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No one answers.

In the distance I hear quiet murmuring, and the soft click of shoes along the walkways outside the cells, which must belong to prison guards. I grimace. If that’s the case, then there are at least a handful of people who know what happened to the warrior women who disappeared from the Otherworld. And they’re facilitating it.

Other than those few sounds, the cell blocks are eerily silent.

This is the place where hope comes to die.

And then, a thought strikes me, one that gives me courage.

“Bargainer,” I rush to say, “I’d like to make a deal.”

I wait for the air to shimmer and Des’s large body to take up space in my cell.

A second passes. Then another. And another.

The cell remains exactly how I found it.

“Bargainer, I’d like to make a deal,” I repeat.

He’s always come in the past.Always. And after last night, I know that he will come for me now that our seven years are up.

Again I wait.

Nothing happens. My room remains empty. Horribly empty.

And now I have to accept that Descan’tget to me, either because he’s been incapacitated—an idea I reject with every fiber of my being—or something is preventing him.

Something like magic.

Something so powerful a fae king cannot get immediately around it. That’s what I now have to contend with. And if I want to make it out of here alive, I’ll need to figure out a way to get past it.

Captivity is …boring.

Frightening, but boring. It consists largely of me sitting in my cell, wondering what exactly is going to happen to me and how I managed to land myself into an Otherworld prison. One that is secretly capturing fae females for some nefarious purpose.

My thoughts are only interrupted every hour or so, when a set of guards makes their circuit past my cell. The first time I saw them, I’d startled at the sight. Each one looks like a blend of animal and man. Some have snouts instead of noses, others haunches instead of legs, and some, whiskers, claws, and fangs.

To a human like me the sight is … off-putting. But then again, the guards are also currently my enemies, so I’m a bit biased.

The only time the guards stray from their hourly patrol is when, like now, two of them cart a fae woman by the armpits back to her cell.

I press my face to the bars, taking in her slumped shoulders, her bowed head, and her lank hair, which hangs loosely in front of her face. Her bare feet drag along the ground behind her. I watch until they move past my line of sight, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous room.

My eyes drift to the other prisoners. Most either sit or lay unmoving inside their cells. I don’t think they’re dead, but they don’t look all that lively either.

Not dead but not alive.

And is that going to happen to me too?

I’m no fae warrior. I’m what fairies derogatively call aslave. A human. To be fair, I’m a supernatural one, but at the end of the day I’m still human. I have no value here as a prisoner.

So why was I taken?

The answer is right there in front of me.

Because you mean something to the King of the Night.

Somehow his enemies learned this, and they captured me to get to him.