None of which Ahnna spoke aloud, and yet Katarina said, “Taryn might not have been amenable if James had not acted as he did. Barging into her sanctum in the conservatory, destroying the dream she’d finally achieved, and tearing her away from the Veliant princess she loves so dearly. The mind is a funny thing, Ahnna, because somehow, all the resentment and hate Taryn once held for Amarid and Maridrina is now fixated upon Harendell—James, most especially. When I deliver her to Aren, everything Taryn says, everything Taryn does, will center upon her need to destroy that which she hates most. If you think that she will not stoop to allying with an old enemy to do it, you are mistaken.”
Ice pooled in Ahnna’s stomach that her cousin was being so cruelly manipulated. But she could not deny that the manipulation was masterful in its understanding of Taryn’s psyche, and Bronwyn did not have enough experience with Katarina to see through her schemes.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Ahnna saw James move.
With Katarina’s forearm trapped where it was linked through his, James tried to throw himself over the balcony so as to drag the old queen with him. Katarina screeched, her nails digging deep into Ahnna’s arm, holding on just long enough for the dark guild soldiers to yank James back.
Katarina staggered into Ahnna, off balance. Ahnna dropped low and hooked her shoulder under the old woman’s bony ass, lifting.
The queen screamed, but before Ahnna could fling her into themoat below, the wardens were on her. The man caught hold of Katarina even as the woman jabbed Ahnna with a sharp needle.
Almost instantly, the world began to spin. Around and around, and Ahnna fell to her knees. Slumped on her side, the sky above swirling blue and white, her ears filled with the incessant noise of the marching band. Not unconscious, but unable to move.
“Ahnna!” James was shouting her name, the guards cursing as they struggled to contain him. Then he fell silent, no doubt to the same narcotic.
Above her, Katarina’s awful face appeared, lip bleeding where it had been cut on the jewels adorning her teeth.
“Poison has always been my favorite weapon.” The queen’s black eyes glittered with malice. “Aren fears armies and swords. He fears starvation and disease. But when he falls, choking on his own blood and surrounded by the corpses of his people, the fear he feels as his heart beats its last will be ofme.”
39
James
Paralyzed by the narcotic, Jameshad been powerless to fight back as they’d dragged him to the showers, stripping away the finery and paints to dress him in a rough tunic and trousers. From there he was hauled through the prison and out into a massive courtyard. It was entirely paved, with smoking chimneys at all four corners, the walls high and smooth and heavily manned. But it was to the small slitted openings in the paving that James’s focus went.
There were dozens of them, and from them shrieks and gibberish poured forth. These were the Furnace cells, filled with men and women who were incarcerated for life. The screams were from prisoners who’d lost their minds to the horror of their circumstances, and he and Ahnna were about to join their ranks.
There were two larger openings in the ground, and James was lowered into one. Left to lie on his back, staring up as masons worked to fill in the opening so that only a small slit remained.
He could not move.
Could not scream.
Could do nothing but lie motionless and stare at the small opening that showed the sky. A sliver of freedom to long for but never achieve, because the only freedom to be won in this place was in death.
The stone beneath him was hot, warmed by the heating systembeneath these cells that gave the prison its name. The air grew close and stifling, stinking of the filth of those who had lived and died in this space. Panic filled his chest because it felt like he was being cooked alive.
Ahnna.James tried to scream her name but all that came out was a breath of air. They were burying her in the chamber next to him, bricking her in. For a woman like her, there would be no greater torture. She was a storm over the Tempest Seas, a wind that needed to race free over open spaces, not be locked in a hole in the ground.
“Ahnna.” Her name was no more than a whisper, but with it, James felt the narcotic beginning to lose its hold. His hands twitched and then his feet. With concerted effort, he turned his head, taking in the stone walls of the chamber. A single wooden cup. A tiny wooden pitcher. A bucket, made in the same rectangular shape as the small slit above.
James rolled his head in the other direction. There was enough light that he could make out a small opening in the side of his cell. “Ahnna!”
His voice was loud now, and in the silence that followed, he faintly heard, “James?”
No part of his body wanted to obey, but James painstakingly forced himself to edge sideways until his face was in front of the opening. Through it, he could see Ahnna lying on her back in the small beam of light from above. So painfully still, the only sign of life the faint rise and fall of her breasts. “Ahnna! Ahnna, I can see you. When you can move, look to your right. There’s a small hole.”
Ahnna’s chest shuddered as she drew in a heavy breath. “James?”
“I’m here.” He didn’t add that he was on the far side of a wall. Or that they’d been encased in a cell in the ground with no way out. “You’ll be able to move soon enough.”
Now that the narcotic had lost its hold, James’s strength was flooding back to him. “Keep trying to move.”
He stood, noting that the floor was curved. As were the wallsthemselves. James pressed a hand against the stones, grimacing at the scratches in them. Nail marks and dried smears of blood turned black from age. Stretching up high on his bare toes, he reached for the fresh masonry at the very top, but even when he jumped, it was too high.
Sweat ran down his back from the oppressive heat. James retrieved the water pitcher, filling the small cup. He drank without concern. Katarina wanted him alive, and filthy water in these conditions would make short work of that.
He took another mouthful of the water, glaring at the opening above, which might present an opportunity.
