Bound by Spells (Bound Series Book 2) (29 page)

I felt the transfer, the Keeper power draining out of me, but with it went my own. I let go of her paw and struggled to sit up. I shoved against the cold surface of the concrete and dropped my head back against the wall, exhausted. It vaguely occurred to me once again how inhumane these conditions were. But when I looked at the cheetah, she was beautiful. The missing hunks of her fur were back, her coat shone, and her frame was filled out. She looked like she was fresh from hunting in the jungles of Africa. Relief filled me.

“What did you do? What did you find? Tell me, girl!” Julia peered through the bars, demanding answers.

“Right now, I don’t know what I’ve done except give this AniMage her strength and life back. Something vital to her having healthy children and something you should have done yourself.” I was repulsed by the Queen and her disregard for these people’s lives.

"I don’t care what you’ve done for her. Did you fix the babies? Will her mongrels have magic? That is all that matters here. Why are you wasting time?” Her shrill tone grated on me. I was so busy wondering how I might be able to kill her from inside the cell, I didn’t realize the cheetah had come to me. I heard a soft purr as she nudged my arm with her head and licked it.

I turned my back to Julia, ignoring her demands and focusing on the cheetah. "Hello. My name is Amelia. I’m here to help you and your babies.” I could feel her love and need to protect her children. I reached out a hand and gestured toward her belly. It drooped as she stood in front of me, perfectly placed so I could reach it.

“May I?” I asked. She purred in response, standing still.

I slowly moved my hands toward her stomach until both were up against her warm fur. While I could feel the heartbeats of the babies, and the vibrations of their mother’s love, I could feel nothing else. But I had no idea whether I could even sense magic in others. Their auras were easy to distinguish, but nothing else was clear.

I turned back to Julia and stood. I stumbled a little, still weak. “I can’t do this. I can’t just take off the cuff and hope for the best. I could kill her. I could hurt myself. I'm no good to you if I can’t continue to do this, right? I need more time. I refuse to try this on anyone carrying a child of any kind. I won’t do it.”

Julia stood, eyeing me as if she were trying to decide whether I was bluffing.

“What you saw with my brother, I had to actively work to control the Keeper. Had I not focused her, she would have gone after Rhi. That’s what she wanted. You don’t understand. She does what
she
wants. You need me to control her and right now, if you force me to take off this cuff, I will not. I will let her tear this place apart. You don't have your army down here now. Do you want to take that chance?”

We continued to stare at each other until she finally said, “Open it.” The door swung open again and I turned. I knelt in front of the Cheetah and whispered, “I will be back for you. I will set you free.” I stared into her eyes, knowing she heard me and understood.

I moved out of the cell and stood before Julia. “Understand I am going to do this, but not for you. I’m going to do it for them. Because you have no right to hold them here, impregnate them, and steal their children. You are the worst kind of evil. The kind that holds some righteous notion your cause is greater than the lives you take. I will not let you take another innocent Immortal’s life.”

I heard a slow clap and turned to find Rhi, an amused smile on his lips as his hands came together and apart. “How touching, Keeper, but you act as if you have a choice.”

“Don’t I? You’ve heard the prophecy. You know what’s inside of me. You have seen what I am capable of. I broke your bonds, didn’t I? How many years have you been down here? How many failed attempts have been made? How many women and children have died? Without control and focus, it could be gone in an instant.” I snapped my fingers and Julia’s head twitched. I internally celebrated someone buying my story, because I was making threats I wasn’t sure I could keep. I saw the darkness of the Keeper when I didn’t wear the cuff, and while it was terrifying, I had no idea whether it could do what I was claiming.

“Joran, does she speak the truth?” Julia seemed to know the exact time to call me on my crap. I stood with my head held high, leaning slightly toward Julia in the aggressive stance Cole had taught me to use whenever I needed to appear stronger or more confident than I was. I waited for Joran to tell her the truth, to confirm I was lying through my teeth.

“She speaks the truth, your highness. The darkness must be tempered.” Joran’s words shocked me, but I let nothing show. I knew Rhi watched my every move.

A slow smile crept across Julia's lips and ice snaked down my back. “Rhi, let’s show our guest the same hospitality we provide all mixed breeds, shall we?”

Before I could internalize her words, Rhi had locked his arms around me and we were across the room. “You play dangerous games, Keeper, and you cannot win. I always win.” His breath was hot in my ear and the pads of his fingers burned into my arm, making me cry out as he threw me into the cell on the other side of the tiger.

I landed in a heap and didn’t have a chance to duck before a pillow and blanket were thrown at me. I tangled in the blanket and ripped it away, only to hear the clang of the lock as the cell door closed. Rhi smiled from the other side and moved away as Julia came to the door.

“You have two days. You will find this control or I will find it for you.” Julia’s eyes blazed red. She hadn’t used much magic in front of me and her display of emotion unnerved me.

I heard her heels click across the room as she commanded Rhi and Joran to follow her. I wanted to yell for Joran, but realized it wouldn’t help me and might hurt him, so I stayed quiet.

I dropped my head into my hands, my fingertips massaging my forehead as I tried to figure out what I had just done and what the hell I was supposed to do about it. I tried calling out to Micah via our connection, but I couldn't find a trace of his power. I wished I had my mother’s journals here with me so I could see whether she had left me any information I could use. Finally, I went back to the Keeper room and tried breaking apart the Hunter power mix, hoping it would give me the strength I needed to get out of the cell. But the orb slammed back together so quickly, I never had a chance to hit the bars with a blast of power.

I was so frustrated, I started shooting violet bursts at the lock, one after the other. I pushed everything I had into trying to get through the bars until I heard, "You can stop. It won’t work. Nothing works. They are all made by Hunters.”

Somehow I had forgotten about the women. I moved to the wall of the cell and looked out through the bars. Across the room, the woman with the braid was leaning toward me. She was one of the few I could actually see from my angle, and she couldn’t move far, the restraints keeping her in the bed.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Eight years,” she responded. Her eyes flickered blue for just a second.

“Are you an AniMage? How are you out there?” I had just assumed the human-looking women were Mages.

“You typically stay in whatever form you came in here as, and AniMages give birth in human form. They wanted some of the women in their shifted form to see if it made a difference, but it doesn’t. When they took all of us, we were pregnant, so they knew we had the ability to conceive. When the children are born human—which, if they are born at all, they are—they take them." Her voice was hard, the emotion gone. She had been here too long, been through it too many times, to grieve anymore. I could feel the numbness she’d forced on herself. The detachment she held in place. Right now, she didn’t look pregnant and I wondered whether she held similar detachment when a tiny life was inside her.

“They keep inseminating us. We can only assume the fathers are Mage, but every child is either miscarried or born human. I have listened to women scream as their children are brought into this world and the Queen has tested her every theory on how to unlock the power she believes is still in them. She forces the female Hunters to attend our births and experiment on our babies.”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask what had happened to the children.

“Can you help us? I see what you did for Nell, but what can you do for us? For our children?” she asked.

It took a second for her question to register but as soon as it did, I was on my feet and yelling. “Nell? She was Nell? Elias’s Nell?” I tried to see over to Nell’s cell, but it was two down from mine and impossible to see anything but the bars in the door. The woman recoiled, as did those who had been quietly listening around her.

“I’m sorry,” I dropped my voice and tried to be calm. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just know of her. Her husband thinks she’s dead. But if that's her, then she’s alive!” I was both elated and sickened to realize Elias had spent all those years believing his wife was dead.

“All of our husbands believe we are dead. It is why they haven’t come for us. The Hunters raided the villages in search of us. They killed hundreds, both for sport, because Hunters are evil creatures, and to hide what they were really after,” she said. “We are nothing but incubators and our children are lab rats. You have to help us.”

“What’s your name? I’m Amelia. And I honestly don’t know if I can help you, but I’m going to try.” I would try like hell. This was the first time the prophecy was tangible—sitting right in front of me and making it clear it wasn’t about having a choice. These were my people and I would help them.

“Cora. My name is Cora. You are the Keeper. I believed in the Elders and their sight. If you have their power, you will find a way.” She sat back onto her pillows, her head held high as she nodded at me. I wished I had her faith.

“Are you the only one who can speak? Are the others okay?” I strained my neck to see through the bars past Cora to the other women.

“I’m Nadine, a Mage. I've been here three years.”

“Sully, an AniMage, five years.”

“Willow, a Mage, seven years.”

I leaned my head against the bars as the names continued. One after another, they told me who they were and how long they had been here. Lydia had been here the longest at ten years. It left me wondering how many women had been deemed useless to Julia and killed after being bred like animals?

“How do you do it?” I wanted to clarify the question, but I couldn’t find the right words to ask how they could possibly keep going.

Willow identified herself. I couldn't see her from my cell, but her voice carried across the space. “No matter who the fathers are, these children are a part of us. They come from us. We give them as much as we can in the time we have with them. We sing to them, tell them stories of our people, where they come from, and we pray the spark we have inside of us will be in them. The Hunters have bound us so we cannot fight them, but they left our power within us to be passed on.”

I closed my eyes and opened myself to their auras and emotions. The more I worked with my Keeper, the more I felt and heard in those moments when I opened myself up to it. I went to the green and violet orb inside me, whispering all the reasons I needed this to work. I needed the intuition and ability to feel what it would bring. Mages rooted in green magic were always more empathetic and emotionally sensitive. When I pulled my fists apart, the power scattered throughout my body and layered with my own. It didn’t fight me at all. I wished I understood why sometimes it worked and other times it didn’t. The sensations were overwhelming, but I needed to understand. I wasn’t a mother. I hadn’t had a mother. I needed to feel what they felt.

The protective instinct was everywhere. Hope for the future. Fear of the unknown. Terror over knowing what was to come as the babies left their protection. Anger at the circumstances preventing them from being true mothers. Agony over those they had lost. Love for the tiny heartbeats. More love than I could comprehend. So much so, I could barely breathe, it was so thick in the air. Their gift for giving life had been turned against them, yet they still loved with abandon. It was only those who had recently lost who were weighed down with grief and anger. The darkness spread through them, leaving them on the edge of sanity.

“I swear to you, I will find a way to help you and your children. I don’t know how yet, but I will find it.” I said the words as loudly as I could. I had been a motherless and basically fatherless child. I knew exactly what that did to a kid. I had an inkling of what it had done to their mothers. And I could only imagine what it had done to the husbands who had no idea their wives were still alive and their children were gone. I struggled to speak, tears swimming in my eyes. The combination of grief and love surrounding me was more than I could take.

“Rynna, please come soon. Please, please be coming soon,” I whispered as I slid down to the ground and hugged my knees to my chest.

Chapter 23