Free The Cage King by Danielle Monsch Page B

was only in contained situations. I was never in any danger.”
    Contained? Being near things that used torture and death like foreplay before they did so much worse, and now Nalah and he might be facing that here? “Yeah, well this situation sure as fuck ain’t contained, and you’re telling me something here’s so strong it’s messing with you inside a place that’s supposed to stop magic? This stops now. We’re gone.”
    Her long fingers curled around his forearm as he started past her to pack their belongings. “That won’t happen, and the days of you telling me what I will and won’t do never existed, so don’t think they start now. This is what I have to do.”
    Underneath her pissed-off attitude existed something else. It was there in the shaky way she held herself, in the pleading mixed with the attitude. She was desperate to remain. “Why do you have to stay? We get out, you tell the Guild everything you know to this point, maybe it’s enough they can get other people in action. They got a thief here already.”
    “And he needs me.”
    Her attitude was pure stubbornness, something she always had in abundance. “What’s going on? What are you hiding from me? And don’t lie or I swear I will go to Beylor now and drop out.”
    With those words, her body half crumpled on itself as she sagged forward, her hands reaching out to steady herself on the kitchen table. “What Beylor has…it’s my mom’s ring.”
    She couldn’t mean…? “What?”
    “The one with the red stone. I always wore it on the chain around my neck.” She swallowed, looked very obviously not at him. “The one I wanted to have as my wedding ring when I got married. That’s what Beylor has.”
    “You’re telling me your ring is some big-time magical item? What does it do?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, and as he was about to lash out, she looked up and held out her hands in a pleading gesture. She drew a deep breath, went into what he always dubbed ‘story mode’. “I never got a chance to tell you, but the ring got stolen by that pawnbroker on Third right before Jac died. When I went to get the ring back I met the Guild. They were there for the ring, and they were the ones who told me it was magic. Said if I wanted it back I had to train with them. What it does is still a mystery to me. I haven’t gotten strong enough to break through its magic.”
    “Doesn’t make sense they’d send you after it without telling you about it. And that still doesn’t explain what Beylor’s doing with it.”
    Her fingers wiggled, like she wanted something she could write with to illustrate her point. “The biggest protection for any magical item is no one knowing what it does. Because the possibilities are near infinite, people can spend years on even a medium-level item trying to find out what magic it contains. But once you know what an item does, it’s only a matter of time before you control the item. The Guild can’t take the risk of that information getting out, so since I don’t know already, they aren’t going to enlighten me. As for Beylor-” She broke off, looked him straight in the eye, serious and strong and with nothing of the little girl in her he always strove to protect. “If I answer that question, this has to remain between us.”
    “You have my word.”
    A nod to acknowledge him, and pleasure buried itself in his bones with that quick acceptance. Even with everything that lay between them, she still took him at his word. “Not long ago, Guild headquarters was attacked. When that happened, beyond killing a lot of people, the attackers broke into a vault that held the most powerful magical items in the Realms and stole a good number of them. The Guild counterattacked not long after and got some back, but you can imagine in that chaos how many items were bundled off by different lowlifes. They were able to track my mother’s ring to Beylor.”
    “And that magic tonight? It’s after the ring?”
    “I think