“We should probably get out of here,” Therese said, sinking back into her pocket. “I’d much rather brave the cold for a short time than have another confrontation with a witch. No offense.”
“I’m with the frog-girl,” Freya said.
“Hello?”
We froze at the voice, a man’s voice from the last cell on the left. I didn’t see anyone standing at the bars, but I was certain it had come from that room. Freya took a step in that direction, but I clamped a hand over her arm, shaking my head vigorously. If the man was behind bars, he could very well be dangerous. And besides, I would rather leave this place without anyone knowing we’d been here.
Freya pulled her arm away. “Callum, if someone is a prisoner, we have a duty to assist them.” She hesitated, then stood taller. “It could very well be someone who was in my own situation, rotting in a cell. And besides, enemies of the Ice Queen could be friends of ours. And we could use someone who knows these caves.”
I chewed on my lower lip, weighing her words. She was right, of course, but it still didn’t sit well with me. I followed Freya closely as she walked up to the cell the voice had come from.
The last two cells held stone tables, as well as cabinets against the back walls, full of medieval instruments, many with blades or decorated with spikes. A man was strapped down to one of the two tables in the cell on the left. He looked up as we approached the bars, and relief broke out over his face. “You’re not her,” he said.
I couldn’t open my mouth to reply; I was too stunned by the scene. The man had obviously been tortured. His hands were restrained, fastened to the table by leather cuffs, where he was missing several fingers—and those that remained lacked their fingernails. White bone could be seen through the skin where they’d been severed. Even worse, the lower half of his body appeared burned.
“The keys,” the man said. He looked at us with kind blue eyes beneath graying eyebrows. He was probably well into his fifties and had little hair left on his head, save for over his ears. He nodded toward the staircase, where I spied a hook on the wall, a ring of large keys dangling from it.
“Freya …” I murmured, taking a step back.
“We can’t leave him like this,” she said, gesturing to the man.
“Oh? You don’t think they’ll notice if a prisoner disappears?”
“Mr. Witch,” Therese said at my back. “When someone is in need, it’s our duty to help them. It’s what Auggie would do.”
My heart twinged at Auggie’s name, but I tried to ignore it.Of courseAuggie would rescue this man. Because he had a bleeding heart. And … I chewed on my lower lip as I recalled the relieved faces on the residents of Kingsbury, the children watching the fireworks who likely wouldn’t have had that chance without our intervention. I closed my eyes. “Blast it all,” I muttered. Against my better judgment, I stalked to the wall to retrieve the keys. With any luck, there would be confusion about whether the prisoner was moved by someone else, and we would have enough time to find a new hidey-hole to lie low until the morning.
I glanced up the staircase. Stone steps curved up along the wall and out of sight. It was probably the passage that led into the castle.
Returning with the keys, I unlocked the cell door, throwing it open with more force than I intended. It banged against the outer bars as it collided with them. I sent an apologetic look to Freya before stepping into the cell alongside her, steeling myself for what I would see.
It was worse than it had appeared from the door to the cell. The man had clearly been through a painful experience. Two fingers were missing from each hand, and those that remained were black, a ring of salty white bleeding into the damaged fingers from the healthy skin of the hand. Similarly, what I’d seen of his lower extremities before was an even darker black. The skin appeared charred, those salty white lines randomly running over his dead legs and feet. The maroon robe he wore was all but torn from his body, a goat’s head emblazoned across each of the robe’s shoulders.
“What happened to you?” I managed to choke out. I concentrated on looking into the man’s face, rather than staring at his wounds.
“Tortured by Her Majesty,” the man said, then coughed. He cleared his throat and smiled as he turned back to me. “I’m from a village a few miles south of here. I was trying to help him escape her.”
I frowned, then noticed that he was gazing over at the cell across the aisle.
“There may still be survivors.” The man continued, “If you let me loose, I’m sure I can get out of my own accord.”
Without thinking, my eyes drifted down to his legs. I noted that his toes were all blown to twice their normal size, as if painfully blistered.
“Frostbite,” Freya murmured into my ear. “He won’t have long. The infection will kill him soon.”
“I’m going to look in on your friend,” I said in a gentle voice, laying a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Okay?”
The man nodded, and laid his head back, a look of pain crossing his face.
I met Freya’s eyes for a moment before I slipped out of the cell and walked up to the one across the aisle. This room was set up similarly, but the boy strapped to the table in this cell looked untouched. In fact, he appeared to be sleeping.Maybe he’s dead, I thought, before shaking my head.
Unlocking the cell, I pulled the door open and stared at the boy from the doorway for a moment. He was tall and rather pale, with blond hair. From the look of him, I would guess he was perhaps nineteen. He was so slim that his clothes were loose on him. I entered the cell and felt his wrist to make sure he was still alive, Freya my silent shadow. A steady heartbeat thrummed beneath my fingertips. With a sigh of relief, I unfastened his wrists and ankles from the table. “Sir? Are you all right?” I asked gently.
“You might need to be a little more forceful than that,” Freya said, picking up a white cotton cloth that lay on the table. “I think he was knocked out with chloroform.”
A loud creak suddenly cut through the air, and my head snapped up, alarmed. The sound had come from the top of the staircase. Cold air drifted through the room.
“Boy, you need to wake up,” I growled into the ear of the boy. I stared at him for a moment, then slapped him hard across the face.
