They stared at me as intensely as I studied them, but inspection was all I saw in their eyes. There wasn’t even a flash of emotion. I was a stranger to them.
How long had I been in this prison, living this nightmare?
The last time I’d seen them, they’d been wild with fury. They’d screamed accusations in my face. If anyone had told me my friends could blame and wound me the way they did, I’d have laughed.
Don’t flinch. Don’t flinch.
I could almost feel Flynn’s hands on my arms as he shook me, begging me to tell him why, why had I hurt him? Why had I driven his father mad?
How could I have been so cruel?
And I couldn’t even tell him. I didn’t know. When the song came over me, the impulse to lament couldn’t be denied. I lost all sense of who I was or where I was. There was no time and no friendship. No love or hate. There was only the keening wild wail of a banshee, announcing an inescapable ending.
Unable to stare for one more second at the cold forms of the people who should have known me better, I went back to studying my hands.
“Here.” Killian’s deep voice startled me as he thrust a handkerchief under my nose. When I didn’t take it, he dropped it in my lap. “You’re a mess, Imogen.”
“Now that you’ve seen the banshee, is there anything else I can help you with?” the warden asked.
“No.” Ronan spoke this time. His soft, raspy voice filled the room. “We’ve seen all we need to.”
The door opened behind me, and a guard suddenly hefted me to my feet. I let the handkerchief fall to the ground.
Of course, I was a mess. Thanks to what the princes had done to me.
I made sure to step on the fabric embroidered with the royal seal as I left. I didn’t want anything from them.
Flynn
Guilt.
It was a damn near foreign emotion.
I was practically an eternal being. A prince. Because of my enhanced abilities, many viewed me as a god.
Guilt was not a part of my vocabulary. At least, it hadn’t been until I’d watched my childhood friend writhe in pain before me.
Imogen. Genny.
Just the thought of her stirred up too many emotions. Anger. Betrayal. Hatred. Loss. But I hadn’t been expecting the guilt. That was new.
Was it possible I’d been wrong about her? That I’d been responsible for putting an innocent woman in that hellish prison, where she was treated no better than a rabid dog?
My stomach twisted.
No, it couldn’t be possible. That barbaric collar didn’t prove anything. She’d driven my father—the king—insane with her wail. I’d seen it with my own eyes.
My mind returned to that night, like it had so many times over the last year. The guards posted outside the king’s bedroom claimed he’d been screaming at someone to stop singing. But when Ronan had checked on him, no one was there. No one but Father, who, in a fit of madness, used an enchanted dagger—a dagger from which no wound healed—to take his life. His life should have continued for thousands of years.
The kicker?
The dagger had belonged to Imogen. Ronan had given it to her centuries earlier as a way to protect herself. She’d sworn she would never use it, and I’d taken her at her word. Even before Ronan revealed the dagger’s owner, accusations started flying. But there was one that stood out above the rest—that this had to be the act of a banshee.
It didn’t matter that, for centuries, banshees had served an important purpose. Fair Folk had relied on the creatures to prepare us for loss. Because of their laments, we were ready to surround and support whoever had suffered the loss.
Of course, that was long ago. For the entirety of my lifetime, banshees were isolated and pushed to the fringes of society. No one wanted to hear bad news, and as the bearers, banshees became unwelcome Folk in Tuatha.
So, when the king heard a wail, it was easy to blame Imogen. Ignorance of the banshee bred hate, and my father’s advisors and other court hangers-on thought they’d found the perfect villain.
Before Killian and Ronan could stop me, I’d escaped the palace to find Genny. She was innocent, and I had been determined to prove it.
I released a ragged breath.
I’d found her all right, but she hadn’t been innocent. She’d been lying on the ground, her usually emerald eyes as red as the devil’s. And then she’d...smiled. Like she was happy to see me. Like she’d kept her promise and would never do another soul any harm.
“Flynn.”
At the sound of Killian’s voice, I lifted my head, only now realizing the SUV had stopped. We weren’t accustomed to driving, but arriving at the prison gates by something other than portals had seemed like the smartest move. From what we’d heard, the warden could get rather twitchy when visitors demonstrated their magical abilities.
Now, we were parked on the side of the road, and both of my brothers were watching me. Had they been talking, and I’d failed to notice? The scenario seemed likely.
“What if we were wrong about her?”
They weren’t the words I’d intended to speak, but they were the ones that spilled out. And it didn’t really matter. They needed to be said.
Ronan grunted, a sure sign that he wasn’t interested in even discussing the possibility.
But Killian appeared decidedly uncertain, which was surprising in and of itself. Killian may struggle internally with doubt, but he rarely let it show.
He narrowed his eyes on me. “You mean, what if you were wrong?”
Guilt pricked at me again, Killian’s arrow hitting its intended target. No one knew how to get to me like my oldest brother.
“I might have been the one to find Imogen, but all three of us played judge, jury, and executioner. Either we were all right, or we were all wrong.”
Fatigue crossed his features, reminding me of why we were here in the first place. “I know,” he said with a sigh, “and none of that matters now. All that matters is finding out the truth.”
And saving you, I added silently.
Imogen
After my warm reunion with the princes, I was dragged back through the halls of NP to my cell. The guard, one of a dozen who rotated through my wing, was quick to deposit me and lock me back up. He didn’t make eye contact and he didn’t utter a word to me, for which I was grateful.
During my entry-processing into the prison, I’d seen how cruel the guards could be. It was ironic they decided to put this collar around my throat, because that experience had already made me promise myself I’d keep my mouth shut.
My room was bare and exposed, but as far as I could tell, it was different than other prisoners’ rooms in one important way. It was soundproof. Rather than bars, my door was made of thick metal. A small slot in the center of the door slid open when I was given a meal, and there was a plexiglass window far above my head. The guards could look in, but the only way I could see out was if I dragged my bed to it. And since the thing was bolted to the ground, that was impossible.
It was also enchanted.
I’d spent my life around magic. I lived and breathed it, and it had a scent. The good kind, the kind that permeated home in Tuatha, was lavender or freshly turned earth. It smelled like dew in the mornings and the leaves that fell off the ancient oak trees in the fall.