Free The Ring Bearer by Felicia Jedlicka Page A

Danato’s cacophonic bellows, it gave her pause. Belus glanced at Ethan as if he didn’t want to speak in front of him.
    Ethan leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek before getting up and heading to the door. “Ethan?” Cori asked questioning his sudden abandonment.
    His eyes flickered between them, and settled in on her. He shrugged. “You lied to us all, Cori.” She shook her head, but there was no denying it. Even if she could take back the crime of letting prisoners out, she still lied about the key. “You can give any excuse you want about it, but bottom line is you lied. I get that you didn’t trust Danato. I get that you didn’t want to pit me up against him. What about him?” He nodded to Belus. “He’s your go to guy now, isn’t he? He’s the one you can’t even get pregnant without consulting.” Belus’s raised a brow at that, but didn’t interrupt. “Why didn’t you call him?” Ethan slipped out leaving her to face Belus alone.
    Cori was surprised how quickly things in her life went from bad to worse. She thought Danato was going to be her biggest problem in all of this, but apparently not. “Well,” Belus said after a moment. “Care to field that one.”
    “I didn’t call you, because…” Cori realized she hadn’t really ever considered calling Belus. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
    Belus shook his head. “That’s a load of crap. You had calmed down enough to go search for a way to suppress Clark’s men and plot the escape.”
    Cori sighed knowing honesty was her only safety net in all of this. “I didn’t even think to call you. I don’t know why?”
    “I do.” Belus tossed the files beside her. “Care to hear it?” Cori sighed. It didn’t matter if she cared to hear it or not, he was going to share, but she nodded obediently to offer him his segue. “It all goes back to that day you saved us from the elementals. You had to do it on your own. You didn’t trust my plan, so instead of standing up for what you believed, you just slipped away and plotted one out yourself.”
    “Belus…” He didn’t let her finish, but she didn’t really have much to say after that anyway.
    “I’d like to say that you’re selfish, and you want to just do everything by yourself, but I don’t think that’s it. I think you’re just a coward. I think you would rather sit in this jail cell for making the choice to act alone, than stand up for what you believe in and risk not getting it.”
    “So, I’m a selfish coward?” She offered with an eye roll. Belus stepped forward. For a moment, she thought he might slap her, but he threw his finger into her face.
    “You want to continue this, or would you rather I leave without filling you in.”
    She shook her head, feeling the sting of his reprimand like she was a child again. “No, sir,” she managed to get out without crying.
    “I don’t think your selfish Cori.” Belus pulled his finger back. “Quite the opposite, you’re too compassionate. You see something wrong, you want to fix it. You see oppression you want to alleviate it. The problem is you don’t take the long term consequences into account. Not every situation is good versus evil. Whether you want to admit it or not, the elementals are dangerous beings. They needed to be assessed before any consideration for their release took place. I mean physiological and psychological. Yes, we’ve determined they were wrongfully imprisoned here, but with powers as great as theirs, freedom may not be the best choice for them either.”
    Cori nodded. Belus was making sense. She hated that. Clark was on one side of the good and evil spectrum by holding them against their will. Cori was on the other side by wanting to free them into the wild like they might suddenly become functionally members of society. Naturally, Belus was somewhere in between. He understood that nothing in this place was yes or no, mostly it was just a lot of “maybes” with back up plans of “if all