A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(41)

“Got a better idea?”

“No. But if the original Ferals can’t tell if we’re good or bad, why are they going to trust the woman we bring back? They’ll probably toss her in the prisons right along with us.”

“That’s assuming she’ll help us.”

“That’s assuming we can find her.” Lepard ran a hand through his hair. “This mission has failure written all over it.”

“You’re welcome to leave at any time.”

Lepard turned away, staring out the window. “Let’s go find this witch.”

Yeah, they’d find her. And she’d tell Grizz his soul was black as tar. But he already knew that. It wasn’t himself he was determined to save.

It was Rikkert.

Fox’s pulse pounded in his ears as he stared at the impossible sight. As cleanly and suddenly as they’d walked into the labyrinth, they’d left it again. But not for the woods. He didn’t know where in the hell they were.

Shops lined the street in both directions, pedestrians scurrying through the light rain over the wet cobblestones, covered in worn peasants’ cloaks and hats from centuries past. A man driving an oxen cart yelled at them as he neared. Fox yanked Melisande back out of the way, the cart splashing them both with dirty rainwater.

Melisande turned to him with eyes as wide as saucers. “Have we actually time-traveled?”

“I’ve no bloody idea.” But it smelled like it—the fish and rotting meat, the excrement, the unwashed human bodies interspersed with the tang of sea air and the sweet scent of the flower seller’s bundles of blooms. Dublin in the early eighteenth century had smelled just like this.

“We’re not in the past,” Melisande said, as if suddenly certain.

“How can you be sure?” He noted the place where they’d first arrived, the middle of the street in front of a shop with the sign Cobbler swinging from twin chains.

“Because if we’d simply time-traveled, I would be able to mist again or communicate with my sisters in this time. And I can do neither.”

He turned his attention back to her, something he constantly fought, and resisted the urge to let go of her hand and stroke that long, gleaming braid. Goddess, he longed to touch more than just her hand, but he wasn’t willing to risk letting go of her just yet.

“You were injured,” he reminded her.

“I was. I’m not any more. The warding has me locked down just as it has ever since we first hit it.”

“If we’re not in the past, then none of this is real.” His gaze darted again, his senses taking in everything—the people walking the streets eyeing them with curiosity, the clank of rigging on the harbor nearby, the utter lack of birds, even seagulls.

“My thought exactly.”

The hint of impudence in her tone had him turning back in time to see a twinkle of mischief in her eyes as she lifted one blond brow. He stared at her, struck by the incongruence of Melisande with a twinkle in her eye. Goddess, he wanted to kiss her.

“But obviously some of it’s real,” she continued. “Like the water. The splash from that puddle soaked through my clothes.” Taking a step away from him, she tugged on his hand, apparently no more eager to let go of him than he was her. Which pleased him more than it probably should.

He was about to ask her where she was going when she released him to quite intentionally bump into one of the street sellers.

The woman turned with a frown, then, sizing them up, began to smile with a mouth missing half its teeth. “Fresh fish?”

“No, thank you,” he replied, then ushered Melisande past her.

Melisande whirled on him, that twinkle of mischief giving way to a gleam of laughter, and it was all he could do not to grin, or haul her into his arms. Goddess she was a beauty when she wasn’t glaring at him with kill-you-in-your-sleep eyes. Well, she was a beauty either way, but he rather preferred the laughter.

“She felt real enough.” The laughter in those sapphire eyes died abruptly on a gasp of horror. “I know what this is.” She stopped beside a broken wheel leaning against the brick and turned to face him, her color turning ashen. “It’s what used to be called a temporal cage.”

“Which is . . . ?” He didn’t like the sound of that, not at all.

“A temporal cage is essentially a Daemon mind game. In ancient times, when the Daemons still roamed the earth freely, they would create worlds with horrific creatures—things not seen in real life—then send their human captives into them to suffer, to die, while they watched . . . and fed.”

“This place doesn’t seem so bad.” He swallowed. Yet. “There has to be a way out.”

“I’m sure there is, but few ever escape the cages.” Pulling her hand from his, she crossed her arms. “We have to find the key.”

“What kind of key?”

“I don’t know. It could be anything—animal, mineral, or vegetable. Perhaps something that doesn’t look right, like a flower blooming out of season, or a rock with an odd glow.” She met his gaze, her own ripe with dread. “We have to find the key and destroy it before this world destroys us . . . as it was almost certainly designed to do.”

Chapter Ten

Fox didn’t like the way the inhabitants of this strange seaport were beginning to eye them. Not as potential customers but as a potential threat. He liked even less Melisande’s suspicion that they were in a Daemon temporal cage. Unfortunately, he believed her. Too many things over the past months pointed to the likelihood that Inir had acquired Daemon magic. It made perfect sense that he’d use the strongest of it to guard his stronghold.