Opium. And who knew what else. Keely had smuggled it in for her, to help when the pain was bad, but she had been too terrified to ever try to use it. She’d seen opium addicts in the market back home, and whatever moment of reprieve it might have offered hadn’t seemed worth it.
But now? At the end? No Keely. No Val. And absolutely nothing she could do to save either of them. Now, it was different.
She sank down onto the side of the bed and held her head in her hands, her hair falling loose around her face. Bard. They had sacrificed themselves to save her. And all she could think of was how she could possibly survive without them.
She would try to escape in the morning. And if that didn’t work…whenthat didn’t work, she would try to get a message out. Somehow. She would keep trying—for as long as she could—but if it got too bad, she would take the powder. All of it. And chase it with the bottle of wine she had hidden behind the wardrobe.
At least that way she would be in control. She would choose how she died. And when. It wasn’t what they wanted for her, but the hell she was living in wasn’t what they’d wanted for her either.
She plucked along the seam of her mourning dress until she found the small blade she’d sewn into the hem. It had broken off Ballanor’s razor one morning, and she had slipped it into her embroidery basket before anyone noticed. A shiver of relief fluttered down her arms. It was still there.
First the powder. Then the wine. Then the blade.
But not until she’d done everything she could to avenge their deaths.
She turned and lay quietly on the bed, curled onto her side facing the room—there was no way she could lie on her back—wondering how long it would take for the party to finish. And how drunk Ballanor would be when it did.
A door opened and then slammed closed in Ballanor’s adjoining room. There was a connecting door, which only locked on his side, and through it she heard a muffled male voice giving orders.
Unusually, there were no answering giggles.
She always tried to warn the women away, but they just laughed at her. The cold, jealous queen. Not especially pretty. Frigid. Barren. Prone to tantrums and childish rages. They could so easily see why he didn’t want her.
And then she was the one who had to listen to their weeping through the door.
Well, she still had to try. She tiptoed up to the door and put her ear to it just as the outer door slammed shut.
She decided to count to two hundred to be certain that the guards had definitely left, when there was a quiet tapping at the door.
She sprang back, heart thumping, and froze. That never happened.
There was another low knock. She didn’t know what to do. Was it a trick? A trap? Then she heard a rough scrape of the bolt.
She looked around the room frantically. She couldn’t get out, and there was nowhere to hide.
The bolt slid the rest of the way, and she knew that it would be opened at any second.
She couldn’t just stand there waiting for whoever it was to burst into the room. She crept back to the door, wishing she was stronger, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open herself, ready to fight.
And immediately stifled a scream as Keely and Nim fell against her and all three of them collapsed to the floor in a rough tangle.
“Bollocks,” said a quiet voice she didn’t know. Nim, obviously.
“Yes. Bollocks,” Keely agreed. Alanna agreed too, but couldn’t find the words as Nim jumped up and set about pulling her and Keely back up.
Nim and Keely were both stripped down to their shifts, shoeless and wild-eyed. The chain that had been wrapped around Keely’s ankle had been moved to her wrist and shackled to Nim’s wrist too, joining them.
Keely looked as if she could commit a murder. Nim had the pale, shocked look of a woman whose life had just disintegrated around her.
But what she couldn’t get her head around was what they were doing in Ballanor’s room. “What’s happening?” she asked softly, knowing that it was nothing good.
“Grendel brought us…,” Nim started, and then, when she saw the look on Alanna’s face and her instinctive step back, quickly added, “He’s gone. The king told him he had to wait for after the banquet. He’s gone back for now.”
“I hate him,” Keely added, her tone slightly stunned as she wiped her hands down her shift, trying to remove the dirt from the floor of the Great Hall.
Alanna hated him more than she’d ever imagined possible. “Why didn’t they take you to the cells?” she asked carefully.
Nim shook her head, her face pale and drawn. “I think there’s more to this punishment still to come.”
