, but I don't have any supplies on me, so I press my hand against the wound, hoping to stem the blood loss until we get where we are going.
The woman sees the bandage and frowns. "You were injured?"
I don't want to explain I was feeding a vampire, so I just nod. She sinks to her knees, cuts the ropes tying my hands together, and pulls my hand toward her, unwrapping the bandage as she does. "This is deep. We must heal it quickly. You've lost too much blood."
She pulls out a small knife and pricks her thumb, rubs a bit of blood on a green stone she takes from her pocket, then chants words in another language with her eyes closed until the stone begins to glow. With her eyes still closed, she presses the stone to my wound. It burns, and I bite my lip to keep from crying out. A deep ache spreads through my arm, and when I look down, the skin is knitting itself back together, healing the cut.
I feel lightheaded, and the woman looks paler than she had, but I'm no longer bleeding. There's not even a scar. "How did you do that?" Though I know the answer. I saw Kayla do nearly the same thing with Daison.
My heart drops at the thought of the sweet boy.
The woman smiles and slips the green stone back into a small leather pouch. "The magic is in our blood. In your blood. You will learn all of this and more."
While the idea of learning magic appeals to me, nothing they say can be trusted. I've seen how they attack the people I care for. How they burned an entire city, a city that included their own kind, just to lure me and Fen out. They are not my kin, and I will not be seduced by their empty promises.
The elevator finally stops, and the stone door opens, revealing a long tunnel lit with lanterns.
The glowing light above our heads disappears, and I follow the three of them through the tunnels.