Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters #1)(82)

The bolder of the two spoke first. She had red and gold hair colored like no hair I’d seen before. It looked more like trails of crimson and gold flame than actual hair, and tumbled down just past her shoulders. Her bright golden eyes were piercing and accusatory. “You-you’re one of them! Don’t try to deny it! We heard them talking about you when they thought we were asleep. If you’re here to try to trick us, you can just forget it!” Her young voice was defiant, but held an obvious tremor.

The other girl, a pale contrast to the girl beside her, made a soothing noise. “Don’t get worked up, Nix. It wouldn’t be good for either of us. Whatever their latest trick is, we won’t let it affect us. Remember, we resolved not to let them feed off of our rage and terror any longer.” The girl spoke in a voice that could break any heart, the despair soft but prevalent, despite her bolstering speech. As she finished speaking, she raised watery eyes to mine. They were startling and lavender, and every bit as heartbreaking as her soft voice. Her hair was white and looked soft like feathers. It hung almost to her waist. Her skin was palest alabaster and, combined with her white hair, seemed to create a white glow in the darkness around her.

Both girls wore thin white slips that didn’t cover nearly enough. “How long have you two been held here?” I asked as my mind began, with dread, to connect the dots of their situation.

“Why would we tell one of you anything?” the one called Nix spit out.

“Well, if I was working with them, which I’m not, I would already know the answer to that. So you have nothing to lose by telling me,” I said reasonably.

“Long enough,” Nix said.

“Too long,” the pale one stated.

“Care to elaborate?” I raised a brow at them until they spoke again.

“Months,” the pale one said.

Nix followed with. “Weeks for me.”

I clenched my eyes shut, rubbing my throbbing temples. “So the red one is Nix. What’s your name, white one?”

“Leona,” the heart-achingly soft voice answered me.

“Well, Leona, Nix, to answer your statement, yes, I am one of them. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I hate them as much as you do-”

“Impossible.” Leona’s soft voice surprised me with it’s vehemence.

“And I’ll help you in any way that I can,” I continued. “Oh, and I have some help on it’s way.”

“You look terrible,” Nix said softly. “I doubt you could even help yourself.”

I couldn’t really argue with that. I felt like crap, too, dirty and bloody and weary to the bone. And oh yeah, like my skin was about to burst, my other form was so close to the surface. It was an alarming development, to say the least.

“What are you two? You’re obviously not related to each other, and of course you aren’t human.”

They looked at each other, trying to decide without speaking what to tell me.

I just stared at them, waiting. They shifted their eyes and feet nervously. I could tell I disconcerted them. “Do the dragons already know what you are? If so, it’s pointless not to tell me.”

“I”m a phoenix,” Nix stated tonelessly, shocking me speechless for a moment.

“I thought your kind were extinct,” I told her honestly.

She shrugged, obviously having heard that before. “If they manage to kill me, then as far as I know, we will be.”

I nodded at Leona. “And you?”

Her watery eyes were pointed at the ground. “Just think of the most useless creature in existence. I bet you can guess it.” It’s not an exaggeration to say that her despairing tone brought tears to my eyes. She was powerful at evoking emotions in others, that much was obvious.

I thought for a few moments, but came up blank. “You’re a necro, then?” I shot back.

She smiled, just the tiniest bit, and hope bloomed inside my chest. She seemed to have no idea that she cold affect emotions with her slightest move. “No. A unicorn.”

I whistled softly. “I knew unicorns weren’t extinct, but just barely. Do you know of any more of your kind?”

She shrugged. “My dead-beat dad’s still breathing somewhere in the world, but my mother’s human. I don’t know of any other relations.”

“What are these bastards up to?” I asked softly.

“Collecting pets is the only idea we’ve come up with,” Nix told me.

“They like to have things around to torture,” Leona added.

“Are you the only ones they’re holding?”

They both shook their heads. “We don’t think so. We’ve heard them talking about other captives. They tell us all the time that we’re their favorites. But we haven’t actually seen anyone except our captors, you, and each other.”

”Do they move you at all? Or have you been in this room for months?”

“Oh, they move us all the time,” Leona spoke. “We’ve traveled almost constantly since they captured me. I was in Florida when they grabbed me, walking home from school.”

“They took me in Ontario, Canada,” Nix added. “They snatched me out of my bed.”

“Have you heard them talk about the two women I had with me?”

They exchanged a wary glance. “They said something about a druid woman…. They said she was dead. They seemed to think it was funny how they’d killed her.”