Page 12 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

SAPHIRA

R ather than what I had imagined would be revealing clothing, I was given leather pants and a cream blouse—almost human clothing, albeit a little antiquated in their style—that covered me entirely.

I ran my fingers over the supple burnished black leather, taking comfort from being covered after feeling so exposed.

I felt safer.

Protected even.

Despite the fact the fae around me, even the servant who had delivered the bundle of clothing to my cell, were strong enough to rip the clothes right off me if they wanted.

“You think too loudly.”

I started at the female voice, not one I recognised, and my head whipped towards the cell to my right.

A huddled kneeling figure emerged from the shadows, peeking out from behind the corner in the L shaped cell that I had decided looked as if someone had made it larger, removing two of the barred walls.

Holes in the heavy, worn stone floor and the ceiling matched the spacing of the bars that separated me from the newcomer.

She blinked large deep amber eyes at me, the gold around her pupils shimmering as if fire burned inside her, her look inquisitive as she took my measure. And I took hers. She was pretty, delicate almost. Like a doll with her clean porcelain skin and braided gold hair.

I wasn’t sure of her species, but I knew she wasn’t human. Perhaps fae. I hadn’t sensed her or smelled her before she had made her presence known, and even now I couldn’t detect her. It was as if she wasn’t there.

Concealed by magic?

Maybe she was a witch.

She didn’t resemble the dark fae king.

Her ears were rounded and there was a warmth to her that beckoned me, as if she wasn’t a danger in this dark and wicked world where I had found myself. Another potential ally. I decided to befriend her and perhaps broaden my limited knowledge of this world at the same time.

It certainly beat being alone in the dungeon.

I shuffled towards the bars between us, shifting my hay bed with me so I wouldn’t have to sit on the chilly stone floor, and the female eased back into the shadows, almost disappearing behind the walls.

“Wait,” I said, desperate for her to stay. If I couldn’t see her, I wouldn’t know she was there, and I would be alone again.

I didn’t want to be alone.

Wolves weren’t made to lead solitary lives, and I had been raised in a pack, surrounded by others. I had thought my captivity would be the thing that broke me, but I was beginning to suspect it would be the loneliness.

She edged forwards again, those strange eyes curious as she waited.

How could I tell her that I needed a friend in this land of monsters?

“They are not monsters.” The female moved further into the open, her pretty face blank as she stated that fact as if it was undisputable.

I was more hung up on the fact she could either read my mind or my thoughts were that obvious and written all over my face. Maybe it had been my desperation that had clued her into my dire thoughts and fears.

She inched closer to me, and I noticed she wore a dark red dress that reached her ankles and her wrists and was fitted to her torso, looking about as medieval as my own outfit.

It was clean, as if she had changed into it recently, but that knowing look in her eyes said she had been here some time. Was at home here in this dungeon.

“Despite your ordeal, you are safe from the real monster here. The young wolf will never reach you.”

I startled, flinching back at her words. “How do you know so much about me?”

She tilted her head up, peering at the ceiling, as if seeing straight through it. “Anger rattles the old bones of this castle. She pushes him too hard.”

“Who? The king? He deserves to be pushed.” The last few words came out more bitter than I had expected and I froze up when the female angled her head towards me and clucked her tongue.

“Speak like that and discover why they call him ‘the wrathful’.”

“He’s a monster.” I didn’t need to know him well to know that about him.

Now that the drug had worn off, I was beginning to remember things about the night of the auction.

The darkness I had felt when in that cage.

The way his presence alone had silenced the other men.

I might not have been able to see through his shadows, but I had felt his strength, and could feel it even now.

I could feel his darkness just as the female had said—in the stones of this castle.

She shook her head. “He is not the monster. Not one to fear.”

I scoffed, doubting that. “Are you here to warm his bed too?”

Her amber eyes widened, and then she did something that shocked me.

She threw her head back and laughed.

Laughed so hard that she had to fight for breath and the sound echoed and bounced around the dungeon, out of place in such a dreary location.

I could only stare at her as she struggled to regain control of herself.

“Good gods, no.” She wiped a tear from her eyes and gave one last chuckle, nailing home that feeling she thought the suggestion was ludicrous. “I am not a concubine, and he would not wish me to be one. I serve King Kaeleron the Wrathful in another way.”

King Kaeleron the Wrathful.

Delightful.

I had craved adventure, but this was too much. Captive of a fae king who had earned himself a title straight out of a nightmare.

“And you are?” I had the feeling she already knew my name, but I wanted to be polite, so I added, “I’m Saphira.”

“Neve.” The woman shuffled closer, and that was when I noticed just how fine her dress was, glittering with gold thread laced with crystals, and that she was using her finger as a bookmark in a leatherbound hardback that looked new. “I serve as King Kaeleron’s seer.”

“And he keeps you in a prison cell. How lovely of him.” I was starting to suspect I was destined for his bed and this was to be my own personal quarters.

Whenever he was bored of me, he would toss me back into this hole.

I pushed the thought of what was to come from my mind and focused back on Neve, using her as a distraction I badly needed. “Are you a witch?”

It had been a magic user who had foreseen that I would be Lucas’s mate, scrying the future for us.

She could have told us he would reject and condemn me to a miserable life.

I might not have fallen for him and might have denied all my instincts and my parents to strike out into the world in search of adventure.

Neve stared at me, expression blank as she said, “I am a shifter, much like you… but not like you.”

I could do without the riddles. I was tired and my head was starting to ache, and my stomach had been rumbling for the last thirty minutes. Neve looked in good health, so hopefully someone would remember to feed me too at some point.

“Not a wolf,” she said, as if I was as stupid as the fae king believed and couldn’t work that out for myself. She cheerfully tacked on, “A dragon.”

“A dragon shifter.” I might have gawped at her a little. “Of course. If the faerie realm is real, then why not dragons too?”

While I was still taking that in, Neve gracefully stood and went around the corner of her cell, and returned carrying a heavy upholstered wooden chair in one hand as if it weighed as little as a twig. She set it down near the bars, sat down, rested her book on her lap and folded her hands over it.

Looking for all the world like the teachers back in my pack had when I had been a pup, eager for story time at the end of the school day.

“I will tell you of this world… for a price.” She smiled widely, her gaze going glazed as it lowered to my breasts.

“Not you too.” I clutched my blouse over my heart, and felt like an idiot as my fingers brushed cool, hard metal.

“It is a pretty thing,” Neve cooed, swaying a little as she continued to stare at the pendant still hanging around my neck.

The only thing Lucas had left me with.

Another cruelty from him, the male who was supposed to be devoted to me, his fated one.

He had taken my precious bracelet and left me with this trinket he had given me—a token of his devotion and love.

I scoffed as I took hold of it and yanked on it, snapping the chain, and tossed it to Neve. “Take it. I don’t need it anymore. In fact, if you could burn it with fire, I’d really appreciate it. I want it destroyed.”

She gasped, horror flashing across her delicate features, and snatched the necklace up, tucking it against her chest as if to protect it from my wrath.

“It does not deserve such treatment. Save it for the one who betrayed you. Take not your vengeance upon this precious item, but upon the one responsible for your pain.”

Vengeance .

That word lingered in my mind, echoing there, tempting me even as Neve slipped the necklace into the pocket of her dress and patted her book, apparently satisfied with her payment.

“I do not have long, so I will need to fill in the details later, when we are alone again.” Neve smiled almost fondly at me, as if we were already best friends and having a pleasant conversation over coffee rather than through the bars of a cell in a dank dungeon.

I was starting to suspect her captivity had worn away some of her sanity, and maybe that was the reason she thought the king wasn’t a monster to be feared and I wasn’t in any danger.

“There is a world beyond these bars, Saphira. A world far different from your own, filled with things you could not conjure into your imagination if you tried. You have fallen down the rabbit hole, little one. This nightmarish world of courts, of light and dark, play dangerous games with each other, and if you are not wise, not willing to still yourself and listen to the whispers of the Great Mother through the sighing trees and the crashing waves, to open your eyes and see without the opinion you cast in iron the moment you woke colouring your vision, you will not last long nor will you find a path to a future far beyond your dreaming.”

She leaned closer, and hissed.

“Look between the cracks.”

More riddles.