Page 25 of When Roses Burn

Briar’s eyes widened as Devnair’s mouth dropped. Hope bloomed in his eyes, and his fingers instinctively gripped the vine as he jerked forward a little. He must not have felt the thorns, as he didn’t let go or ease back.

“No,” Devnair breathed. “That’s not possible. The only way out of here is death.”

“What?” Briar gasped. “Your time here is a sentence. This is a prison. They let you go afterward.”

Both Devnair and I shot her disgusted looks. “You’re either a really good liar, an idiot, or incredibly naïve if you don’t know they never free anyone from this place. Every prisoner will die here,” the elf said.

“It’s the first option,” I assured him.

Briar shrank in on herself as she wrapped her arms around her middle and shook her head.

“How did you get free?” Devnair asked in a hoarse voice.

When I lifted the sorcerer, his feet dragged along the floor before rising to dangle in the air. He released a gurgling sound that made Briar retreat a step. Enjoying her discomfort, I shook him.

“How?” Devnair demanded.

“They’re the key,” I said with a jerk of my chin toward Briar. “It’s time to go now, mea eveto.”

Her breath sucked in as I called her the endearment I’d whispered to her so many years ago. The one I’d called her often afterward, but then it had been with love; now, it was with disdain.

I’d once lovingly called her little rose as I’d believed she was the rose amongst the thorns of her kind, but she’d told me she hated roses because of her mother. I now understood why she loathed the flower so much… or maybe she’d lied about that too.

The endearment must have sealed my identity in her mind as she breathed, “Seth.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Knox

Her bloodstained fingers stretched toward me before pausing in the air. They hovered between us, not bridging the gap, and I made no move to take them. Her arm fell limply back to her side as confusion marred her features.

“Seth?”

When I didn’t respond to the question in her voice, her gaze traveled from me to Devnair, and then to the caster stuck to my claws. Finally, she looked at Devnair again.

“I can’t get him free,” she said.

“No, you can’t,” I told her.

“We can’t… we can’t leave him here.”

“Why not? Are you that eager to fuck him?”

She recoiled again, but fire was replacing the shock in her eyes as color flooded her face once more. “How do I get the vines undone?” she demanded.

“You leave the room,” I told her.

“And then you can free him?”

“No. Only the casters can open the doors from the inside, so I’m not stepping inside that room without you in it.”

She bit her bottom lip as she studied the room and tapped her foot. When her gaze settled on one of the open doorways within the room, she gawked at the whips, chains, ball gags, swing, and assorted other sex toys lining the shelves within.

I didn’t have to see into the room to know that’s exactly what she was seeing. My prison was nearly identical to this one, except my comforter was green. I’d never been inside any of the other rooms either and would never step into them, but I’d seen through the doors’ windows on the occasions we were taken out and paraded around, and I’d noted they only varied by color.

“Then how… how do we get him free?” she asked.

My teeth ground together as I glowered at her. It irritated me that she was so concerned with freeing the elf, and it pissed me off more that it bothered me.