A Kingdom of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales Book 3)(44)

“Of course. His officers get power, and he gets paid.”

I reached out and grabbed one of the bars. “I still can’t believe this goes on. That no one does anything about it!”

“How would anyone know?”

I widened my eyes and indicated everyone in the huge room.

“People who are willing to pay for the privilege of fucking a shifter are hardly going to tattle on the people who provide them their entertainment,” Micah said. “They wouldn’t want to get implicated in all this.”

I ran my lip through my teeth, power still pumping through and around me. My desire to do something violent ate at me.

“If you get me off this island, Finley…” Micah said in a low, rough voice. “If you can somehow get me home, I will personally make sure you have a dragon army at your back. As the goddess looks down, I will help you.”

I nodded slowly, watching the clusters of demons as they drifted past us. Watching the people in blue move among them, unhappy to do so. Watching Jedrek do the same, only with smug smiles and his infallible swagger. The injustice of it all choked me, bled away my reasoning until rage ate me from the inside out.

“You’re scaring away your suitors.” Micah chuckled darkly. “They aren’t amused by the way you’re enhancing that claiming scent.”

“Enhancing? What do you mean?”

He gave me another funny look before shaking his head and looking away. “It blows my mind how little you know about what you are.”

“You’re powerful. Why aren’t they worried about your scent?”

“Because mine isn’t a claiming scent blasting off a powerful female who doesn’t wish to be approached. Don’t get me wrong, they wouldn’t be eager to meet me without this cage, but a claiming scent is different. Quite a bit different. It warns them that your big, tough mate will kill them if they touch you…”

I’ve been thinking that, so…you’re welcome, my dragon thought.

Not my unconscious warning, then. My dragon’s.

Thank you, I thought, and then, Keep doing it.

“I don’t think you’ll get many bids,” Micah said, leaning on the bars near me. “Unless Dolion assures them that the smell will come off.”

“Which…it won’t.”

“Right. Maybe he’ll just say you’re off-limits because you’re his. That’ll make them interested. Still…he’d need to get that smell off to do anything with you.”

“And…he won’t.”

Micah laughed. “Let’s hope not, for your sake.”

“But not for yours,” I said, laughing.

“For mine too, I suppose, until we get out of here and I convince you that there are better alphas in the sea.”

My stomach fluttered, although I wasn’t sure why. I ignored it.

He pushed off the bars. “You’ve got company.”

A woman in a blue robe wandered near us before stopping and bending to her foot. She adjusted the strap on her sandal, then straightened up slowly, looking out at the sea of happy faces.

“You have the guests nervous,” the woman said, facing the crowd. I could just see her pointed ears peeking out of her soft brown hair. A faerie.

“It’s my dad jokes,” I told her, lounging against the bars like Micah was doing.

“You are from that forgotten kingdom, are you not?”

“You know of it?”

“Yes. Well…no. I know some who had claimed to be from there. They died of a sickness. A sort of plague. They said it was from a curse.”

The breath went out of me. “Yes. It was. Are there any left?”

“No. The dragons don’t have that sickness.”

“Correct. Kinda. The people of the castle and court weren’t afflicted with the sickness, and all the dragons were in the court.” I didn’t bother explaining the particulars of the curse. It likely wouldn’t mean anything to her anyway.

She turned and walked a little farther before bending to her sandal again. When she straightened, she looked up into my face.

“Calia has noticed you. She has heard that you have power in plenty. You are our hope. We will be in touch.”

“Who is…”

But the woman moved along, continuing her lap of the room before she disappeared back into the crowd.

“Calia is the faerie in the cage over there.” Micah glanced right and then away again.

The faerie with the indigo eyes was staring at me from across the ballroom, her gaze acute even from so far away.

“She had powerful magic once, I’ve heard,” Micah went on. “The suppression has locked it inside of her. She tried to escape after us but didn’t make it nearly as far. It was a fool’s errand.”

“Anyone else? Tried to escape, I mean?”

“One more attempt, that I know of. A few wolves. That was after they strengthened the bridge over the lava pit, I hear. They never came back.” Micah adjusted his stance. “I’ve heard that Calia thinks she can dissolve the suppression and then the magical locks, if she has enough power fed to her.”

“Fed to her?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what that means either. I heard through Vemar, and he wasn’t in his right mind when he got a moment to speak with her. Apparently an alpha shifter should have enough power to spare, but we’ve all been suppressed. Cut off from the majority of our strength.”