“We won’t let you—”
Bing raises his hand to quell our protests. “Somebody needs to be here to set off the distraction we put together. This is part of the plan, and I’ve made my decision. Go.” He looks at each of us in turn. “Let me do this one last thing for all of you. I don’t have family out there. Osian took everything from me. So let me do this. Go now. No more time to waste.”
He’s right. We’re out of time. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for—our escape. No one says a word. One by one, we each go our separate ways until it’s just Bing and me.
“Here,” he says. “We found this in the king’s linens. I think it’s your prince’s.”
I glance down and see that Bing is holding Dietan’s royal knife in its well-worn sheath.
We lock eyes, mine becoming misty, and I take the knife from his hand. He wraps his fingers around mine. “I wish you speed and safety, Aren of Evandale.”
“I…” I almost repeat his words back to him, but Bing will find no safety. A crushing ache settles in my heart, and I try to smile. “Thank you, Bing. You are a good man.”
He gives my hand a squeeze before releasing it. I slip the knife into my shoulder bag as I watch him shuffle down the passage in the darkness back to the kitchen that he will never leave alive again.
…
It takes all my strength to yank open the door that leads from the servants’ tunnel to the morgue’s overflow chamber, where Dietan has been hidden in a secret room. I’ve studied the map that Arnfried drew for me, but now that I’m here, I feel woefully unprepared.
I lift my candle higher, widening its flickering circle of light. The chamber is dark and empty, save for the rows of bodies laid on stone shelves on either side, stitched into their bags.
Even with a kerchief tied over my nose and mouth, I gag. My eyes water at the rancid stench of death.
As I reach the center of the room, a chill crawls over my skin and my pulse pounds in my ears. It feels like the corpses are watching, waiting in the oppressive silence, as dread coils tight around my chest.
In the darkness, I can’t see the latch for the hidden door depicted in Arnfried’s drawing.
With one hand clutching the candle and the other over my mouth, I slink silently across the room in my soft-soled slippers until I reach the back wall and spot the iron hook protruding from the mortar between bricks. A drawstring sack hangs from the hook, full of sewing supplies for stitching the corpse bags, just like Arnfried indicated.
I pull down on the hook as instructed. Just like the door behind the oven, it reveals a passageway. For a moment, I hesitate, terrified of what I’ll find.
Is he here? Is he even alive? Or did they find him when he woke up? There are a thousand ways this could have gone wrong, and I picture each of them as I stand frozen in the doorway.
Move!I tell myself.
I step inside the cramped, dark space, candle held high. Dietan’s body lies on the floor, taking up the entire length of the chamber. The bag has fallen off his face, and his arms are limp across his body.
My stomach lurches. He looks truly dead. His face is swollen and purple, with more bruises since I saw him this morning. My heart beats frantically as I kneel at his side and place the candle on the floor next to me.
Every fiber of my being is shaking in agony, as I feel his wrist for a pulse. Panicked, I keep searching, but there’s nothing. His skin is cold, and his face is gray.
Dear goddess, I’ve killed him.
I move my fingers over his neck, searching for a pulse probing the tendons and muscles, my palms clammy with perspiration. I feel…
Nothing…
Harvest Mother, forgive me, I didn’t mean to—
Then I find it—the slightest hint of a pulse, slow yet steady. I sit back on my heels and huff out a breath. He lives.
Thank the goddess.
“Dietan,” I whisper, pressing a hand to his cheek. His skin is so cold. How can it be so cold? “Dietan, wake up.”
He doesn’t move. I rummage around in my pocket for the vial of essence of hartshorn that Rosamond stole for me from the laundry chamber. I hold it to his nose.
I jerk the vial back when he startles violently. His face flushes, eyes wide as he sits bolt upright at the pungent odor that could wake the dead, which it appears to have done.
