‘At the beginning,’ Izill said. ‘You tell himeverythingin your heart – even the ugliest parts – because if you don’t, it might haunt you for the rest of your days.’
She promised to be there at the exit when Ezer was done.
Ezer’s steps echoed as she followed a rounded stairwell down, past guards and flickering magefire torches that cast an eerie blue glow on the stones. She walked until her legs felt leaden. With every step, her heart raced faster, until she came to the bottom of the stairwell.
‘Cell 59,’ a stone-faced guard said, after reading Kinlear’s letter. And Ezer was on her way, counting the numbers as she went.
The smell was just like Rendegard.
She must have been far beneath the Citadel, deep in the belly of the rock on which the fortress stood, because the air felt stale. Cold, and lifeless.
She walked into the narrow hallway, past countless cells.
The men and women were mere scraps of things, covered in ragged blankets, curled up amidst their own feces.
A horrific place to be.
And not where she had ever, in a million lifetimes, expected to find her Uncle Ervos.
She approached cell 59 slowly, carefully, her heart in her throat. And when she came to the front and peered inside, she wasn’t even certain Ervos was there until the lump of blankets on the cot shifted.
And a ghost sat upright.
At first, she thought the guards had directed her wrongly. Because the man inside could not be Ervos, kind and larger than life Ervos, aman whose laughter held such joy it could have shaken the stars from the sky.
The man before her was skin and bones. His tattered cloak hung from his shoulders like a sloughed skin. Tears blurred her vision. He was covered in cuts and bruises, gashes large enough they had to have been made by the tail end of a whip.
His cheeks were too shallow, the bones protruding from beneath his skin. His head was shaved, his shock of red hair gone.
She felt like she’d collapsed into another of her dreams.
He had lied to her, all her life.
As long as she’d been searching for the truth of her past. But now that it was right here before her …
She was suddenly afraid.
She backed up a step, but something pushed at her back. The wind.
‘Go,’it whispered.
So, before she could stop herself, she stepped up to the bars.
‘Hello, Uncle,’ Ezer said.
He stiffened at the sound of her voice. Slowly, he looked at her, blinking into the torchlight as if she, too, were a ghost.
‘Ah, my Little Bird,’ he said. ‘I was wondering when you would arrive.’
‘What have you done?’ Ezer breathed. ‘Is it true?’
‘All this time apart, and this is how you greet me?’ he asked.
She crossed her arms. ‘I knoweverything,Uncle. I know about the blood on your hands.’
‘The … ah. The monster pups,’ he said. ‘I did what had to be done for the Five.’
‘Not just the pups,’ Ezer said, and rage ran through her as shecurled her fingers around the cold bars, thinking of how lost and lonely Six had been all this time. Because ofhim. She took a deep breath. ‘I know aboutStyerra.’
