I’m hollow, a husk of who I once was.
The guards toss me like a bag of rubbish into the last cell; the one that, until this afternoon, belonged to Queen Mor.
I slump against the dirt and examine my crushed hand.
It’s bright red, the skin pulsing and hot. The pain is so intense, it radiates up my arm and into my shoulder, like a physical rope of aching fire.
I’m almost grateful for it; the agony gives me something to focus on that isn’t the emotional pain of my failure.
The dungeons are a pit of darkness, with only the shadowy glow of the distant faerielight by the guard’s station to see by.
I don’t know how long I sit in that cell, slipping in and out of consciousness.
It must be at least a full day by the way my stomach starts gnawing at itself. My broken hand throbs with a burning pain so intense, sometimes it’s hard to breathe.
I’m drifting somewhere in the hazy space between sleep and wake when I hear a soft ringing sound and look up to see Eloree knocking at my bars.
Her large eyes are frightened, but her voice is steady. “They won’t let your sister visit, ma’am, but she did convince His Majesty to let me bring you some of your things.”
In her arms she holds a blanket stuffed with objects.
Gently, she unfurls it and passes them to me one by one. A leather-bound journal, an inkwell and fountain pen, a glass carafe of water, and a pillow small enough to slip under the bars.
The last object, she handles with great care. It’s glowing a dim blue, small enough to fit within the palm of her hand.
It passes under the bars with only a hair’s breadth to spare.
I gasp softy, and the glow turns to a warmer shade of blue, the color of the sky on a crisp fall day.
It’s the lux flower Emmett gave me, that afternoon he tookme to the waterfall and told me this place could be beautiful. I ruined it by goading him into a petty argument, just like I ruin everything else.
I clutch the flower to my chest and find it slightly warm. It’s the first comfort I’ve had, in this hole at the center of the earth. No,not the earth, I remind myself. England will be forever out of reach to me.
It’s funny that the thought of rainy afternoons, a warm cup of tea, the Thames winding through the center of the city, is what finally makes me cry.
I’ll never again see the Covent Garden arcade, or the trees of Hyde Park. I’ll never walk through Belgrave Square with a parasol over my shoulder, or bound up the steps of my family home.
I’ll never see my mother and father again.
I’ll never see Emmett again.
I cling to the hope that Lydia is smart enough to keep her mouth shut about me, to send me down the river and protect herself and our parents. I am all right with dying if it means she gets to keep on living.
I made that decision days ago, when I first conceived of this plan, though I hoped it wouldn’t go quite like this.
I feared if things went south and we didn’t get the opportunity to implement Rhion’s plan of threatening Bram with the knife and asking him to abdicate or face prison, we’d need a second option.
Emmett knew I planned to threaten Mor into opening the door, but he didn’t know about the second part of my plan. I can’t bring myself to regret it, not even now.
For all the time Emmett spent living under the same roof as Mor, I fear he doesn’t understand her as well as I do.
Above all things, Mor loves her son. Even threatened with death, I knew she would not betray him.
Emmett believed we were going to return to London, all of us, and let Mor spend a few weeks ruling as she used to. We would then use our allies throughout the country to bind her in iron chains once more and have her cede power.
But she’d never do that, not if it meant leaving Bram behind forever.
When Bram caught me with Emmett, I knew he’d never let me close enough to kill him again. I had permanently severed what little trust he had left in me.
