“You’re a massive fool if you think that,” the guard scoffed.

But his frowning gaze lingered on her hands for a long moment before he pushed the cart away.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait. While she could still see, she dumped the bad food down the privy hole, and after chewing her lip in thought, she dumped her good food too.

The familiar dark gray of the day settled around her. Having lost her night sight, she felt her way back to one wall where she sat cross-legged to run the zipper across the stone and watch the sparks again.

I’m getting out of here, she thought. Maybe things will get better or maybe they’ll get really bad again, but one way or another, I’m leaving this particular hell behind.

While she had no ability to tell time, presently the glow of approaching torches lightened her cell again, much too soon for the supper feeding. She listened to the sounds of footsteps as they grew nearer. There were three guards, maybe four.

As they stopped just outside her cell, she wrapped her hoodie around her middle, shaking.

Here we go.

A key grated in the lock, and her cell door was flung open. While the other guards waited outside, a powerful male strode in, grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her upright.

“On your feet,” he commanded. “I have some questions I want to ask you.”

It was too late to change her mind now. The pitiless audience had chosen to appear, and now she had to put on the performance of her life.

Chapter Nine

They took her to the same room where they had broken her fingers. Her breath shook as she looked at the grim surroundings. She had to stiffen the muscles in her legs to remain standing.

Bad things happened here. This was where they tortured people and killed them.

The guard who brought the meals was present, but he remained in the background while the powerfully built male who had dragged her out of her cell swung her around to face him.

“Who did this?” he demanded, gripping her by the wrists so he could stare at her hands, which she had clenched into fists.

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed, throwing every ounce of passionate conviction she could into her voice. “I was asleep when it happened. When I woke up, my hands were completely healed.”

“You were asleep when someone miraculously healed your broken hands,” the male said, his tone skeptical while his eyes narrowed. “In an underground prison.”

Her gaze darted around. This was a room where they questioned people as they tortured them. Someone had to have truthsense.

“Well, I couldn’t have healed myself,” she said flatly. “I have no magic. I can’t even telepathize. You can ask him if you want.” With a jerk of her chin, she indicated the mealtime guard. “Didn’t I say thank you? I’m a musician. It’s the one skill I’ve got that might interest her majesty. The Queen had to have ordered this, right? Who else could it have been? Like you said, it’s an underground prison.”

Questions weren’t lies. She was banking her future on it. They just helped to support her statements as she was telling them.

When her interrogator’s hard gaze lifted to the mealtime guard, he admitted, “That bit’s true enough. She kept crying and carrying on, and insisting on the chance to apologize to her majesty and make it up to her.”

Her interrogator released his bruising hold on her wrists. “Keep her here while I inform his lordship,” he ordered the guards.

As the male strode out, Sid backed against a wooden table so she could lean against it as she massaged her wrists.

After having been in the darkness for so long, her eyesight felt weak and oversensitive. Although most of the illumination in this room came from a fire in an iron grill, everything seemed overbright, and her eyes kept tearing without her having to resort to biting her cheeks. She avoided looking at the three other guards left in the room.

His lordship. Did he mean Modred?

Well, she knew it had to get worse before it could get any better.

If it got better.

She didn’t know if she would live to see another evening, and she regretted…

She regretted so many things. She was sorry she never got the chance to have breakfast with Julie in Paris. She wished she could see another sunrise. She regretted not being able to tell Vince what had happened to her, because she knew her disappearance would haunt him.

But she especially regretted not being able to look in her benefactor’s eyes as she told him good-bye and thanked him one final time. She wished she’d had that eye-to-eye contact with him, just once.

The wait felt interminable, her patience stretched tight from nerves. This time the sound of approaching footsteps was rapid. The door flew open, and Modred stalked into the room.

He looked the same as he had when she had first met him, a richly dressed, handsome Light Fae male, but now there was nothing pleasant in his hard expression. Striding over, he grabbed one of her wrists and yanked up her hand to stare at it.

She had been correct. Her body knew him, and every nerve rioted at his touch. Under his piercing gaze, she opened and closed her fingers.

He shook her hand under her nose and hissed, “Who did this?”

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. With a quick yank, she took him by surprise and pulled out of his grasp. Before he could grab her wrist again, she hid her hands defensively in her armpits, her arms wrapped around her torso in a classic defensive gesture. “I never saw who did this or heard their voice. I certainly can’t see anything in that cell, and I wasn’t awake when it happened.” She looked at her first interrogator. “Somebody in this room has got to know I’m telling the truth.”

As Modred looked at him too, her first interrogator raised his eyebrows and gave an infinitesimal shrug.

Without taking his eyes off the other man, Modred said over his shoulder, “How many Hounds do we have on the castle grounds?”

“Not many, my lord,” the male said from behind him. “Most of them are on the search, on Earth. Perhaps three or four?”

“Get a couple of them down here to see if they can pick up a scent.” Modred turned away. He told her first interrogator, “Bring her.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Oh, yay! They were taking her someplace else. Almost anyplace else would be better than this horrible room saturated with blood and pain. Except for her cell. That wouldn’t be better. But from the sound of it, they had another destination in mind.