AFTER A COUPLE OF trips back and forth, we got all of the wounded, the elves, and supplies back to the castle. Luckily, we got extra horses and carriages from the former lord of this place.

Vinsor and Bralazin helped find spaces to fit everyone and everything. With the solid stone structures of the castle and guard towers, we only had to worry about securing the windows. It took no time. String lights helped liven up the place.

High time we had a chat with Lord Dralik, though. I had some suspicions about what he had been up to in the last few months. Nasilain came to the dungeons with me since she didn’t want her spells disturbed. The moisture on the mountainside of the structure added to the mustiness of the morbid place.

“Just a fair warning, Misavan is always obnoxious,” Nasilain said when we reached the bottom. “We can try brainwashing him later, when Jill gets here. Elves are kind of like that in general, so he’s not a lost cause.”

After the things he had said to her, it was more of a statement to Nasilain’s character that she still didn’t want him dead. I wanted to knock his front teeth out. Maybe then he could get a new set that wouldn’t have a gap. Hell, maybe he could do something about that awful hairstyle too. Pink and green hair sticking out in all directions didn’t suit any man.

As we walked to the cells, Misavan’s sickly-sweet voice came to greet us, proving Nasilain’s spell hadn’t lasted as long as I had hoped it would. Lord Dralik sat calmly on the stone bench, watching as we approached.

“Could you silence the clown, beautiful?” I asked. At the moment, I wanted to hear what the good lord had to say.

Nasilain did the same thing with making his tongue and jaw numb. The bastard continued making incoherent noises, like claws on a chalkboard.

“Can you stop his vocal cords from working?” I asked.

Nasilain eyed Misavan’s neck, frowned and said, “I’m not as familiar with the vocal cords. I don’t want to accidentally choke him.”

I wouldn’t mind her accidentally choking him. I made a necklace out of the strips of foam Nasilain had enchanted earlier, opened the door to Misavan’s cell and put the foam on his neck. There. Nothing more than a whisper.

As I left the cell, I returned my attention to the lord. “Now, why don’t we talk and come up with a good solution to the little problem of you being in the dungeon. I assume you want to get out of here. We can make it as easy as answering a few questions.”

“You’re an otherworlder, aren’t you?” He asked me instead of waiting for my first question. “A man like you could gain a lot of power in this world if he had proper guidance. What would you like to be? A king? Then you wouldn’t have to compliment a common wench to convince her to come to bed with you.”

I arched my brow and waved for him to continue.

“Look at Nasilain here, all I had to do was snap my fingers, and she would come running to me. She had her own goals, of course. They all do. The trick is to give them as much as you are willing and take everything you want.”

I glanced from the corner of my eye at Nasilain. She stood tall, like a statue, her face still. A tiny movement of her eyes gave away the emotions she fought. No wonder she didn’t want to come here.

“Nasi, could you wait for me upstairs?” I asked, trying not to give away my feelings. “I won’t take too long.”

She turned her face to me, letting me get a glimpse of concern in her eyes. I ran my knuckles over her jaw. She didn’t have to hear any of this. She sure as hell didn’t need to see this asshole. Nasi turned silently and walked away, head held high, as it should be.

“Be careful with her,” Dralik continued as soon as Nasilain disappeared in the staircase, and the sound of her steps grew faint. “She always has her own goals. She likes power and isn’t afraid to play dirty to get it. She’s pretending to care about the otherworlders, but all she wants is their knowledge, so she can become stronger.”

“How so?” I asked. She did read a lot.

“That’s the thing with magic. The more you understand about nature, the more you can do and the less energy you need for it. That isn’t all she wants, though. She wants to have a last name, become a lady. She tried it with me, said she was carrying my child, so she could have some claim to my name and position. You can never trust a woman like that.” He talked so calmly about it, as if he was discussing a ball game instead of the woman he had slept with.

My mind found that wavelength where I felt so little I couldn’t possibly overreact. It had always been useful when I was a SEAL. No matter what happened, I could keep a cool head. “What happened with the child?”

Lord Dralik shrugged. “Who knows if she was ever with one. I ordered her to drink a potion to get rid of it. She tried to talk me out of it, of course, but I couldn’t risk everything for a common girl with a few magic tricks.”

A common girl who could split atoms.

“And what about the demon boy?” I asked as I remembered the scared, skinny guy in the kitchen.

“What of him? Demons are hard to find, but not impossible. Not when you have the money and the influence that I do, which you can have with my help.”

I was more concerned about where exactly he had gotten the boy from. Between the dark skin and the lighter, wavy hair, he wasn’t African. “Did you have to go to Auralia to buy him?”

“Yes, I had business there anyway, so I took the time to find a new demon for myself.” He waved dismissively.

“Did that business of yours have anything to do with fairies?” I didn’t believe in coincidences like that.

“You’re even smarter than I thought. You can achieve such greatness. Yes, I brought the fairies here. I want to end this war, so I used what my enemies can’t fight. You do the same with your weapons.” He pointed at the gun in my hands.

I looked down at it and nodded. “In my world, we would call those fairies a biological weapon. The thing is, after they are done killing your enemies, they will still be around. Do you have a plan to get rid of them?”

I began taking off the silencer. Never liked using them, but sometimes I had no choice. Today had been one of those days, but that part was over.

“Of course. If you get me out of here, I’ll show you how you can track them down,” Lord Dralik said with a victorious smile.

“How can I know you’re not lying to get out of here? I’m not opening this cell door until I know that when we get out of the castle, we’re not gonna get swarmed by those things.”

He wouldn’t risk his own hide if he didn’t have at least some idea about how to get rid of the fairies, but I needed that information now.

“I’ll give you a hint. There is an energy around them that a sorceress who knows what she’s doing can sense.”

Nasilain had nuked them, but she had used what was already there. Weren’t nukes usually made of radioactive things? If we had a Geiger counter, we might be able to find all of the swarms before they reproduced and ate every living creature. We’d need a flamethrower to kill them.

I lifted the gun, holding it with both hands and pressed the trigger. Dralik’s head bounced back and hit the wall.

The elf stared at me with wide eyes as I stepped closer to the iron bars keeping him inside. He flinched, then pressed himself into the corner.

“Nasilain asked me not to kill you. She thinks there’s still some hope for you. You should thank her.”

The sound of Nasi’s feet hitting the wet, stone steps at a run filtered into the dungeon. She needed to be more careful. It would be too easy to fall. I didn’t want her to get hurt after everything she had survived. I walked to meet her, my mind still in that strange space where emotions were far and few between. Before Nasilain could get any closer and see all the gore, I caught her by the waist and pulled her to me, then planted a kiss on her temple.

“You shouldn’t have to see that.” I guided her back to the stairs. “We can ask someone else to clean it up.”