by Martha Carr
“Congratulations. I was talking about him.”
That made her sit back in her seat and blink against the heavy fabric of the bag over her head. So L’zar has issues with authority and following the rules. Big surprise there.
After the first ten minutes of riding in Sir’s passenger seat in complete silence, Cheyenne didn’t care about being able to see where they were going or trying to remember the way to Chateau D’rahl. She just wished she had something to see, or look at, or distract her. Every time Sir smacked his gum like some kind of barn animal munching on hay, she wanted to slap it out of his mouth.
“Any chance you could turn on some music or something?”
“Can’t hear you under that bag, halfling. Speak up.”
She rolled her eyes and raised her voice. “Can you turn on some music?”
“Too quiet in here for you, huh? Fine. What’d you have in mind?”
Cheyenne shrugged and turned her head toward what she thought were the controls on the dash for the radio. “Anything. I don’t care.”
“Gotcha…” Sir leaned forward in his seat to turn on the radio, flipping through stations without stopping to hear what was playing. When he did stop, the halfling didn’t know if she wanted to smash the radio to pieces or just open the door and throw herself head-first out of the car. “Hey, listen to this. This is good stuff right here. Classic stuff. You know Taylor Swift, right?”
The halfling rolled her eyes even though he couldn’t see it. “Never mind.”
“Can’t hear you when you’re mumbling, halfling.”
“I said, never mind!” She thumped her head back against the headrest and turned to look out the window, which of course, she couldn’t see.
“Whatever.” Sir punched the radio button again, and the music cut off. “What would you prefer, huh? Satanic ritual chanting?”
“If those were the only two options, yeah. Probably.”
Sir snorted and started with the gum-smacking again. Cheyenne leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. Longest car ride of my life.
* * *
The Kia Rio had hardly slowed down before they passed off the smooth pavement and onto a severely bumpy gravel drive. They skidded a little, maybe fishtailed once or twice, and Cheyenne thought she’d end up hurling into the thick black bag over her face and herself if Sir didn’t cut it out with the crazy maneuvers.
Then they stopped, and the engine cut off. Sir unbuckled his seatbelt and just sat there for a moment. “Take that stupid thing off. You look like an executioner on welfare.”
Cheyenne whipped the black bag off her head and tossed it onto the dashboard. Blinking against the sunlight bouncing at her from the hood of the car, she unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door as Sir closed his behind him. Getting out and looking around brought a wild sense of déjà vu washing over her.
This is Chateau D’rahl, all right. Only I’m seeing it up close and personal instead of through security footage in Mom’s study.
There was the chain-link fence topped in concertina wire. In front of her and a little to the right were the open chain-link gates on huge wheels, just inviting her to come in and take a look around. The low guard tower sat six or seven feet up from the ground, the walls glass from halfway up. There was a prison guard in there too, wearing a navy uniform and a matching navy baseball cap with the letters CDR across the front in light gray. Two more guards stood halfway between the front doors of the prison and the open gate, wearing full protective gear minus a helmet or mask, with large rifles slung across their chests by a strap.
Looks like outdoor security hasn’t changed much in the last twenty-one years. I’m guessing they upped their game on the inside.
“Come on.” Sir nodded toward the open gates and pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. “I wanna get this over with before lunch.”
Cheyenne slipped her cell phone out of her jacket pocket to check the time. It was only 7:15.
Maybe the better question was why Sir was willing to give the drow halfling so much time inside the maximum-security prison for untouchable magicals. It really didn’t matter. She would’ve taken twenty minutes if that was the only option. Hopefully, it wasn’t.
Their footsteps crunched along the gravel drive until it gave way to the pavement stretching past the front gates. Cheyenne stuck her hands in her pockets because she had no idea what to do with them, but she made sure to keep up with Sir’s quick, authoritative pace.
“Morning, Sir.” One of the armed guards nodded, but neither of them moved from their posts as their guests passed.
“It’s definitely morning,” Sir replied, raising his eyebrows like he couldn’t believe he’d let himself be talked into bringing her here.
When they reached the entrance doors, another guard in the same uniform appeared out of nowhere to push the door open from the inside and hold it for them. He exchanged a curt nod with Sir, all business, and surprised Cheyenne by giving her the same. She lifted her chin at him, and that was it. They wouldn’t be this polite if they knew who I am.
Sir led her across the front lobby and past a small enclosed room on the left with a narrow pane of bulletproof glass. Another guard stood behind the window and the counter, but he barely looked up at them as they made their way toward the metal detector on the other side of the room.
Apparently, Sir was used to the process. He pulled out his keys, cell phone, and loose coins, then took off his sunglasses, undid his watch, and dumped it all in the plastic tray on the table. The guard standing behind the table nodded and ran the tray through the x-ray on a conveyer belt. Then Sir stepped through the extra-wide, extra-large metal detector that could’ve fit three people through it at the same time, and he was on the other side.
When Cheyenne stepped up to empty her pockets, the guard behind the desk raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t say a word. Out came her phone and her keys. She went ahead and took off her jacket, just in case metal buckles were an issue. Then she double-checked both pockets of her baggy black pants and didn’t turn up anything else. Last to go were the thick silver chains wrapped around both wrists. The guard behind the table just stared at her as she unwrapped them over and over before dropping the long string of chains into the plastic tray.
“Okay.” She rubbed her hands together and stepped through the metal detector. It flashed and beeped before she’d even gotten both feet through and onto the other side.
“Ma’am, please step back through. We need to try this again.”
Sir just raised his eyebrows at her, so she walked back through and waited for the guard to tell her what came next.
“Sometimes it’s the shoes. Take those off and place them up here on the belt, please.”
“Seems like a lot.”
“It’s policy.”
“Okay.” The halfling pulled off her shoes and ran them through, then headed under the metal detector one more time. The alarm went off just as quickly, and another guard stepped toward her from where he’d been standing by the opposite wall.
He grabbed the metal-sniffing wand from his belt and stopped just a little too close for Cheyenne’s comfort. “Spread your legs, please. Hold your arms out on both sides.”
Staring at Sir, the halfling did what she was told and waited for the guard to pass the wand up and down, side to side, from her collarbone all the way down to her socked feet and back up again. Then he looked up at her face and seemed to notice her piercings for the first time. He hesitated a little, then brought the wand up from her chin to the top of her head. The thing let out a squeal and two high-pitched beeps.
“Ma’am, I have to ask you to remove the various—”
“Yeah, the piercings aren’t coming out.”
“Ma’am—”
“No.”
The guard shot Sir a questioning glance, and the FRoE official shrugged. “Let her leave ‘em in.”
“Ma’am, is there a specific reason why you’re refusing to remove the various pieces
of metal from your person?”
Cheyenne cocked her head and gave him a deadpan stare. “Yeah. They’re part of my religion.”
With a confused frown, the guard glanced one more time at Sir, then just shook his head. “Okay. Are you carrying any knives, firearms, or other weapons at this time?”
“No.”
“Do you currently have anything on your person that could be considered a weapon?”
She couldn’t help herself. This was Chateau D’rahl, after all, and it wasn’t like she had anything these guards hadn’t seen before. The halfling spread her arms and lifted both hands in front of her hips. It could have been a shrug or a wordless gesture to search her again if he was so worried about it, but then she slipped into her drow form in the blink of an eye and conjured the purple sparks, all the while staring at the man who’d asked the dumbest question he could have asked her.
The guard sucked in a sharp breath of surprise and took a step back. Then he frowned, which was about as close to reprimanding her as he was going to get.
Cheyenne cut off the sparks and pushed the heat of her drow magic all the way back down. “That’s about all I’ve got.”
Pressing his lips together, the guard just blinked at her and sighed. Then he grabbed her shoes off the x-ray’s conveyer belt and dropped them on the floor beside her. “You can pick up the rest of your things on the way out.” He waited somewhat patiently for her to slip back into her black Vans, then turned around and took off. “This way.”
He shot Sir an irritated look, but the FRoE official just shrugged again. Cheyenne thought she saw a little twitch at the corner of his mouth, but she didn’t want to look at him long enough to make sure. She was focused on following the guard across the smaller room on the other side of the metal detector toward the thick steel doors leading into the rest of Chateau D’rahl.
I might actually be the first magical to walk into this prison without any dampening cuffs.
The thought filled her with pride and weird, unexpected discomfort at the same time.
But the guard didn’t lead them to those thick steel doors into the max-security prison. Instead, he took a sharp right turn down a narrow hallway and pressed the call button on an elevator. Sir and Cheyenne stopped to wait behind him, then the elevator doors opened.
“After you.” The guard gestured toward the elevator, and they stepped inside. A heavy metal grate slid into place across the opening and stopped on the other side of the elevator with a loud clang. When the doors had closed again, the guard swiped his badge across the card reader on the wall and pressed the button below it. There was only one.
“Where does this take us?” Cheyenne couldn’t help the question. This part of the process just seemed a little odd compared to the normal protocol, even for a prison like Chateau D’rahl.
The guard glanced at Sir again but didn’t say a word.
Sir’s mustache twitched. “Just think of it as a special visitation room.”
“Anything I should know about before we get there?”
He cocked his head. “Probably.”
That was apparently the end of the conversation.
The halfling hadn’t expected the elevator to go down when they started moving. The ride lasted over two minutes, which was just one more item on the list of weird Chateau D’rahl experiences.
Even before they stopped and the elevator doors opened, Cheyenne could smell the damp stone and the tang of wet metal. The guard pulled the grate back into the side of the elevator and gestured for his honored guests to step out. “Welcome to the dungeon. Just keep walking.”
The halfling shot him a confused look over her shoulder, but she stepped out beside Sir and kept the rest of her questions to herself. The dungeon. That’s gotta be a euphemism.
They walked across the dark stone room, heading toward the same kind of booth as they’d encountered in the front lobby. This one spanned the corridor, reinforced by thick iron doors and iron bars on both sides of the bulletproof glass running around the top half of what looked like the control room. Sir stopped in front of the door on the right, and a guard with a burn scar stretching from below his left ear to beneath the collar of his uniform shirt nodded at them through the glass. He pressed a button on a wide panel in front of him, then a loud buzz echoed within the stone walls and he pushed the door open toward them.
“Come on in.”
Sir snorted and stepped into the booth. Cheyenne had no choice but to follow. At this point, she would’ve walked into that booth even if she’d been given another choice.
This is it.
The door shut behind them, and the booth suddenly felt very cramped with three people standing inside. But it was a lot easier now to get a good view of the room on the other side.
The huge cavern was twice the size of the prison’s front entrance, apparently carved out of stone beneath the building. Two-thirds of the way across the cavern was a curved wall of thick iron bars stretching from floor to ceiling, creating a giant circular cell. Dim industrial lights had been bolted into the stone walls, giving everything a muted, unnerving yellow glow, but it wasn’t enough to see anything on the other side of those huge bars, which were spaced a few inches apart.
“Okay. I will make this short and sweet.” The guard gestured at the cavern with a firm nod. “We’ll be able to hear everything you say from in here, so don’t say anything you don’t want anyone else to hear. The only thing that’s not allowed is slipping something to him between those bars. Nothing changes hands, but no one’s gonna stop you from shaking hands. And if you need help, if he does anything or says anything you don’t like, if you want someone to come in there with you, just say ‘Easter Bunny,’ and we’ll take care of it.”
The halfling raised an eyebrow. “’Easter Bunny?’”
“Yep. Last week’s word was ‘Manamana.’ Thankfully, no one had to use it. You ready?”
“Yeah.” Cheyenne glanced at Sir and tilted her head. “You’re staying here?”
“This is your visit, halfling, not mine. Honestly, just standing here in this box is a little too close to him for my liking, but a deal’s a deal. I’m not going anywhere until you’re done.”
“Right.” Not that she was worried about the guy leaving her down here while she had her reunion, but whatever. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Yep.” The guard stepped up beside her and pressed a button on another panel, and that loud buzz filled the booth. Then he pushed the door open, and Cheyenne stepped into the even stronger scent of damp stone and metal and something else that made her think of fresh-baked bread.
The door closed with a surprisingly loud bang and an echoing click, probably as it locked behind her, and then the drow halfling was standing in the same room as the man who’d spent one night with Bianca Summerlin just to bring their daughter into this world.
She didn’t see him on the other side of those bars. Not yet. But in the next few seconds, she’d be standing in front of L’zar Verdys. Her father. The drow who’d made her what she was. Cheyenne lifted her chin and walked across the cavern.
Chapter Ninety-Six
The only sound now was the soft whisper of Cheyenne’s Vans across the stone floor and the steady trickle of more than one thin stream of water running down the stone walls of the cavern. From somewhere behind those thick bars, she heard the slow, steady breathing of the magical enclosed within them.
One of those cheap metal folding chairs sat several feet from the bars, but Cheyenne didn’t move to grab it. She wasn’t sure if she’d want to take a seat, or if she had enough time to pretend to make herself comfortable on this side of the giant cell. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause or slow on her way to the bars, and when she got about two yards from them, a shadow moved inside the cell.
A second later, L’zar Verdys stepped toward the bars and into the yellow glow of the lights mounted on the walls. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall, thin but still in good shape, with the same purple-gray skin
Cheyenne had been seeing on herself for at least the last fifteen years. L’zar’s long, straight white hair was tied behind his head in a loose bun, some shorter pieces of it having come loose to fall down the sides of his forehead. The tips of his pointed drow ears rose from that bone-white hair, and glowing golden eyes stared at Cheyenne Summerlin from the other side of the bars. The drow wrapped his hands around the iron bars on either side of him, the long, slender fingers pressing into the metal one at a time. Then he leaned a little closer and smiled, almost in disbelief.
“Wow. You look just like her, you know that?”
His soft, low voice sent a shiver across Cheyenne’s shoulders and down her back. She wasn’t sure yet whether it was the good kind of shiver or the kind that would send her back across that cavern toward the booth at any minute. This is him. This is my dad.
Without knowing why, she stepped closer and spread her arms by her sides. Her drow magic burst to life at the base of her spine, and the transformation washed over her.
L’zar’s golden eyes widened, and he let out a soft chuckle. “Ah. Now you look like me. Even better.”
For a moment, they just stared at each other, father and daughter, both of them looking like full-blooded drow. L’zar sniffed at the air once, twice, and glanced at his daughter’s arm. “What happened to your shoulder?”
That’s the first question he wants to ask me?
“Acid burn. And something else put in there that had no business being there.”
L’zar’s smile widened into a dazzling grin, his white teeth flashing even in the dull light. “It’s not there anymore, is it?” She shook her head. “Not healing, either.”
“Doesn’t look like it, no.”
The drow’s golden eyes flicked over Cheyenne’s shoulder toward the booth on the other side of the cavern. Then he slid his hand through the bars and waved her toward him. “Come here. I wanna show you something.”
The halfling paused, but only for a second. She wasn’t trying to slip the man anything, and the guard behind her had said that everything else was fair game. If L’zar wanted to show her something, she couldn’t very well say no at this point. She probably couldn’t have said no to him about anything.
