Chapter 98 Chapter Ninety-Eight

Chapter 98 Chapter Ninety-Eight
Isla stepped into the pool, the cool water raising gooseflesh across her skin. The energy coursing through the element lit up her tattoos and zapped along her nerve endings, making her shiver. The makeshift steps cut into the edge of the pool led to a shallow path that eventually dropped to an unfathomable depth.

“I don’t like this,” Sylvan grumbled, not for the first time.

Isla turned just enough to spy him beside the edge of the pool, watching her with his arms crossed, the tattoos of his exposed forearm mirroring the glow of his mate’s.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Ameretta asked, skimming her nail down a book procured by Delilah, who watched Isla with eyes filled with her own concern.

Sylvan guffawed, a nearly silent note of his disapproval. His eyes snapped to Teresa, being held by Gregory, and his jaw started to tick. Images assailed Isla’s subconscious of Teresa being chained to a wall of stone, breathing deeply through the pain from the various gruesome cuts over her body. Sylvan smirked as his idea of torture played out in both of their minds.

“No,” Isla said again, eroding the visions as Sylvan’s attention focused back on her. Isla shook her head. “No, this is a better way, Sylvan.”

Sylvan crouched down and crooked a finger at her. Isla sighed but responded to his beckoning gesture. When she got close enough, he gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger, dragging her gaze up to meet his.

“I don’t like this,” he repeated slowly.

“This is the best way to know for certain what is true,” Isla argued. “Torturing her will only lead to her saying whatever it takes to make the torture end. This way I’ll be able to see what she saw, hear what she heard… There will be no room for doubt.”

“So you must suffer?”

“She won’t suffer,” Ameretta said with a condescending sigh.

“You are asking her to die,” Sylvan growled, turning his head to glare at the fae queen.

Ameretta slammed the book shut and returned his glare. “Our lives race through our minds when we are on the brink of death,” Ameretta explained for the fifth time. “I am not asking her to die. She only needs to reach the precipice, to straddle the line between life and death, and look down without falling from the ledge.” Ameretta’s eyes rose to meet Isla’s. “We will introduce the prisoner’s blood to the water, and her memories will merge with Isla’s. From there she can glimpse the answers you seek, and once that is done, we will bring her back, completely unharmed.”

Sylvan stood and squared up to Ameretta. “And precisely how will you know when that time is?” he asked.

Ameretta smirked. “You’re going to tell us, of course,” Ameretta informed him.

“What are you…”

Metal clinked and snapped. Sylvan jerked away from the fae queen, but he was too late. He held his wrists up, showing two cuffs circling his wrists. His eyes blackened, and he snarled. His hand shot out to grab Ameretta around the throat. The tendons of his forearm bunched as he lifted her from the ground. Nikolai and Cole surged forward in response, but Ameretta’s giggle brought them up short.

“Careful, wolf,” Ameretta warned. “I wouldn’t try to shift farther. What did you think I was looking at in that book, hm? Do you really think the High Priestess would possess a book describing fae memory castings? The likes of which no fae has ever been able to conjure?” She shook her head. “That book was for you and taming your primal side so we could achieve what is necessary.”

Sylvan’s black regard shot to Delilah, who ducked her head and took two steps back. “What did you do?” Sylvan asked.

Ameretta shrugged. “Your mate will be cut, her blood will fill this pool, and her soul will teeter on the edge of death. How exactly did you expect your wolf to react?” Her eyes jutted down to Sylvan’s manacled wrists. “This will keep your beasty from coming forward. Delilah will measure your pulse, and you, Prince, will tell us when we need to pull Isla back to our realm.”

“Get out of the water, Isla,” Sylvan ordered, his hand still wrapped around her mother’s throat.

Isla backed away, further into the water. “No.”

His eyes jerked to watch her slow retreat into deeper water. “That pool won’t keep me from getting to you. I can swim, Isla. Get. Out.”

She shook her head.

Sylvan dropped Ameretta and strode to the edge of the pool. “If you think I’ll let you pull this stunt with my hands tied by some dark magic, you are sorely mistaken.”

“This is the best way,” Isla reminded him.

“I don’t give a fuck!”

A commotion of jubilant voices echoed through the conclave tunnels. Everyone turned to see who was coming. A group of dragon guards strode through the entrance to the chamber with the leader Morris at the front. The dragon rider smiled broadly as Sylvan growled.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sylvan asked as the riders approached.

Morris stopped a few feet away. “They needed a few guys who you couldn’t command.”

“What are you talking about?”

Morris lifted his hands, and his smile grew wider. “We’re the brawn.”

Sylvan’s narrowed eyes pinned Isla with accusation a moment before the six dragon riders jumped. Despite the fact that it was six versus one and Sylvan wasn’t able to call on his wolf, it was not an easy feat for the dragon riders to subdue the unruly prince. After all, up until a month earlier, Sylvan kept his wolf barricaded behind impenetrable bars within his mind.

“Mother!” Isla yelled, holding her hand up.

Ameretta flung a blade toward Isla, who caught it with ease.

“Isla, don’t!” Sylvan yelled beneath the pile of men.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered before she used the knife to make a precise cut on the side of her neck.

Her instincts forced her to clamp a palm to the blood that flowed from the artery she’d just sliced open. Sylvan cried out, and Isla watched as he tried to shift, only for his body to shiver and quake in pained agony while the spell cast on the metal around his wrists prevented the transition. Isla felt her body weakening. Her eyelids started to droop, and the image of Sylvan fighting against the struggling dragon riders started to blur. She took several steps backward until she felt the ledge of the deepest part of the pool.

Ameretta beckoned Gregory forward, who dragged Teresa toward the water. Teresa fought against her restraints, her eyes wide, uncertain of what this conjuring would entail or do to her psyche. Ameretta procured another blade and grabbed one of Teresa’s wrists. She held Teresa’s hand over the water and sliced her palm open with the blade. Teresa cried out and clasped her hand into a fist. Blood dropped down and hit the pool with punctuated taps that resounded over the still water. Isla took another step back, and she sank into the pool’s depth.

The sound of Sylvan’s screams, Teresa’s cries, and the various grunts of the dragon riders were swallowed by the water. All she was left with was the silent reverberation of her body falling deeper and deeper into the abyss. Due to her ability to hold her breath for long periods of time below water, the blood loss from her severed artery would be what took her first. She felt her limbs grow heavy, then numb. She watched her hands rise up, her fingers loose and useless. Her feet followed suit as her body turned and she stared upward at the waning light being swallowed by the darkness of death.

The light started to shift. The mixture of yellow and white light streaming in from the lit torches along the walls expanded. A multitude of colors morphed. The water rippled, and visions of herself flooded through faster than she could decipher, stopping only long enough for her to make out shades of color or give her an inkling of an emotion. The images stopped, and suddenly Isla was looking at a young version of herself, only a couple of years old. She is looking down at Cecelia as she spins Isla in her arms. The smile on her adoptive mother’s face transformed, and she was walking down a hall, watching the strained back of Slade as he strides into his war room. He stops at the door and glares back at her.

“Find your nanny,” he growls before walking inside. As the door closes, Isla gets a glimpse of the legendary King of Eredhal waiting to speak with her father.

As the door shut in her face, a new door appeared: one made of iron bars and a heavy lock that sealed her fate. Her hands shake as she grips the bars and looks out at the other cells where curious young women stare back. She recognized one of the girls who sat at the back of the cell directly across from her. The girl’s legs are fully extended out before her, and a small dragon, just a baby, sits beside her. Her fingers stroke the dragon’s back. A smirk pulls at the girl’s lips.

“Are you forgetting something, Princess?” she asks.

Isla felt a jolt run through her body. The vision of the girl petting her dragon shifted. The girl staring through the bars changed; it was no longer Teresa she saw, but herself clinging to the bars of her cell, shaking with uncertainty and fear. The memories above her spun, the colors drained and reignited. The emotions rearranged and became foreign to her body. Teresa’s blood had mixed with her own in the waters of the Stone Conclave. Her objective came back to the surface of her consciousness, and Isla fought to access a vault of memories that were not her own.