Destined for Deception ✔️

Chapter 21

If Jade hadn't been pregnant – if she hadn't had the survival of her unborn child to think of – she wouldn't have been half as terrified, though still equally as bewildered. Who were these people? Who had sent them?

She recognised the red-headed woman. It had been the same woman who had tried to kill her. She had no clue who the person disguised as Ryleigh was, but she was fully convinced it was not her sister. She had never seen the man before either. Were they humans? They had to be, but what did three humans have to do with anything?

When she woke up from her drug-induced sleep, she was lying on a cold, hard floor. There was a torch mounted on one of the rocky walls, giving some light to the darkness. Was she in a cave? It looked that way but it made no sense. High above her, the stone gave way for air, a little bit of sunlight filtering in.

She was in a cell. Thick, iron bars separated her from the rest of the cave. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. The cell was empty, save a bucket on one side. The stone underneath her was rough, hurting her backside.

An underground prison. Alright. No reason to panic. She touched her chained hands to her abdomen. Surely her motherly instincts would tell her if something was wrong with the baby. A magic-repellent bracelet jingled around her right wrist, cutting off her access to her magic. It was deadly silent in her head. Normally a break like this would be welcome, but not when in enemy territory, and not when that meant she couldn't hear her child. She had gotten used to listening to the vague impulses. No matter how much it had freaked her out at first, now she missed it.

"Ah, you're awake." The red-headed woman stepped inside the room – as far as it could be called a room.

"Who are you?" Jade asked. She pushed to her feet, swaying dangerously. She had to lurch to the bars and hold onto them to keep herself standing. "Where am I?"

"My name is Mikayla," the woman said, "and you're in the heart of a mountain."

"You tried to kill me." In her mind, Jade saw herself on the forest floor again, trying to talk to the woman who was mercilessly using her as a pincushion.

"It was just a sedative," Mikayla said.

Jade shook her head. "I wasn't talking about just now. I mean back in the woods. With the arrows."

"Ah." She smiled. "Yes. That was me. You were supposed to die a slow, silvery death. We underestimated you. Well, we overestimated how much your family hated you." The woman linked her hands behind her back, cocking her head a little and studying Jade. "You don't look like your mother at all, but you do look a bit like your father. Same eyes."

How would this woman know what her mother looks like? "Who do you work for?"

Mikayla smiled and stepped aside, nodding to the cave's entrance. "See for yourself."

Before Jade could ask her what by the Goddess she was talking about, and that it was hard to see anything out of her line of sight as long as she was confined to one space, another woman walked in.

Jade's first thought was, Impossible. The woman she was seeing looked uncannily like her vague memories of her mother. But Cerise was dead, and this woman had to be someone else. Perhaps it was the shape-shifter again. It had to be.

The woman came closer, stepping in the light of the torch. Her face was older than Jade remembered, and it made her blood run cold. Shape-shifters copied people's appearances, and those appearances never changed. Cerise had been dead fifteen years, so if a shape-shifter was using her skin, then it was impossible that that skin was fifteen years older than Jade remembered Cerise being.