Very rarely did anything captivate my attention, but she had. I had been watching her from the back of the room, quietly, my pulse and body functions slowed to mask my presence from her enhanced senses.
Had this been any other day, any other wrongdoer, I may have intervened when those two idiots brought her into an interrogation room without properly subduing her first. But I could sense the fight in her, I could feel her instincts. They were as raw and as primal as my own.
I had wanted to see what she was capable of.
I was not disappointed. Had she been given a chance she may have killed them both. I had to admit, I had considered letting her. Howes and Brickmore deserved it for being as incompetent as they were hungry for the rush of power and authority.
Letting them die would not have looked favorably on me, however, so I intervened. And there she was. A warrior, a gladiator, a fiend. I had only ever heard of such creatures, of their innate brutality, of their savagery.
In their world, they were once outcasts. Now they were lords of entire kingdoms; kingdoms built upon the bones and blood of their enemies. Passage through the rift stripped them of their claims to royalty, but it could not strip them of the thing that made them such formidable fighters and conquerors.
This one, however; this one was different. Her skin wasn’t grey and covered in red scars, her teeth—though sharp—weren’t the monstrous tusks I had been expecting to encounter. She was… sublime. Strong, swift, and strangely sensual, with a body I couldn’t keep my eyes off.
I shut my eyes and drew in a deep breath through my nose, plucking her scent out of the air. Though she was covered in the blood of a man I once knew, I could push past it to uncover the sweet aroma of her flesh lingering beneath it. I was drawn to it, inexplicably, inexorably.
And that was why she was dangerous.
I had spent years hammering my discipline into shape with the sheer strength of my own willpower. Why? Because among the masses of the world I was one of the few who understood, in order to succeed, emotions had to be suppressed and locked away. Emotions were a weakness, a vulnerability; and those who allowed themselves to be vulnerable opened the door to ruin.
Some might call me hollow, and maybe that was true. And maybe it was also true that in that vast hollowness, her amber eyes burned like distant stars freshly winked into existence.
Maybe.
Maybe that was true.
But it didn’t matter. As intriguing as she may have been, the danger she posed could not be overstated. I could not risk succumbing to ruin. There was too much at stake. She would prove useful in the coming weeks, yes, but when she had outgrown that usefulness, I would have to snuff her starry eyes out like candles in the night.
Because she was one of them.
She was an Outsider.
She was the enemy.
CHAPTER THREE
The guard marched me down the corridor and through three gated checkpoints before shoving me into a big holding cell. There was nobody else in there but me, but the stench of sweat and fear lingered in the musky air all the same. A large mirror spanned the entire length of one wall, but the others were bare.
There, I saw myself for what felt like the first time in my entire life.
The giant wings pinned against my back were the first thing I noticed. They were black, leathery, with sharp spines jutting out of the joints and scales covering some of the harder, more rigid parts. I hadn’t seen them properly in the interrogation room, but I saw them now, and damn if they didn’t make me look tiny in comparison.
But I wasn’t tiny. Sure, the guards I’d come across probably thought I was weak as shit compared to them, but my muscles were toned, and my reflexes were sharp. Long, black hair fell around my face and down my back, streaks of red running through it like huge claw-marks—or blood. Real blood? No, too bright. Definitely highlights.
It was my eyes that drew me closer to the mirror. They burned with amber light, glowing from the inside out as if little fires lived in them. The light from my eyes touched my high cheekbones, my nose, even the tips of my full lips. The harder I looked, the more I realized the light really was shifting and swirling, doing a mesmerizing dance.
A loud buzzer split the silence in half, making me jump. The door opened with a loud clunk, but it wasn’t the same man who had come back for me. This time it was a woman. She wore the same black uniform all the others did and kept her hair in a neat, tight ponytail… and just like all the others, she scowled when she saw me.
It was as if the very sight of me set something off in her; something like disgust. That was fine. I felt the same thing. It bubbled up inside of me like bile, only it stuck to the back of my chest instead of my throat.
“Let’s go,” she barked, her voice stern and sharp.
I walked toward her, then moved through the door out of the holding cell and into the corridor, where she shoved me and told me to keep going. The nametag on her uniform read Sanchez. I burned it into my mind, just like Jensen, just like Howes, just like Brickmore.
“What’s the hole?” I asked. “That’s where you’re taking me, right?”
“Shut up, inmate,” Sanchez snapped. “If I want you to talk, I’ll say so. Until then, assume I don’t.”
The guard led me into another large room, only this one was pastel yellow, with a slightly dipped floor, a lot of pipes running along the walls, and a small, square drain in the middle. Sanchez turned me around and stared at me intently.
“You listen to me very carefully,” she said, “I’m a mage. That means I could stun your ass and do everything I need to do to you without your permission… but I’d rather not do that, so you’re going to cooperate. Do you understand me?”
I lowered my chin but kept eye contact with her. “Yes,” I said.
“Good. Here.” She handed me kind of collar—a big, heavy thing made of iron that felt strangely cold in my hand. Strange runes were etched along the inside, they shimmered as the light touched them. “I want you to put this around your neck. I’d do it myself, but I don’t like the idea of being that close to your face.”
“What is it?”
“Put it on and don’t ask questions. Things work a lot more smoothly around here that way.”
I took a deep breath, and then I wrapped the open collar around my neck. It was easy to do even with my bound hands. I was expecting Sanchez to have to snap it shut, but she didn’t have to. It closed on its own, as if it was magnetic—and then it shrunk, tightening around my throat just enough that it wasn’t too loose, or too constricting.
A wave of something washed through me. I wasn’t sure what. Magic? Maybe. Whatever it was, it made me feel cold inside, different, exposed, and a little numb. Something behind me fell to the floor with a loud clang. More shackles. The ones that had been binding my wings together at my back were on the floor… and my wings were gone.
“What the hell did you do?” I asked, raising my voice.
“You need to cool it right now,” Sanchez said, stepping back and raising her hand toward me. “Don’t make me have to stun you.”
“You took my wings away!”
“They aren’t gone, they’re suppressed. There’s a difference.”
“What does that mean? Suppressed?”