Resistance (14 page)

“So, summer would be the best time to do this?” I
ask, mostly to have something to say to get us back on track. After
all, it’s common sense that we wouldn’t infiltrate the Winter Court
and kidnap one of their princesses until they were at their
weakest.

Sean’s eyebrows are near his hairline when he asks,
“What are we doing?” I look to Flint and he nods at me to tell him
myself.

I swallow and tell him the truth. “We’re going to
kidnap a Winter princess.”

Chapter 10—Lumi

June 2101

There is nothing but soft crying and senseless
muttering in this part of the dungeon. It’s too dark to see who I’m
rooming beside, but the small cries sound like a young woman,
somewhere in her late thirties probably, and the older man is
mumbling about God only knows what — and I have a feeling that may
just be who he’s speaking with.

Without any windows or doors I don’t have the sun to
track how long I’ve been down here. Judging by the tight feeling in
my stomach and the flavor my mouth has manufactured from
dehydration, I am going to presume it’s been longer than a few
hours. However long it’s been, my tongue is sticking to the roof of
my mouth and the sweat created by fear and tension has made these
floozy garments and me rancid, I’m sure. What I would give for a
long, hot shower right now…

I’m sure Khan has been able to shower,
I think
bitterly with a shake of my head. I sigh quietly to myself and try
to continue daydreaming about food, but it’s too late now — my
brother’s lies and stupidly smug smirk have taken over the
forefront of my brain, and the urge to punch him in the jaw is
making my fingers twitch.

He found me sneaking out in the middle of the night.
What he was doing poking his stupid head in my room, I have no
idea, but while I had one foot out the window I heard the telltale
creak of the wood saying I had an unwanted visitor in my presence.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the sense to act nonchalant, and pretty
much threw myself back in the room; nearly cracking my face open on
the dark floor.

“Going somewhere?” he asked with a chuckle in his
voice.

Knowing exactly how my brother was about this sort of
thing, I simply shook my head at him and waved my hand. “Go on,
then,” I snapped. “Go run and tell Father.”

But he didn’t. He shook his head and came up in front
of me; reaching down and helping me to my feet. I should have known
something was wrong at that point, but my deep-rooted craving for
at least one of my family members to accept me in some way took
over, and I waited for an explanation.

He told me he wouldn’t tell our father he caught me
hanging out the window if I would just accompany him to a little
soirée he couldn’t be seen alone at. He didn’t elaborate more than
that, but only admitted Landric would not approve of our
appearances at the event. He used his perfect vocabulary and made
me believe he just wanted to hang out with his baby sister. I was
stupid and let my hopeful little heart believe and went out with
him, even when he told me I couldn’t possibly wear the ‘childish
garbage’ I usually did. He snuck into Astrid’s room and retrieved
one of her gothic-style outfits, insisted I wear it, and despite my
discomfort, I did. Astrid is older than me and younger than Khan by
about one and a half centuries on either side, and she quite
enjoyed rebelling against our parents in desperation for attention.
I have always wondered why her intent to embarrass them has never
received the same reactions as my inability to keep my mouth shut
did.

What the party was could have been called a sex
exchange, to put it mildly. The minute we entered the building I
was assaulted by the overwhelming smell of alcohol and sex, and I
nearly gagged on it. I turned to ask Khan what the hell he was
thinking, but he was already walking away; getting in the personal
space of a small redhead wearing a purple and black corset top and
a black skirt with purple ribbons keeping it tight to her toned
legs. She was fit, like she’d been working her whole life, and she
had a brand on her arm that screamed she was official property of
the Spring Court.

Hold up.

When I saw her arm I took a double take around the
cramped, sweaty room. Everyone in there was either branded or lower
class Fae, and I realized what this actually was. This was a group
of humans joining together and giving up; hiding away and trying to
have one semi-normal evening before they were maimed, killed, or
even worse by their superiors.

What could possibly have made Khan think I would
enjoy this? He knows how I feel about humans and their captivity,
he knows I think it’s unfair and horrible, and that the main reason
I get in trouble around home is because I am the one sneaking food
to the humans my father keeps. I am the one sneaking them out of
the house and trying to let them get to one of the rebellions no
one believes in but me. I am the one who wants the way they are
treated to change, and he brings me to a place to show me just how
horrible they feel?

Having decided I’d rather pluck each strand of hair
out of my head than continue on with the evening after mere minutes
of being in the room, I made my way to the wall and leaned against
it. Khan had made grand headway with the Spring girl by that point;
leaning over her skinny frame with her long, red hair wrapped
around his fingers and his other hand snaking up her skirt. I don’t
know if she was aware of Khan’s status in the Fae Courts or not,
and I couldn’t bring myself to care. She had to know he was Fae
and, after a few drinks and probably a little glamour, she ended up
with her legs wrapped around his hips and her corset pulled open
far enough to leave nothing to the imagination anyway. It was late
in the night and most of the people there were too hammered to
notice her throwing her breasts around in my brother’s face, but I
couldn’t stomach the sight any longer.

I shook my head, looked around the room and instead,
focused on other details. The music was loud, making the floor
shake and causing people to scream at each other to be heard.
Astrid’s skimpy, black bejeweled shorts and midriff-baring red
shirt got the attention of a deeply tanned young man with short
dark hair, and when he approached me through the crowd of other
half-naked individuals I stiffened involuntarily. He looked
harmless enough, but he reeked of alcohol and his eyes were hazy as
he loomed over me in a way that made me want to run away and hide.
Khan wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention and I didn’t have a
guard beside me as I normally did. I wasn’t used to being left
alone, and I really didn’t like feeling so exposed.

His full lips moved and I knew he was trying to talk
to me, but with the music blaring as loud as it was I couldn’t
understand a word that came out of his mouth. Knowing I was nearly
deaf with the music, the man reached out and rested his hand on my
waist; trying to pull me away from the wall and speak with his
hands. He stumbled though, and ended up sandwiching me between
himself and the smooth concrete. His mouth opened and he was
laughing, I’m sure, but I felt like I was going to throw up. I
tried pushing him away from me, but he didn’t seem to understand
and smirked down at me; his hand sliding from my waist to the bare
skin of my thigh as he fingered the too-high hem of my shorts.
Panic gripped my throat but before anything could happen, he froze.
His eyes grew wide and his brow furrowed, and slowly his mouth
opened and he looked as though he couldn’t breathe properly; giving
me a pleading look as though I could help him. I didn’t know what
was going on until he hacked and blood spilled from his lips,
dripping down his chin.

The music abruptly cut off when someone pulled the
plug and suddenly I could hear him; this horrid choking sound
coming from deep in his throat. His knees buckled out from under
him and he fell in front of me; landing in a heavy lump on the
floor with a blade hilt sticking out of his back. I was eye to eye
with one of my fathers’ guards, and one look down confirmed my
thoughts — he had that boy’s blood on his hands.

I couldn’t hold in the banshee scream that tore
itself from my throat.

Khan looked up when the music cut, and when he saw
the guards swarming in the building and one of them in front of me,
he took off in the other direction. I yelled for him, but it was
like he didn’t even remember me. The guard rolled his eyes and
extended a hand; wrapping it around my upper arm and yanking me
forward.

“You are in an obscene amount of trouble,” he hissed
in my ear just as a male voice cried out, “It’s the Fae!”

My plea for him to let me go was drowned out by the
hell that broke loose. People were plowing into each other and
trying to escape without being captured or returned to their
‘owners’. Khan was nowhere to be seen. The man holding me was
yanking me around like a rag doll, letting other humans ram into me
without a care in the world. He stopped one of the guards by the
door and said, “If they’re branded, bring them back and turn them
in to the other royalties under King Landric’s name. Do away with
the rest of them.”

“No!” I yelled, but they didn’t hear me.

“Should I keep the fit ones, sir?” he asked the
guard, who shook me for speaking. The man by the door was young and
human, obviously one of the few who were bred to kill and maim from
birth. There wasn’t even a spark of sympathy in his cold eyes, just
blind obedience.

The guard holding me smirked. “What do you think?” He
shook his head. “What else would I mean by ‘do away with’?”

My stomach flipped and I doubled over and puked with
the realization of what he was saying. These humans, all of them,
would be taken and branded; used for sex or work or whatever else
the highest bidder said was fit. Everything they had been running
from, the broken acceptance that caused them all to cluster
together and drink themselves into oblivion, had come bursting in
the door with the Winter prince and princess.

The man holding me dragged me out the door even as I
continued to heave and retch. He either didn’t hear me over the
commotion or simply didn’t care as he threw me forward against the
wagon they’d brought to collect me. I let out a sob when my gut
connected with the wooden panel, wanting nothing more than to run
away and never be seen by these people again. I might have
attempted that had I not been trapped in a pair of three-inch
wedges that were killing my feet. Humans were screaming and being
slowly escorted out of the buildings and into the back of the
second wagon, all to be crammed inside and carted back to the
mansion where I lived. One of them escaped the clutches of a guard
and took off running in the opposite direction, but no one
followed. A gunshot rang out against the previously quiet night,
and the running being fell to the ground. I snapped my head forward
too late, the image already burned behind my eyelids; making me
feel sick again.

While I tried not to pass out in shock, I was thrown
into the back of an escape-proof cart with iron cuffs hooked around
my wrists and ankles. The guards didn’t acknowledge the pained
sounds I made as the metal burned into me; they just slammed the
door and locked it from the outside. Within moments, the horses up
front jerked to life and we were headed to Hell.

I must have fallen asleep at some point in there,
because it felt like mere moments after the door closed I was being
drug back out. It was the young guard that time, and he led me past
the rolling box with my hands still bound. The sounds of sobs and
screams were harsh through the back vehicle and I felt my own eyes
fog up. Even though Khan told me to go, I still felt that whatever
happened to all those humans was entirely my fault.

Speaking of — where the hell
was
my
brother?

As I was towed into the foyer a dreadful sight
greeted me, answering my internal question bitterly soon. My father
was sitting in his chair and my mother was seated at his side with
her head in her hands. My sisters were nowhere to be seen, which
was not unusual, but Khan was standing opposite my mother, looking
down at me with disdain as he rubbed her shoulders comfortingly. I
felt my jaw drop and couldn’t seem to form words, let alone full
thoughts. Why isn’t he in trouble? I thought. Why hasn’t he been
walked into the room in iron shackles?

“Thank you, Murphy,” my father said to the man who
drug me in. “Please see to the rest of the humans, would you?”

Nodding silently the guard left the room, leaving me
alone under the stares of my family members. My father’s face was
stony as he stood and came to glare down at me.

“I see you were dressing inappropriately, as well,”
Khan said, but he closed his mouth when my father raised a hand in
a request for silence. Father looked down my body at the too-tight
shirt I was still wearing and the dangerously short shorts clinging
to my legs. My feet were blistered from the heels, and at that
moment I seriously considered kicking them off and chucking them
violently at Khan’s head. How dare he tell me I was dressed
inappropriately?
He
was the one who told me to wear
this!