Hipsie. My heart sank into my stomach like a stone at the thought of her locked up in here on my account. I couldn’t just leave here without her. But what else could I do? I’d spoken my piece. She did take a guard’s arm and apparently injured three others.
The guard Clarke had spoken to walked over to my cell and produced a key.
I held my breath as he unlocked it and allowed me to exit.
This was so weird. One second, I was a prisoner, and now I was free? I peered down the hallway and noticed that the man named Clarke was gone.
“Uh, so I just leave?”
The guard, who sported a shaved head and a giant neck tattoo of a sword, just grunted. I exited the cell and followed him down the hall. As I passed other cells, I tried to look inside for Hipsie, but most were empty and others were filled with people I didn’t know.
Pretty soon we were ascending a staircase and I said a little prayer that Hipsie would be set free. I’d come back later and check on her, but first I needed to see my father. I was sure he was worried sick.
At the top of the stairs was another guard with cropped black hair who watched me warily.
“They’re releasing her?” the black-haired guard asked. He was in his early twenties and looked at me with disdain.
I clutched my gloved arms to my chest, only now realizing that my hands were no longer cut or injured. They must have had a healer mend me.
Was it Ariyon?
The tattooed guard who stood by me nodded. The guard with the short black hair didn’t move for what felt like an entire minute. Only when the man at my side cleared his throat did he get up and use his key to unlock the door. The door swung open and into a courtyard full of sunlight, and I suddenly wanted my freedom. The way this one guard was looking at me was giving me chills.
“Stay out of trouble,” the short-haired guard growled as I stepped into the open doorway.
“Dude, she’s just a kid,” the other guard said.
“She’s a Bane,” the mean guard said with a growl and I swallowed hard.
Note to self: watch your back.
I stepped away from the outer door and walked, a little stupefied, through a garden and away from the giant castle that loomed behind me.
One second, I was a prisoner, and now they just let me go and I had no idea where I was? We were perched on a hill, and down below I could see the vast city beyond and the gilded gates that walled it in.
She’s a Bane.
I still hadn’t fully processed the Marissa Bane evil birth mother thing yet. I only cared about my father and Hipsie right now. Running through the city and all the way to the main gate, I screamed when I saw my father waiting just inside of it, looking over the throngs of people nestled by the market.
“Father!” I bellowed.
His head snapped in my direction and he nearly sagged with relief. We both ran to each other. Reaching for my gloved hands, he tried to take them and squeeze, but I shrank back. Lifting them up, I showed him the burned and cut holes from my tussle with the guard and he nodded, eyes tearing up.
“Oh, thank the Light you’re okay, Fallon. I prayed the entire three-hour walk.”
I looked around the space, the people going about their day unbothered by our presence. “Did someone come talk to you?” I asked him. He was inside the gates, so I was taking that as a good sign that the gentleman Clarke had explained things to him.
My father nodded. “He just left. Fellow a bit younger than me said he was a master-teacher at some school you will go to.”
I winced at the thought of going to that school with the snobs I’d met in the courtyard the night my father fell sick. Eden was great, but the other girls, and Ariyon, had all turned out to be bad apples.
“Did it sound mandatory?” I hedged. Maybe I had misinterpreted our conversation and I could just go back to Isa and forget any of this happened.
My father looked over his shoulder and I noticed a guard standing ten paces away with a hand on his sword, glaring down at me. “He said we were not permitted to leave the city and your attendance at school every single day wasnotnegotiable.”
I sighed. What had I gotten us into?
“I’m sorry, Dad…” My voice caught as the guilt of dragging him into this pressed in on me. “I don’t know how all this happened—one second I was just working at Hipsie’s and the next…” I could no longer speak, and my father reached out to grasp my covered shoulders.
