Durvla
I’mon edge as I pace my bedchamber—notminefor much longer. I’m stuck in my own world without anyone to tell me what’s going on. I’ve since changed out of my ballgown and into a lightweight slate blue dress with loose sleeves. My bare feet throb as badly as my head does, but I can’t sit down. I can’t quell the unease inside me or the suffocating stillness that filled me after I put the bracelet on.
I’ve tried convincing myself that it’s all a coincidence. I’ve worn this bracelet for as long as I can remember. There’s no way that it was a dampener or whatever Kilkenny called it. There’s no way that I’m… likehim.
I can’t get the sound of his voice out of my head. It was both entrancing and disturbing. I want to believe that it was some kind of trick—that it wasn’tmagic—but I can’t remember when last I heard anythingwith such clarity.
You’re braver than you give yourself credit for, he’d told me.Keep beingbrave.Don’t break.
I laugh at the memory of it. Brave. Right. I’m anything but brave. All I want to do is go home and not have to deal with princesses and sewing and overly flirtatious cooks and servants. Not to mention explosions.
Stalking toward the window, I draw back my curtains and glance out. Thick, grey smoke billows against the midnight sky. My chest tightens as there’s a sudden tremor behind me. I turn quickly—my door has been broken down by a royal guard in maroon. Two brig guards in charcoal livery storm in, one holding a set of iron manacles.
Not again.
My heart starts to beat in triple time and my head lightens. The soldiers march toward me, and I back away, hitting the windowsill.
“Durvla Garrick,” says one guard. “You stand accused of treason by the decree of Her Majesty Queen Morwenna Meredyth, the Good.”
Treason? Has Kilkenny finally exposed me as an Undesirable? Did they discover that my bracelet was a dampener? That I have… magical dreams?
Whatever the guard says next, I cannot decipher behind the black spots waxing and waning in my vision. The room feels smaller than the crawl space where we’ve kept Taig hidden during raids. The air is too dense to breathe.
I barely feel the soldiers latch the manacles onto my wrists. My limbs grow heavier as they tug me out of the room, my feet stumbling along numbly. My pulse rushes in my temples, sweat cooling on the back of my neck as the soldier continues to haul me away from my freedom. I was almost home.Almost.
But treason is a death sentence.
A fresh wave of dizziness hits me like a swift kick.
They’re going to hang me. I’ll never see Taig or Osheen or anyone back home again. My breaths come in fast puffs. I gulp down air as my vision spots until I’m rendered sightless.
The floor rushes up toward me with no return.
I come to with a gasp for air, jolting upward against something hard. Pain blossoms in my wrists, and my head hammers painfully. An image of a large figure swims in my bleary vision as I try to focus.
A pair of mismatched eyes, one clouded and scarred stares back at me. “Welcome back,” says the soldier woman. Sergeant Angharad.
No …
I look around frantically at my surroundings. A single lamp barely illuminates the room; the walls are dark stone and the floor unfinished. I’m in a chair, my hands manacled behind my back. I tug against them but the metal bites into my skin and I swallow a gasp of pain.
“Answer truthfully and you’ll be released from this room,” says Sergeant Angharad.
I turn her words over in my mind. Released fromthis room… I’m not going home, am I?
“Do we have an understanding?” Angharad asks.
I nod, my chest heaving, tightening painfully.
“Have you ever consorted with faeries or any being from the Otherworld?”
I almost bark out a laugh. “No.”
“Have you harbored an Undesirable or covered for someone who has?”
“No.” Gods, I hope my voice sounds steady.
She leans in, her eyes narrowed, and my heart is ready to break through my ribs. “Are you sure?” she asks me.
