The redhead flinched like my voice annoyed him. I might have even cared if I wasn’t living the last moments of my life.
But the blond answered.
“We’re simply the men who want something youhave,” he said, then slowly leaned closer to me. I moved back, but that chair must have been nailed to the floor because it didn’t budge. All I could do was watch the high fae reach out his fingers for my neck. The moment his fingers pressed against my skin, I stopped breathing. What was he going to do to me—strangle me to death?
He didn’t. Instead, he grabbed something off me—the chain of the necklace I’d had on me for long enough to not even notice it on my chest anymore.
The diamond. Shit. I’d never gotten the chance to take it off!
He slowly eased it from under my shirt, and once he saw that it was there, he simply yanked the chain hard, and it cut my skin deep before it snapped.
I hissed in pain, my hands moving on instinct to wrap around the back of my neck, but the magic holding them back bit into my skin harder at the motion, and that pain overpowered the other instantly. Squeezing my eyes shut, I gave myself a second to breathe. I didn’t want to cry out in front of these guys, damn it!
But the high fae moved, no longer interested in me. They went to the first table, where a guard had opened a laptop and was trying to put something in the side of it. Something that reflected blue light everywhere, just like the diamond I’d had around my neck would. I swallowed hard when I noticed the chain of the necklace on the table. The diamond was gone, seemingly pulled from the metal flower that had held it, and now it was plugged into a port in that laptop.
Impossible, my mind said. I’d been given a dupe, something to resemble the real thing, and it was a real diamond because the ODP knew that these people would be able to spot a fake. Not because there was an actual flash drive in it.
But…unless my eyes were lying to me, there was.
The guard pressed on the keyboard for a long two minutes, while I tried my best to send wave after wave of my magic onto the spell holding my hands together. If I could only get it to fade a little bit, I could slip my hands out of the cuffs easily—my hands were small and the cuffs way too big.
But before my magic managed to cause even a little damage, both high fae turned to me again, stern looks on their faces.
“What is the password, Theodora?” the blond said, his voice calm, like the ocean before a storm. I blinked at him, not sure if he was even real. If any of this was real.
Because nothing was making any sense right now.
And then the guard turned the laptop my way so I could see the screen—completely black, with a grey window in the middle requiring a password.
“It is in your best interest to give us what we ask for, believe me,” the redheaded fae said, and he sounded almost bored.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, shaking my head. “That’s not the real thing. It was never…I’m not…” I couldn’t even finish a sentence. The words kept tying on my tongue.
Because though I didn’t want it to make sense, it was starting to. A little bit.
If that diamond I’d had around my neck had really been a flash drive, that could only mean one thing—the ODP knew about it. They knew what it was, and that’s why they gave it to me. That’s why they sent me here. They knew I was going to get kidnapped by these people. I was the bait—of course they knew.
And the reality of the situation fell on me hard.
Suddenly, bitter laughter burst out of me, together with fresh tears.
All this time, I thought I’d been given a chance, a fair chance to prove myself, and they’d all laughed at my face. They were the reason I was here.
The diamond had been real, and I hadn’t even questioned it.
“Focus.” The blond high fae was right in front of me, leaning down so we were eye level. The laughter died on my lips instantly. “The password. It’s the last time I ask.”
“I don’t k—”
The back of his hand connected with the side of my face so fast, so hard, my head jerked to the side, almost falling from my neck for real this time. I was grabbed by the hair and my head was pulled up, and I couldn’t see anything from the stars in my vision, but I could still feel his energy coating my skin.
“The next time we talk, you will be much more cooperative,” he said, and his words were a promise.
He let go of my face and stepped back, and loud footsteps filled my ears before I had the chance to even realize what was happening.
I blinked the stars away until I had a semi-clear view of the guard standing in front of me, that big gun in his hand. But I never managed to even look at his face before he raised his arm and hit me with the butt of his gun’s handle straight on the side of my head, behind my ear, right where “they”had hit Derek.
Everything went dark.