The woman set aside her pen and stood, looking at Sid for the first time. As she came around the corner of the desk and approached, her beautiful face pulled into an expression of distaste, much like the others Sid had seen throughout the castle.

“No magic?” The woman sounded incredulous. “At all?”

“She didn’t respond when I tried to telepathize with her earlier, so I would say none at all,” Modred replied.

“Why, she’s little better than an animal,” the woman remarked. “Also, she’s filthy and hideous. Look at the shape of her eyes, the pasty white skin, and that awful black hair.”

Sid’s mouth dropped open. For a moment, she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. She had read that some of the Elder Races didn’t think much of those who were magicless, but she had never come face-to-face with such blatant bigotry. The fury that had been simmering over the course of several days began to boil over.

“Isabeau,” said Modred, sounding amused. “She’s human. She’s not going to look anything like a Light Fae, and they chained her up in the stables overnight, so of course she’s dirty.”

Isabeau was a name Sid was supposed to remember. Angrily she shoved that aside. She snapped, “I have never been spoken to like that before in my life.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, girl.” One of the Light Fae woman’s eyebrows rose. “And I didn’t give you permission to speak.”

“I am not a girl or an animal,” Sid snapped. “And your permission means nothing to me.”

“It should,” Isabeau said dryly. “It very much should.” She said to Modred, “Bring musical instruments. Let us see if the girl has any talent. Perhaps it might offset her ugly looks and poor manners.”

Even as the other woman spoke, the pieces came together in Sid’s mind. Isabeau. The ornate surroundings, the rich dress, the guards at the door. This was the Queen of the Light Court.

Then Isabeau took a lock of Sid’s hair and fingered it, one nostril curled, and all thought of caution or of trying to negotiate a passage home vanished in a surge of rage.

Breathing heavily, Sid knocked her hand away. She said between her teeth, “I don’t play music for kidnappers and bigots.”

The other woman’s expression iced over. “Then you are of no use to me whatsoever.” She looked at Modred. “If the bitch won’t play her music for me, then she won’t play it for anyone else. Break all her fingers. Perhaps that will teach her some manners.”

“Consider it done,” Modred said, smiling.

Shock jolted through Sid, followed by a surge of terror so powerful it turned her muscles watery.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait, please. This has all been a massive, nightmarish mistake—if you could just give me a moment to explain how I got here—there’ll be a large reward for my return…”

Suddenly the sound of her voice stopped. She put her hands to her throat and tried to shout, but nothing came out.

“The sound of your voice offends me. I’m done with you, ugly brown-haired girl.” Isabeau spared her one venomous glance then turned away. “Get her out of my sight.”

“Of course, my love.”

As Modred grabbed Sid’s arms, she began to fight, all the while screaming silently. Then the guards came into the room and took her away.

Away from the richly decorated corridors. Away from the sunlit windows.

They took her down a flight of worn stone stairs to a hot, windowless room lit with a fire in an iron grate. There were other things made of iron in the room—chairs, tools, manacles, a cage. A wooden table, along with the floor underneath it, was dark with stains.

No matter how she struggled, the guards who held her were too powerful. One male held her hands to the table, while Modred rummaged through the tools until he found a mallet. Strolling over to her, he smiled at her. “It’s nothing personal, pet.”

He broke all her fingers, and her thumbs too. When he was finished, they dragged her down into a cold place filled with stone. Unlocking one barred door, they threw her into a room, and the door clanged shut behind her.

Light faded as the guards walked away, leaving her behind in deep shadows and a silence so deep it seemed to be alive.

Shaking, in shock, she crumbled where she stood like a broken marionette and cradled her ruined hands against her chest. The pain was so intense it lit up her mind like reddened stars.

After a time, the spell dampening her voice wore off, and she could hear herself scream again until her vocal chords turned raw and she lost her voice. Then there was silence and she lay curled on her side on the uneven stone floor.

The guards hadn’t set the bones after Modred had broken them.

She would never hold a violin again with any kind of dexterity. She would never be able to play.

The result of all the years of constant devotion to her music was gone, her purpose for living destroyed. She would never again create her unique citadel of radiant vibration, which had been exactly what the Queen had intended.

After that, it didn’t matter how long her body managed to survive.

They’ve already killed me, she thought.

Chapter Five

Her cell was chilly, the stone floor gritty with dirt. A cot stood in one corner, much like the one from the first cell where she’d been held, and from the smell, she guessed that a primitive latrine in the form of a hole in the floor was in the opposite corner.

After a while, the intensegray shadows deepened into inky blackness. Then the blackness receded into gray again.

Some distance away at the edge of her hearing, a creature in a nearby cell moaned and cried. The sound was quiet and tired, as if it had been crying for a long time. There were other noises, shuffling sounds, the drip of water nearby, and sometimes a rhythmic scraping, as if something dragged its body over the stones, pacing back and forth incessantly.

When the blackness turned to gray again, a fierce light came, flaring almost unbearably to her oversensitive gaze. The light came from a torch carried by a guard who shoved a tray underneath the bars of her cage and moved on.

Hours slid away, and when the gray began to deepen to blackness again, the light came back. The guard took away her untouched tray and shoved in another one.

None of it mattered. She didn’t move from her fetal position. There was no reason to. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing she could do. It didn’t matter if she was cold. After a while, she stopped shivering. The pangs of hunger had disappeared, leaving her more hollow than before, until her skin felt like an empty shell.