There’s a hellish crick in my neck, and my body feels like it was run over by a plow, but I crawl to the front of my cell and press my face into a thin gap between the bars. A grisly-bearded guard sits on a stool outside my cell, whittling what looks to be a bird.
“Where’s Alaric?” I ask without preamble. “How long have I been here?”
The guard jumps, and his knife clatters to the floor. He scowls at me as he retrieves it. “His Majesty’swhereabouts are none of your concern.”
My questions keep coming, flowing out of me like a raging river. “Were they able to treat his wounds? Is he stable? Awake?”
“His Majesty’s health isalsonone of your concern,” the guard says with a sniff.
I slam my palm against the bars. “I’m his wife! Of course it’s my concern!”
The guard rolls his eyes. “I’m afraid you lost those privileges, andthat title, when you tried to assassinate him.”
“I didn’t try to assassinate him—” I start to argue. Except that’sexactlywhat I did. It doesn’t matter that I was manipulated and deceived. Or that I changed my mind and tried to save him in the end. My hand still wielded the knife, drew his blood.
Alaric has every right to despise me. I don’t blame him if he never wants to speak to me again. I just need to see him, at least once, to ensure he’s alive and well.
“Please,” I beg hating the smug smile that twists the guard’s paunchy face. “Just a brief audience.”
The man shakes his head and resumes whittling—and humming now, too, to drown out my pleas.
Eventually, I slump to the ground and wrap my arms around my knees. My head is pounding, and I’m drooping with exhaustion, despite having just woken up. But I won’t go back to sleep. I may never sleep again. Every time I close my eyes, I see Alaric’s lifeless body and Rowenna’s scowling face. The vicious flash of her knife and blood. So much blood.
I don’t know how much time passes while I sit in a heap, but the guard changes, and this one is even more implacable than the first. The woman refuses to even look at me and acts as if I haven’t spoken, no matter how loudly I scream. Eventually, I lose my voice and take to pacing instead, prowling the length of the bars, trying to catch a glimpse beyond my cell.
There must be other prisoners in this dungeon, but I can’t see other cells, and I never hear voices. Not even the skittering of mice. And the longer I spend in utter silence, the more the stone walls start to feel like a coffin. Like I’m dead already, buried deep beneath the earth, with no final words, no chance to explain. Not that any explanation could ever be good enough, but I thought Alaric would at least give me the opportunity. I thought the feelings between us ran deep enough that he’d want some sort of closure, if nothing else.
But the guards change again and again, and I’m still alone. Still in the dark. I still haven’t been fed, and I still can’t close my eyes for fear of being accosted by the horrific memories. Minutes feel like days. Hours crawl by like years. And as my eyes grow heavier and my belly grows emptier, my thoughts grow even more erratic.
What if Alaric hasn’t come because he’s dead—or close to it—confined to his bed and clinging to life? Why else wouldn’t he come? Surely, he’d want to condemn me at the very least? Make his hatred known and sentence me to death?
But I remain alone, ensconced in this maddening silence.
When I’m too weak to sit up, they finally toss me some bread crusts and a bowl of murky water. The bare minimum to preserve life. Though part of me wishes they’d just let me die. It would be better than this endless waiting, with nothing to distract me from the parade of regrets, marching across my mind.
I see my parents’ devastated faces. Not only did I blame them for betraying my secrets to Soren and accuse them of never loving me, I failed to save Tashir. They’ve lost two children now, and nothing goodhas come from it. I imagine them receiving the news of my capture and execution and feel certain neither will survive it.
Delphine torments me next. I can’t stop replaying the moment she left me on the mountaintop with nothing but a clipped goodbye, and I vacillate between hating her and worrying about her. I assume she and Cloudia left the Fortress, but where could they possibly go? Cloudia is still so weak, and two lone women crossing the Tomb Flats would be an easy target for Marauders. And maybe that’s what Delphine deserves—what I should want. But I find myself praying they met up with a caravan. That they’re happy together, somewhere. That at least one pair of sisters made it out of this tragedy alive.
Then comes visions of Elodie, with her tinkling laugh and bright smile. A reminder of my own failures and misjudgments—all the ways I don’t deserve her as a friend. I pray she’s been found innocent of any crime, that she isn’t suffering the same indignities. But I also, selfishly, pray she’ll come to my rescue again. That she’ll appear from out of nowhere, like she did on the mountaintop, and hurl a stone through the bars of my cage. Sometimes, I swear I hear her trilling voice, so real and close, I drag myself to the front of my cell, convinced I’ll find her there.
But of course she isn’t.
If Alaric has sentenced me to death, he won’t allow her to visit. She probably hasn’t even tried. She may have saved me from Rowenna, but that was before she knewIwas responsible for stabbing Alaric.
Alaric.
His presence haunts me most, begging me to believe him yet still saving me from the burning cave when I refused; offering immediate forgiveness and insisting I take the gemstone triad moments after stabbing him; the feel of his cold, weak hands squeezing comfort into me, and literally using the last of his strength to save me from plummeting to my death.
After what feels like several months, when my body is so heavy withregret I can no longer rise from the floor, and my mind is so filled with ghosts, I can’t tell the real world from my nightmares, I hear heavy footfalls and a new voice that makes me sit up so fast, stars burst across my vision. I scramble to the front of my cell, this time praying it’s another delusion. Of all the horrors that have haunted me in prison, this is by far the worst.
Which is precisely why it’s real.
Councilor Garitt Von Nevus rounds the corner and excuses the guard with a flip of his hand. Then he marches to my prison cell and leaps back when he realizes the grimy, matted creature pressed against the bars is me.
“Gods of the mountain, you look positively feral,” he says, crinkling his nose and peering down at me. “It’s only been a week.”
“What are you doing here?” I snap, my voice rough from lack of use. “Weren’t you supposed to flee to Tashir? Or were you too afraid to go without my sister? Did you finally realize you’re nothing without her?”
