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is?”
    His mother answered before he could even open his mouth. “He wants to know what the grail knight told you before you killed him.”
    How nice of his mother to help him for once. Not that it mattered. Bracken laughed at her words. “He didn’t say much. Pietra tore his tongue out after he refused to tell her his clue.”
    In a very fucked-up sort of way, it was nice to know that the fine art of torturing someone for information was lost on the MODs.
    Varian forced himself not to react even though inside he ached dearly for the poor unsuspecting man who’d been up against Morgen’s pets. The fact that MODs held no compassion for anyone was what had enabled them to turn on their own parents. “How did you capture him?”
    One corner of Bracken’s mouth quirked up. “I can’t be giving away our secrets, turncoat. If I did, you might know how to keep us from dragging you off one night while you sleep.”
    Varian gave a low, lethal laugh. “I would pay you to try. Just one night, you and me.”
    Bracken’s mouth flashed back and forth again, letting Varian know that the demon was salivating for the chance. Which meant someone, most likely his mother or Morgen, was holding the demon back.
    His mother stepped closer, placing her hands on his breastplate. “Come, Varian. You visit me so seldom that I don’t want to waste our time down here with the MODs.”
    He started to correct her about the fact that this wasn’t a mother-son visit. But she knew as well ashe did that he hadn’t come to spend time with Mommie Dearest. He allowed her to turn him around and lead him back the way he’d come, which made him wonder what she wanted with him. Normally, whenever he visited Camelot, she left him completely alone.
    Neither of them spoke as they left the underground chamber and headed back upstairs.
    “I’m beginning to get nervous, mum,” he said, as she opened the door to the third floor and led him into a narrow hallway.
    “Why would you be nervous, love? I’ve already told you that we want you on our side. I merely have someone I’d like for you to meet.”
    He froze in the middle of the hallway as her words went through him like acid. “And you also told me that you’d see me dead, which makes me wonder if this person is the one you’d have kill me.”
    She laughed lightly. “No.” She pulled at his arm, but he refused to take another step.
    It was time for him to return to Avalon. “I’ve learned what I wanted to know. I’m leaving now.” Yet before he could move, he felt her snap something onto his wrist.
    He looked down at the small gold bracelet that was heavily etched with the fey words— Era di crynium bey. Freedom is an illusion.
    It didn’t hurt, but he couldn’t figure out why she’d placed it there. “What is this?”
    There was an odd serenity to her face that scaredhim more than an entire raiding party of MODs. “That is your shackle, dear boy.”
    “Shackle for what?”
    She stepped forward to whisper, “You can no longer travel through the veils. You’re stuck here, Varian. More than that, your magick is neutralized so long as the bracelet is on your wrist.”
    He tried to flash himself out of here, but true to her words, nothing happened. “What the hell?”
    “You will join us, Varian.”
    “Never,” he said from between clenched teeth.
    And before he could move, his mother clapped her hands. A group of male Adoni appeared.
    “Take him,” she said coldly.
    Varian struck out at them, but since their magick wasn’t negated, he was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it. He succeeded in knocking several of them back and splitting their lips. In the end, however, he was outnumbered.
    One minute he was in the hallway and the next, he was in the bowels of the northern tower. The cell was small and cramped. Even though he continued to fight, they clapped a chain on each wrist and chained his arms to opposite walls so that he was standing in the room with his arms spread