Free Alterant by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dianna Love Page B

can.”
    Like who? Kizira clamped her mouth tight to keep from shouting that. Flaevynn had no one with Kizira’s level of power to send out to do her bidding. At least no one Kizira had ever met. Flaevynn’s panic over facing impending death had turned her crazier than usual. If Flaevynn did have someone else to fight her battles, she would order Kizira to remain in TÅμr Medb.
    Kizira couldn’t risk that, not when the safety of another life depended upon her ability to come and go at will.
    Stop! Do not think about . . . Kizira flushed her mind, returning to her mental calm. She was Flaevynn’s most trusted enforcer, who worshipped her queen.
    Schooling her face to passive, Kizira said, “I will deliver the five Alterants.”
    “Then do it. You have forty-eight hours to hand me two Alterants. I will not suffer failure again. There is plenty of room in the dungeon with that druid.”
    There was Kizira’s opening to lobby for a meeting with Cathbad. “I understand, Your Highness. Speaking of Cathbad, might you allow me to speak with him to see if he could enlighten me on how to locate the Alterants more quickly?”
    Flaevynn’s face twisted with hatred. “You think he will tell you what he refuses to share with me? His own wife!”
    Hard to understand why a man locked in a dungeon by his wife while she had sex with every penis in this realm would feel the least bit vengeful, huh?
    Kizira forced devout sincerity into her reply and tried to sound as though she feared Cathbad. “I’m willing to risk meeting with him if it will benefit you, Your Highness.”
    That soothed Flaevynn, who sat back and smiled over at the young stud next to her. Her hand drifted down along his abdomen to . . .
    Kizira could not stomach another minute of this. She gritted out, “The sooner I see Cathbad—”
    Flaevynn yelled, “Go!”
    Before Kizira could form a thought the room vanished from around her. Hallelujah. She spent a moment suspended between time and reality before her feet settled on a stone floor. She’d have preferred to teleport herself, but she couldn’t reach the dungeon without going through Flaevynn. The queen had imprisoned Cathbad by convincing him she’d sent Kizira to the dungeon. When he went to the dungeon to see Kizira the queen locked him inside a warding she held the power over.
    When the room came fully into focus, Kizira faced Cathbad the Druid . . . the fifth to carry that name.
    Appearing closer to a human age of midthirties than he did to six hundred years old plus, he sat in calm repose in a padded desk chair. Far from an archaic dungeon cell, his accommodations had plenty of candles for light but no windows to see the outside.
    What would he have seen in this realm anyhow except the greenish-gray myst that enveloped TÅμr Medb, the Medb Tower?
    Bookshelves lined one wall of his cell, displaying precious tomes that had been passed down from the original Cathbad the Druid. An armoire held two more robes identical to the black one he wore. She knew this because she’d been the one to bring him those two robes the one time she’d been allowed to visit him when he’d first been imprisoned.
    He swiveled sideways to face her and scratched his neatly trimmed black beard, considering her with hawk-like eyes. Wavy black hair touched his shoulders. “’Tis good to see ya, child.”
    “Hello, Da.”
    “I’m surprised Flaevynn allowed you to visit. Something change between you two?”
    “No. She still hates me as much as the day she bore me.”

SEVEN

    K izira faced her usual dilemma with Cathbad—should she hug him or keep as much distance as possible between them? Unlike with Flaevynn, she felt a bond to her da and danced along a fine line between care and respect, careful not to step on the wrong side of all that lethal power.
    Just as a baby shark should respect the jaws of a parent that might consider the newborn food under dire circumstances.
    She smiled at him, ignoring his teeth for now. “I