“Be careful.”
“What’s on them?”
“Nightshade and wolfsbane.”
“Well, lucky that I’m immune to them then.”
Although the smell was awful and stung the back of my throat, I freed Darius and threw the ropes onto the other side of the room. Once he was able to compose himself, he grabbed me and threw me into a tight hug, but my arms remained rigid at my side.
“I could feel all your pain. I don’t know how that’s possible.” He said as he let go of me and placed his hands on my shoulders.
“I could feel yours too. When they did something to your chest, I felt that too.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, and there next to his heart was a beautiful purple and yellow bruise, it appeared to have veins as it spread across his chest and up towards his shoulder.
“What is that?” Reaching out, I traced the veins with my fingers.
“A concoction of wolfsbane, nightshade, and I think hawthorn. It stings like a bitch.”
“Will it kill you?”
“No, it just keeps me from being able to use my full strength. How they knew what to use, I don’t know.”
It was as if a lightbulb went off in my mind as I stepped away and began patting myself down. I had tucked the folder about Darius under my shirt, and although a stupid place to keep it, I felt it would be safe as it was spelled but after feeling around, the folder was gone.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I think I know how they knew. I'll explain later, but I believe we should try and get out of here. Fast. I am a little concerned about all this."
“How so?”
“Well Darius, if you haven’t noticed, there are no guards. It’s as if they expected us to free ourselves. So, I am just waiting for something to happen or someone to jump out on us.”
He took my hand, and mostly all of me wanted to pull away, break free from his grasp, but a small, tiny part of me was happy he was safe. I didn’t let go of his hand as he pulled me towards the door, out into the hallway, and going in whatever direction his feet took him.
“How did you find me anyways?”
“Would you believe me if I said I followed a firefly?”
“Yes – No, actually that sounds crazy.”
“I think, once we break free of this place, we will head to the manor, and ask Jackson to give us all the information on this mate business.”
“Good plan, let’s do that.”
His normally beautiful black hair was stuck slightly to his head from dried blood, and each time he glanced at me, I could see the new bruises forming around his eye sockets and down his cheek bones. Anger boiled deep within me, and I couldn’t wait to get a hold of the creatures that had done this to him.
“Why did they beat you?” I asked, concern appearing in my voice.
“Because I refused to tell them about you.”
“Well, that was a stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?”
“If I knew they were gonna do this much damage to my pretty face, I would have sung to them.”
He winked at me, and I could see how painful it was as his busted lip tried to bring up a smile, and for a split second I wanted to pull him into a hug and comfort him, but that feeling soon disappeared when voices appeared down a hallway we had turned down. So many hallways, this place was almost as big as the manor.