Ballanor flung her into the grasp of two of the guards, who immediately pinned her arms, half lifting her off her feet as they started to drag her from the cell.
Ballanor wiped his hands clean on the sides of his tunic as if he’d been soiled by touching her. “Take her to the square.”
His voice sounded strangely distorted, as if he was speaking underwater. Or perhaps she was underwater? Everything was an undulating blur of fractured images. All sound deadened except the rough in and out of her own harsh breaths.
The humiliating, muscle-wrenching pain of being manhandled down the stairs and through the palace grounds felt almost as if it was happening to someone else.
Strange things caught her attention. The light glinting on an open window. The call of a hunting bird, high and distant. The way that many boots marching on cobbles set up a discordant echo through the courtyard. The flicking manes of the beautiful sets of matched bays standing ready, harnessed to two waiting open-topped carriages.
Someone hauled her arms behind her, binding her hands together with a rough rope, but she hardly noticed her screaming sinews in her distracted concentration on the soot smeared across the staring face of a young kitchen boy.
She was unceremoniously picked up and shoved into one of the royal carriages, and she stumbled gracelessly in the footwell before sinking onto the seat. She leaned forward helplessly as she tried to make space for her bound arms, her body shaking in fear and pain.
The coachman gave the command, and the coach rattled and shuddered along the cobbles of the narrow bridge over the new moat that Ballanor had commissioned after Ravenstone. He had utterly destroyed what remained of the gardens his mother had cherished, the gardens that she had walked in with Val. There was nothing that he hadn’t desecrated.
The second carriage trundled behind them, and she turned to see Ballanor sprawled out across the soft leather seats, uncaring of his dirty tunic and splayed legs, his guards walking at pace beside him. Almost like the wedding procession she had never had.
It occurred to her, as they approached the freshly completed outer wall with its massive wrought iron gates, that it was only the second time she had ever been let out of the palace grounds since her marriage. So strange to think that the entire remainder of her life would take place in the square that she had never been allowed to visit.
There was a bevy of green uniformed guards ranked along the front of the gate and spread over the walkway on the wall. The soldiers jumped to attention, hauling at the heavy gates, then standing stiffly as the carriages and soldiers passed through and into the wide Clock Tower Square.
On the two occasions that she’d passed through it, the square had been an elegant, tree-lined plaza filled with cafés and dominated by a glorious gold filigree astronomical clock set into a high tower. The preferred meeting place of the affluent nobility of the city, where they could drink tea and eat ices or visit the clockmaker’s luxury store.
All of that was gone, destroyed for Ballanor’s new wall. In its place were ruined storefronts and piles of broken bricks and litter. And, at the back, past the surging crowds, a massive wooden platform surrounded by Blue Guards in full parade regalia, swords drawn.
On the platform stood a huge, dark gallows. Built for Val. And now her.
She flicked her eyes away. Somehow, in all the destruction, the clock had been left untouched. Its richly detailed astronomical dial showed the sun and the moon in the sky in vivid colors.
Her eyes snagged on the statues standing around the clock face, one for each of the races. A stern-faced Nephilim with fiery red hair held gleaming measuring scales aloft, while a muscled Tarasque with glittering scales winding up its arms bore a massive sword. The dark, black-eyed Apollyon, with evocative swirling family tattoos etched into its skin, stood watch. The reclusive Pythic seer, cowled and with eyes bound, lurked at the back. And, of course, the Mabin soldier, his powerful wings unfurled, looked ready to leap into the sky as his sightless eyes watched over the crowd.
Her breath scraped desperately in her throat, and she forced herself to breathe as the carriage came to a rough stop and her guard grabbed her bound hands and hauled her to the ground.
Around them the mass of angry humanity booed and shouted obscenities. Blaming her for the lives lost at Ravenstone, the broken treaty, the renewed war, their conscripted sons, their lost city. Someone threw a parcel of rotten vegetables, and the stinking mass splashed her face and slowly slid down her dress.
But she hardly noticed. Instead, she lifted her eyes to the wall flanking the platform, to its glorious inlaid clock, and stared at the lone Mabin soldier, half dreaming that he was Val.
She had to look away to step carefully up the rough stairs and onto the platform, pushed relentlessly forward by the cursing guard as he vented his fury at having been caught by the putrid spray of the rotting vegetables.
As soon as they stopped, she turned her eyes back to the Mabin. Wishing he was Val. Wishing that she could open her mouth and tell him the truth. That she loved him. That she had loved him since that first terrible day when he had kneeled beside her and told her she would be okay.
But he looked so grim. So forbidding. He was angry with her. She knew it. And she knew she deserved his rage. His censure. She was the reason he was hurt.
A lone tear tracked slowly down her face as she waited for him to leave her, as she knew he would. She’d told him to go, after all.
And then they would kill her.
Chapter Six
The small boatrocked precariously as Val stood, trying to balance among the willow traps as the stink of mud and eels assaulted him.
Jos and Garet wrinkled their noses as they stood with him in the shallow, flat-bottomed boat, keeping to the shadows where the river lapped against the massive stone wall.
Thank the gods Nim wasn’t with them. And not for lack of trying either. She’d been adamant that since those who could fly were going, she should join them. Nothing had dissuaded her. Nothing until Tristan had arrived, muttering something about a promise she’d made.
Hell, he didn’t want to be grateful to Tris, but standing in the stinking, rocking boat, about to fling themselves over the city walls, he was damn glad that his former friend had kept his sister well away.
Somehow, he’d made it through the interminable ride from camp, taking back roads and narrow paths through the woods as the sun climbed ever higher. By the time they’d reached the riverbank, his shoulders were a tight, aching mass of knots.
