Feros seemed to get somewhat

  of clue after the second time his head was removed from his body and

  didn’t directly approach Ana. Instead, he skulked in the shadows

  looking at her with pathetic glances. It seemed strangely counter

  productive for him to spend so much time irritating someone he

  claimed to still love and want to try again with. It was apparent to

  me that she had no hope of ever processing and working through the

  past when he gave her no space to do so and insisted on hanging

  around the training areas like a bad smell. It was starting to

  irritate me as well, not only was he being extremely pathetic, like a

  kicked dog who just wanted to be in good graces again, but it was

  making me wonder how he could possibly be keeping up with his own

  training with Alice.

  “How is Alice?” I asked,

  not looking up to him in the balcony above the training room. Ana and

  I had just finished an exhausting session and I wanted nothing but to

  go soak my aching muscles in a hot bath, but there were few times

  where he lingered long enough after Ana left to speak to him in

  private. “I assume her training is going well?”

  “As well as to be expected,”

  he replied.

  I let the silence sit and

  mature to see if he would provide any additional information, but the

  fiend didn’t offer any.

  “It feels to me like you

  might have taken a bit of a break on working with her, am I

  mistaken?”

  “A break? No, I wouldn’t

  call it that.”

  “Then what would you call

  it?”

  “A necessary time for her

  adjustment to the demon realm. The magic is very different from

  what’s she’s acclimatized to, she’s finding the transition

  difficult, something like your princess friend only less pathetic,”

  he explained.

  I tilted my head to the side

  slightly in thought, then raised my gaze to the general area I sensed

  he was sitting back in the shadows. We both knew that while Alice was

  wildly untrained that her sheer magical talent should have been more

  than sufficient to keep the worse of the magic sickness at bay. In

  fact, I would have staked part of my royal claim on her being able to

  experience no sickness at all even though it was her first venture

  here. She had seemed completely fine when had first arrived, so

  either he was deflecting, outright lying, or withholding some part of

  the truth. All of the options set my blood to boiling.

  “I want to see her,” I

  demanded, “take me to her.”

  There was a long pause where

  it felt like he was trying to come up with some reason I could not

  see her. The hesitation verified that there was something he was

  keeping from me.

  “It wasn’t a request,” I

  added.

  “You’ll need to speak with

  Rafe for that,” he said, voice not quite as jovial as his typical

  self.

  “Why would I need to do

  that? She’s under my guidance.”

  “We are here as refugees.”

  He finally had the decency to step into the light and look down at me

  from the balcony. His new shell looked identical at first glance, but

  there was something eerily different about him that I couldn’t

  quite place yet. “If Rafe asks me to jump I have to request to know

  how high. He wanted me to restrict access to the girl, no matter who

  asks.”

  I rolled my eyes and made a

  dismissing motion towards with with my hand. “You are being

  ridiculous, you know that such an order would not stand for myself as

  well. While I am a guest, I am a guest monarch, you are being

  restrictive for some other reason and I already hate that you sneak

  around like a rat trying to get into the pantry all the time, now is

  not the time to keep up all this subterfuge and deflection.”

  Again he went silent, his body

  so still that I wasn’t sure if he was even still breathing. “I

  ask this one time you accept that I have a handle on things well

  enough to not have your oversight.”

  “It seems you have forgotten

  the last time I gave you that leeway. It cost me my kingdom and now

  you’re asking me for more, that’s a very bold and stupid move. I

  perhaps don’t threaten you as much as I should, but I’m sure Rafe

  would side with me and could conjure up something that would be

  sufficiently terrible as punishment. In fact, I think he may be

  delighted to help me figure something out, he’s still absolutely

  furious that your judgment brought down his human allies.”

  The fiend nodded once, lips in

  a tight line. “It cannot be avoided then.” There was dread in his

  voice that sent a shiver down my spine. “Before I take you to her,

  I must ask that you let me explain before you make any rash

  decisions.”

  “It is that bad?” I asked

  with a groan. “I will take it into consideration, but I will make

  no promises.”

  Feros leapt over the railing

  to the balcony and dropped silently down to the ground next to me,

  his boots hardly making any sound as they made contact with the

  stone. He gave me an intense look and let out a sigh, before turning

  towards the door and motioning for me to follow. My forehead wrinkled

  into a worried frown as he led me through the castle and past all of

  the normal bedrooms to the entrance to the dungeon.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  As a general rule, Evonia and

  then myself, had never really utilized the dungeon rooms for much,

  but I knew they were filled with various restraints and torture

  devices in this realm. Evonia and I had really sunk a lot of effort

  into making people too afraid to interfere with us so the need for

  such things was generally kept to a minimum, but demons seemed to

  revel in the idea that they may get to throw someone in a dank, dark

  room chained up for an indefinite amount of time. I really did not

  like the idea that whatever was happening Feros had decided that such

  a place was the best place for her, either he was being exceptionally

  cruel to what still was a little girl or things had spiraled out of

  control even further than they already had.

  “Here,” he said in a

  defeated tone.

  The door looked unassuming and

  my sense of what I remembered about the dungeons placed it somewhere

  on the lower level opposite where the ritual room was located.

  “Please remember to at least

  try to let me explain before you do anything rash.”

  Before I could answer, Feros

  flared his power, expanding it to form a perfect seal around the

  door, then tugged the handle, causing a cascade of blindly verdant

  magic to rush out through the cracks. He quickly wrapped his own

  magic around it and pushed it back through the doorway so he could

  open the door wider and allow us entrance. He only opened the door

  just enough for me to slip through, then he motioned for me to come

  around the side of him and enter the chamber. I complied and shivered

  as my own aura struggled to keep the wild fae magic at bay.

  “Miss Toria,” Alice

  gasped, jumping up from the makeshift pile of blankets and pillows on

  the floor.

  The room had quite obviously

  been used as some sort of interrogation room with shackles dangling

  from the walls and suspicious stains coating every surface. There was

  the girl’s makeshift bed and a few candles in the room, but little

  else. Feros entered the room quickly behind me and snapped the door

  closed with a sigh of relief.

  “Why is she down here?” I

  demanded to know.

  “I can’t keep my magic in

  anymore,” Alice said sadly, she looked to the ground and dug at a

  strange purple stain on the stone with the toe of her shoe.

  “I can see that,” I said,

  feeling the wild magic swirling and seeking a way out of the room.

  “My question is really more for your trainer, he is the one in

  charge of you.”

  “I think they put a fail

  safe in her,” he said with a long sigh, “I have never heard of

  such a thing before, but I can’t think of any other reason.”

  “A fail safe?” I inquired.

  “Perhaps when fae are close

  enough her magic becomes unmanageable and they would be sure to be

  able to track it.”

  “Close enough?” I asked

  with alarm. I turned to face him directly, an intensely serious

  expression on my face.

  “It’s all just

  conjecture,” he said, putting his hands up like I might strike him.

  “I don’t know that is the case so there’s no need for alarm

  just yet. Perhaps the fault lies in the skills of the girl and she is

  just too weak in this realm to keep it contained, we don’t know and

  I don’t know enough to pinpoint just yet.”

  “You wouldn’t have even

  suggested the first idea if you were at least some level of certain

  that was the case.”

  He gave me a pained, but

  amused look. “You are too clever my queen, but I assure you if I

  thought there was real, imminent threat I would have sounded the

  alarm and not risk the wrath of the Draks. Like you have already

  mentioned, they do in fact know exactly how to make my life miserable

  and painful so I would like to avoid that at all costs.”

  “How are you doing, Alice?”

  I asked, changing the subject briefly so I could ruminate on how

  exactly I was going to approach this situation. “It doesn’t seem

  like there’s much for you to do here.”

  “It’s boring,” Alice

  said, looking around the mostly empty room. “I can play with my

  magic here at least, but there’s not much else.”

  “It seems that Feros here

  has forgotten that you are still a little girl, albeit a magical one,

  and not a prisoner awaiting sentencing.” I turned my gaze back to

  Feros. “She should at least have a real bed and a desk, preferably

  some books or something else for her to do as well. You are away

  enough for me to know you are not constantly training her at the

  moment.”

  “It is a struggle to get in

  and out of the door with even just two people,” he explained,

  “carrying all that stuff with multiple people would be a

  nightmare.”

  “Then I guess you’ll just

  have to do it all yourself.”

  He gave me a tired, pained

  look but I stared back at him intently until he gave me a nod of

  compliance.

  “Good,” I said and stepped

  forward to place a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “I need you to try

  to work very hard on getting your magic back under control, okay?”

  The little girl looked up at

  me with her wide, blue eyes and nodded very seriously. “Of course

  Miss Toria, I’ve been trying, it just won’t go back in.”

  “I

  understand, but you have to keep trying. You can’t leave this room

  to explore the rest of all this new magical land until you do.”

  “I know!” she exclaimed in

  distress. “I want to go see and feel all of it, it’s not fair.”

  “Soon enough we’ll get you

  out meeting all the demons and feeling their magic,” Feros said,

  picking up on what I was trying to do. “This is a good test of your

  control, if you can manage this then you’ll be able to be around

  all sorts of different magic safely. So try very hard and I will

  return later with some furniture and your possessions.”

  “Yes, of course!” she said

  and clasped her hands excitedly at her sides. “I am going to try

  right now!”

  As soon as she closed her eyes

  and scrunched her face up with effort I could feel the magic in the

  room pull towards her, but there was just so much of it. There was a

  barely perceptible difference, but I was impressed that there was a

  difference at all.

  “Good girl,” I encouraged,

  then followed Feros carefully out of the room. As soon as the door

  closed I snapped my attention to him with an angry grimace on my

  face. “You are an idiot.”

  “I won’t argue this time.”

  “This is reckless and

  dangerous.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “All this drama with Ana is

  to distract from this isn’t it?”

  “Guilty as charged.”