The guard jerked her shoulders, a clear sign to shut up. She glanced up and watched Lumi circle one last time before darting off back toward the lower city. She hoped Lumi got the message. They needed to focus on the Dragonborn and the resistance. Sofia would take care of herself.
“I will be there the moment you tell me,”Chalia said, an ever-present reminder that Sofia wasn’t alone.
When a servant—a Dereyan Sofia didn’t recognize—opened the door, it only took a moment before they were excitedly calling out for Harlow. Sofia didn’t breathe, waiting, her hands cuffed behind her back and useless. Her body trembled, but she kept her chin held high. The entryway was wide, with a sweeping staircase centered opposite the doors. The room was ornate and overdone, just as she remembered, with more gas lamps than strictly necessary lining the walls and gold embellishments gleaming in the flickering light. An enormous painting of the chief commander in his full regalia hung on the left wall. The painting was new, yet the painter had smoothed out his wrinkles anddarkened the gray from his hair, as if a veneer of youth might make up for the stain on his soul from the thousands he’d killed.
Sofia couldn’t stop the shudder than ran through her as Chief Commander Harlow appeared at the second floor landing. His eyes widened, and a grin overtook his face. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he swept down the stairs.
“I didn’t think you’d take me up on my offer and just turn yourself in.”
Sofia expectedto be taken to the military prison. Yet, it didn’t take long for them to turn left down a thin alley she’d never been down before. And the hairs on her neck prickled with unease when Harlow, newly dressed in his finest leathers, brought them to a dilapidated door. He turned the guards away with a wave of his hand. She wondered if she could reach the dagger on her leg with her hands cuffed behind her back, but with barely a flicker of movement, Harlow had his own dagger out and placed none-too-gently against her neck.
“Breathe wrong and I’ll push you down the stairs and call it a day. You’re quickly losing any value to me.”
“I’ve never had any value to you,” she said, but she walked forward all the same when he opened the door to a dark and narrow set of stairs leading down.
“Alas, I thought you did when you were young, but my soft heart steered me wrong. I should have let the general kill you when I had the chance. I can only assume he met his fate at your hand.”
No, that was your precious protégé.
She turned to him, smiling. “He died on his knees where he belonged. I’ll make sure your death isn’t nearly so quick and clean.”
He laughed, and her jaw clenched. They didn’t speak again and when they reached a door at the bottom, he reached carefully around her to open it. Light blinded her, torches ringing the large, cavernous space, but as her eyes adjusted, her breath caught at the sight beforeher. She could just make out the white sheen of scales a few stories down at the bottom of the giant pit.
Harlow’s captive dragon sat below, wings folded and head resting on their claws. A giant collar circled their neck, and even from this distance, she could see the raw red skin below where the scales had worn away.
“Eha,”Chalia’s voice was stronger in her mind, as if the dragon were somewhere just beyond the walls of the cavern.“I’m coming.”
“Wait,”Sofia said, unsure of what Chalia’s plan was, given their location, but she didn’t want a dragon barging in.“Not yet.”
She almost felt the snap of Chalia’s teeth at her frustration.
Eha was nearly twice the size of Chalia, yet the chain holding her neck barely allowed her to hold her head up properly while lying down.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Harlow’s voice was closer than she expected, and she shuddered at the heat of his breath on her neck.
“She’s not an it.” Sofia glared over her shoulder.
“It is to me,” he said, speaking through a bright, almost genuine smile.
“You captured a god and chained her up in your basement. And you’re…proud?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I captured a god. And soon, I’ll be able to control it. Why wouldn’t I be proud? Would you prefer I grovel? Bow down before that pathetic creature? And here I’d thought you might have gotten smarter after your death.”
He motioned Sofia to the staircase. She was all too happy to follow the wooden steps down to the dragon.
“You’re Chalia’s?”
“Eha,”Sofia replied. The dragon’s voice was lower and softer in the mind than Chalia’s.
“He said you’d come.”She sounded exhausted.
Sofia’s stomach twisted.“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
She became all too aware of Harlow behind her, studying her with a keen awareness that made her skin crawl.
“You’re talking to it.”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t take him for an idiot, but she wouldn’t be pulled into confirming anything, either.
