The cells ran along our left side – the right was the roughened stone – extending as far as I could see. The atmosphere was tense, this place had a very bad vibe to it. The cells I could see were occupied by a variety of supernaturals, from all of the races. A lot were demi-fey. These inmates seemed harder than the criminals in Vanguard, eyes dead, brows furrowed, lines of stress across their features. They looked old, and supes didn’t look old until the last few years of their lives.

I found it strange that none of them glanced up as we moved past. We weren’t quiet. Our footsteps scraped the stone and our scents should have tipped them off to our presence.

Orange must have noticed my confusion. “This prison is harsher than Vanguard. The worst of the worst are sent here. There are spells on their cells, like a one way glass. We can see in but they can’t see or hear out.”

Well, that would explain it. And harsh was an understatement. These prisoners were basically in solitary confinement, cut off from all contact with others. For shifters, and many of the other races, it was a torture worse than death.

Lemon picked up the conversation. “They don’t separate the races in here. These cells simply wind their way through and around this mountain.”

“So basically this entire mountain is Krakov?” I tried to wrap my head around the logistics of this. Cells just winding themselves deeper and deeper into the rock.

The twins nodded. “Yes, they allow them out of their cells for a few hours a week, but nothing like the free mingling time you have at Vanguard. It’s not in your best interest to find yourself jailed in here.”

No wonder the faces in the cells were so desperate and desolate, crushed down to shells of supernaturals. I hoped every single one of them deserved to be in this sort of situation, because otherwise … I couldn’t even think about it.

“The dragon marked that were in here … was it this bad for them?” Mischa asked. For the first time in ages, real emotion creased her face.

A dark fury swooped across the twin’s features, an identically swift and brutal expression. “Yes,” was all Lemon said, but the tone of the word said so much more than that.

My own anger was ignited – babies and children in this environment. The Four and any other members of the supernatural community who took part in this needed to spend a few years in a prison. Or dead. Yeah, they needed to spend a few years dead, because there was no redemption for what they had done to hundreds of innocents.