Page 76 of Magic Betrayed

I’d lost count of the number of times it had happened—this made three just in the last couple of days—and honestly, I was starting to feel like a real-life soap opera cliché.

On this occasion, it seemed I was still wearing the same clothes I’d put on the previous morning. There was a pain in my leg, an ache on one side of my head, and a bad taste in my mouth, but at least I wasn’t left wondering who’d undressed me.

Priorities.

The room I was in was, of course, dark, except for a sliver of light coming in from under the door. But that sliver was basically at eye level, because I’d apparently been dumped onto a cold, bare floor.

A definite downgrade from my last couple of involuntary naps.

So how had I ended up here? And where, exactly, washere?

I rolled to my back, hoping it would help clear the fog, but it only served to notify me that my hands and feet had started to lose feeling from the bindings on my wrists and ankles. Though that could have been as much about temperature as blood supply. The room wasn’t exactly warm, and I’d been lying here, unmoving, for who knew how long.

A rather inconsiderate bunch of kidnappers, all things considered.

As I lay there flexing my fingers and toes in an effort to restore circulation, I reached through the fog for the last thing I remembered…

Walking. I’d been walking through the city, trying to pass the time and settle my nerves before… we were supposed to be rescuing Kes.

Raine.I heard my name. Saw a truck. A pair of boots.

Don’t you remember me?

The face flashed in my memory. Dark eyes, brown skin and floppy dark hair…

The rest of that memory slammed into me like a speeding train, carrying the weight of a thousand other moments I wished I could forget. All of my guilt and regrets and the burdens that plagued me when I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep.

But it also answered so many questions.

I knew, now, exactly where I was. I knew why Kes hadn’t wanted me to find her. And I knew who Ari had seen.

He sleeps a lot. Screams sometimes. And I heard him crying.

And I also knew that if I didn’t get out of here in time to warn the team that was probably even now on its way to rescue us… Someone was going to die. That might seem pessimistic, but to anyone else who’d shared my prison, it would not come as a surprise.

Elayara’s human experiments had succeeded only five times. There was Ari, Logan, and me, and one of the five died before we escaped.

And then there was Ethan.

I was the first success, and for a time after I somehow absorbed and retained fae magic, Elayara’s research focused on testing me. Training me. Trying to figure out what went right so it could be duplicated. My other powers came later. After Ethan.

He was a little younger than me, and by the time I met him, much of his mind—along with the ability to control his magic—was already gone. In an attempt to build herself the ultimate elemental warrior, Elayara had given him all four elements at once, and it had utterly destroyed him.

But it had also made him nearly unstoppable.

Even Elayara had no way of controlling him, so she kept him partially sedated at all times. It was Ethan who had provided a huge percentage of her stockpile of elemental artifacts—driven by the need to continuously siphon his magic to keep him stable.

When we escaped, leaving him behind was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. He hadn’t deserved this any more than we did, and his day-to-day existence was a living torment I could not even begin to imagine.

But in the end, trying to break him out would likely have gotten us caught, and afterwards, I had no idea how to keep him safe—let alone how to keep the world safefromhim. I’d been desperate and scared and so I’d just left him, and that decision haunted me. Probably always would.

My heart sped up for a moment as I heard light footsteps outside the room, pausing briefly on the other side of my door before continuing on. The sound of the steps suggested wooden floors, with an occasional creak and groan that further suggested age. More proof that my hypothesis was very likely correct.

Judging by the size and shape of the room, I was probably in one of the second-floor bedrooms. Maybe they hadn’t bothered to secure the window—if there was one. So if I could only get out of these manacles…

It was too dark to see, so I rotated my wrists in opposite directions as far as I could, until I could feel the shape and texture of my bonds… zip ties! This kidnapping was clearly the work of amateurs, which meant I still had a chance.

I rolled back to my side before wriggling onto my knees. After using my teeth to tighten the zip tie as much as possible, I raised my hands as high as I could, then pulled them down quickly, elbows flared, essentially punching myself in the stomach.

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