Page 51 of Kiss of Smoke

It was like speaking to an empty void wearing a mask of Ioin’s face.

“Steve Harrison? What did you sick fucks do to him?”

Steve had tried to kill me with hemlock poison, and I still sort of regretted that Robin and Jack hadn’t let Gwyn tear him limb from limb right then and there.

But good ol’ Steve was suffering in other ways.

“I don’t think you’d recognize him now. Robin really likes to work on the hands and feet first. I’d bet he doesn’t have fingernails anymore…or even fingers, for that matter…”

Ioin snarled, shoving me against the wall and slamming the cold iron cage shut. The rough dirt of the wall scraped against my cheek, and I closed my eyes, feeling for anything now that I was away from the cold iron.

Distant roots clamored when they heard my call, but they were so far away…

Ioin grabbed me bodily, hauling me upright, and I lost that tenuous connection.

“See, this is why you need to be exterminated,” he told me, looping his fingers through the chain that bound my hands. “You’re demons on this earth. I knew that you had this sickness in you when we met. You just did a better job of hiding it than most.”

I blinked at him. “I don’t take joy in the pain of others…I’m just giving you a heads up on what’s going to happen to you when Robin gets here. If you were smart, you’d let me go and leave Avilion before that happens.”

Blessed Branches, it would pain me to let Ioin go…but if the Unstained Souls would just pack up and go, and we drew down the Veil so they could never get back in, I’d let my revenge go and forgive this.

But Ioin shook his head. “We’re not going until the Ghosthand is done with her work.”

He gave me a not-so-gentle nudge, forcing me down the tunnel.

Lamps lined the wall in regular intervals, and we passed several more cold iron cages, more than a few containing the dark, desiccated lumps of whoever had been unfortunate enough to fall in them.

I quickly understood that we were descending. The walls were no longer made of earth where I could call on my tree friends, but cold, hard stone that glittered with pale gray flecks under the lamplight.

And it wasn’t an easy journey. Ioin made a point of pushing me whenever he could, his knuckles somehow always managing to jab into the softest, most unprotected parts of me.

I’d just stumbled and taken a hit to my kidney when the tunnel began to widen. Ioin gripped the cold iron chain tighter, his breathing growing quick.

“I’m going to enjoy watching you die,” he whispered, digging the chain in so tightly I knew it would leave scars.

I didn’t want to go into that room. Even though I had total faith that my men were coming, I didn’t want to face what I knew was coming.

It was too painful to acknowledge. I’d kept hoping until the very last that I’d been wrong.

But Ioin pushed me forward inexorably, and I saw light ahead that wasn’t made by fire, and smelled the thick scent of many humans gathered here beneath the earth.

Digging in my heels didn’t help at all, and I didn’t want to be dragged in like a dog on a leash.

So I walked in with my head up, determined to go to what might be my death with my head held high.

18

The tunnel openedon a large chamber that was absolutely packed with mortals.

Fear crept up my spine with skeletal fingers as the hooded, masked humans parted, their eyes glittering in the ghostly light like pinpricks.

Ioin pushed me through, and they were all so closely packed that I brushed up against them as we walked.

There were dark mutters and the occasional scoff, their voices muffled. But the animosity was so intense that I felt it, like a miasma hanging over this place and suffocating me.

The chamber was large, with a high domed ceiling of rock. The Unstained Souls had taken it upon themselves to paint select lines from their manifesto with white paint, so the words swirled around the walls and ceiling.

I caught sight of the words “Suffer No Fae to Live” and my lungs seemed to shrivel in my chest.

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