Page 179 of Ignite
Silence bears down on me, weighing on my shoulders and leaving me wondering what the hell just happened. I don’t bother getting up, my limbs too shaky to even attempt to stand.
“Who’s there?” I ask, staving off the trembling in my voice enough to bite out those two words.
A deep sigh follows my question. Movement catches my eye.
Out of the darkness emerges a figure, tall and broad. Familiar.
His eyes are different this time, the sconce lighting them up enough for me to see. Navy-blue irises peer at me, the scars across his face somehow seeming less harsh now.
“Daimon,” I breathe.
He tips his head toward me. “Daughter.”
Seventy-Four
Black Onyx
With all thestrength I can muster, I clamber to my feet to face him.
He looks less like the Lord of Shadows and more like any other fae, but I know better than to blindly believe what I see. Reichardt taught me that.
“I forget how dark it can be down here.” The voice I haven’t heard since our second meeting causes my spine to straighten.
A blinding light bursts across my vision, so bright that it causes my ears to ring.
My eyes slowly adjust to a soft white glow illuminating the room from seemingly nowhere.
For the first time, I take in my surroundings. The room is long, filled with empty cells. They’re all small, nothing but a blanket on the ground and a sack of hay to lay one’s head down on. Just like mine. My jaw clenches as I take it in, wonderinghow many innocent souls Daimon has trapped down here over the centuries.
But there’s something different about my cell. Glittering black bars surround me, unlike the steel-coated ones encasing the others. Mine shimmer against the light like onyx stone scintillating in the moonlight.
“You’ll find the prison you know is far less terrifying than the prison you don’t,” Daimon muses.
His words draw my attention back to him—to my father. Mycaptor.
“You’re the one keeping me prisoner?” I snap, rage filling my body.
This whole time, I could only speculate where I was. Until Graylen came to see me, I hadn’t seen anyone else. But knowing he’s here—that must mean I’m in the Shadow Realm, not the Vale.
Part of me had wondered if he was on my side, but that curiosity slowly begins to die out. He’s been here thewhole timeand is just now coming down here.
I’ve woken up with scraps of food waiting just outside of the cage, yet have never seen anyone come or go. He’s practically let me starve in here—me, his own daughter.
With the remaining strength in my body, I lunge for the shimmering black bars. My fingers curl around them as I ram forward, teeth bared, a snarl ripping from my throat.
“Not the father you were hoping I would be?” Daimon huffs a laugh and takes a step closer, stilljustout of reach if I were to stretch my arms out. “My first lesson to you: hope makes you weak.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I snap. “Unless it involves helping me get the people I care about back and letting me go.”
Ellerry’s face flashes into my mind, her free-spirited smile stretched wide as she jumps through the Mother Tree. Then Annora’s face, soft and serene as she helps me learn how todreamwalk. And the countless others trapped after our failed trial.
“You brought us to this wretched place. What has Vidaris done to Graylen?” I demand. As much as I know my pleas will go unanswered, I have to try. “Let him go.”
He smiles sadly, an expression that almost looks genuine. But I don’t have enough hope in me to trust for a moment that there’s anything good within him.
“Don’t waste your breath on him,” Daimon mutters.
“You don’t understand—you’ve never loved someone,” I growl. “You’ve never watched the person you love be ripped away from you—watched them turn into someone else.”
