Mid-air, I grab Dice’s ankle as rocky spikes come into view, glistening like they’re lined with toxins, and I dematerialize us.
The second our molecules spread, and I start to feel the grip of the next plane within reach, we’re suddenly slammed hard into something. It feels like there’s a forty-million-ton iron ship behind me.
Dazed, I stagger, looking around as the bars around me block me from going anywhere. Dice drops to the ground on the other side of the bars.
Cells? Are we in cells?
Still half dizzy and disoriented, I hear Dice groan as I look around, my vision trying to dim as I t
ake in the cave-like dwellings. The stone is carved out with little nooks for books, and dinnerware, and glasses. Little sparkly trinkets decorate the room, giving it a teenage girl vibe.
Other than the five random cages on this side of the cave, it looks like we’re in someone’s home. Underground. Which is really freaking creepy.
Roots are growing through the cave top, and little flames float and glow like they’re on the end of an invisible candle, illuminating everything around us.
I stumble to my knees, unable to stand any longer, and Dice curses as he uselessly yanks on the bars. Can’t he feel their power? Is it not draining him the way it is me?
“I hate to say I told you so,” he groans. “But…”
His words trail off into a distant echo as my gaze swims, I blink rapidly as a silhouette appears, my vision too blurry to make any more than that out. It sounds like two voices are yelling through fifteen walls—loud in volume.
That gnawing presence of being watched weighs on me as I slowly come back to my senses, the disorientation draining from me as abruptly as it began. And the grating voice of Dice’s yelled words finally becomes abundantly all too clear.
“She’s Alyssa’s fucking daughter! Do you have any idea how bad this would be for the lot of you?!”
My vision completely clears, and before me stands not one person, but three. Two women and one man.
I immediately reach for my phone, only to find it missing. How did it get lost? They haven’t searched me or confiscated it.
“The queen’s daughter?” the man asks, his eyes brightening as they settle on me with far too much intrigue.
Dice, you stupid idiot!
Dice immediately makes a sound that pretty much echoes that sentiment.
“Please tell me one of these women isn’t Polly,” I say quietly to Dice.
The guy watching me removes his arm from one of the women, using his free hand to stroke his jaw thoughtfully as his eyes flake with familiar colors.
Another incubus.
“At this moment,” Dice grinds out, “I wish it was Polly.”
Then this really can’t be good.
“I’m sure you understand we’re on a quest for the queen and king. You can’t really keep us locked up in here. Surely you know there would be severe—”
“Completely fatal,” Dice interrupts.
“—ramifications for such treasonous actions,” I go on, pretending as though I wasn’t interrupted.
“Hellfire will rain down on you like you never before imagined, Jeremiah,” Dice adds.
Jeremiah does not sound like a name I’ve been forced to remember as an important one. And he’s an incubus. Which makes him as harmless as Dice.
I can handle—
A wave of seduction blasts me with more force than I’ve ever experienced—well, unnaturally, that is. Slade has certainly made my head fog up and my mind short circuit with just his presence.