Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
T rapped.
It still hasn’t entirely sunk in. I listen to the men bricking the door up behind me, to ensure that I won’t abandon my post as the sacrifice to the goddess. If I panic and flee the tower, I doom the war fleet, and I doom the crops for the next seven years. It’s vital that I stay where I am. That I do my duty to my people.
Seven years of this.
I can come out when I’m thirty-one.
Yay.
The noise of the bricks being smacked into the mortar echoes inside me. I lean against the sled full of trunks, and it’s so heavy that it doesn’t budge. I pull myself atop one of the trunks, settling my skirts in the darkness and listening. It’s only when silence greets me that I realize that the noise of the bricklaying has stopped. They’re done.
I’m truly bricked up inside this tower. No one will know if I am here for another year, when they deliver more food. I’m to spend seven years in this darkness, with nothing and no one.
My chest becomes tight.
I jerk to my feet, panting, and I claw at my bodice. I can’t breathe. I can’t draw a deep breath and I desperately need one. Gasping, I tear at the laces that go up the front of my bodice in such an ugly (but practical) manner, until my breasts bounce free and the entire corset loosens with a rush, my knife clattering to the floor. I lean against the trunk, sucking in deep breath after deep breath in the darkness.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
I surge forward, feeling in the absolute darkness for the wooden doors. My trembling hands hit stone first, and I move along the cold wall until I find the wood of the doors. It takes me a moment to locate the handle, and then I tug on it.
The doors don’t budge. They don’t even groan. It’s as if they’re completely and utterly locked in place. The anxious knot returns to my throat and for a moment, I feel as if I’m going to vomit. Or cry. Or both. I give the door another tug, harder this time, and it’s useless. With a moan, I press my brow to the wood, collapsing against it.
You can break down later , I tell myself. I know you want to cry, but you can do that after you pull yourself together. Find your medicine. Light a candle. Get to your room, where it’s safe. There’s too much to do and no one is going to help you.
Right. Okay.
Taking a deep breath, I turn around—and scream.
Two gleaming, shining, evil green eyes gaze out from the darkness across the room. The Fellian. The one that I need to kill before they kill me.
And they can see in the dark.
Dragon shite.
“Stay away!” I cry out in a trembling voice. “Leave me alone!” I drop to the floor, feeling for Erynne’s knife. How could I be so careless as to abandon my only weapon moments after I enter the tower? I’m an idiot.
To my relief, I find the knife quickly and jerk it from its sheath, holding it aloft in the pitch black around me. I look up, searching for the eerie green eyes, but they’re gone. Heart pounding, I get to my feet and peer into the darkness, listening for sounds, but I think I’m alone again. There’s no sound but that of my pulse.
With a relieved little sigh, I clutch the knife close. “Am I alone now?” I whisper.
The blade shivers.
“Is she going to kill me?”
There’s no response, but at the same time, the air feels pregnant, as if there’s a question unanswered.
“Are you sure?” I ask the knife.
No answer. Hmm. That’s not a good sign. Either I’m asking the wrong thing or the knife isn’t as omniscient as I thought.
One problem at a time. I need to find my quarters and get situated. I need to make my medicine, too. Already I’m feeling weak and a little sweaty, a sign that I need my dose and to eat something to settle my stomach afterwards. Riza will have a bag prepared for me for today, I know. I just need to find it. I run my hand over the mountain of trunks, but finding where anything is stashed feels monumental. Luckily, I have help. I touch one trunk. “Is there a candle in here?”
Silence from my knife.
“Here?” I touch the next trunk and wait.
It takes four more trunks before I get a positive response, and I haul out the one in question, which is underneath a large, heavy garment bag full of my petticoats. I drag the trunk to the floor and fumble with the latches, pulling it open. Feeling around inside, I’m relieved when I find a bag of thick candle tapers and a wrapped pair of strikers, along with a tinderbox. I scrape the strikers against each other, clumsy. I’ve never done this before without Riza’s supervision, and I all but laugh with relief when I get a spark.
When I finally get a candle lit, it feels like a major accomplishment.
Relieved, I settle the candle into a chamberstick holder and bring it aloft, looking around. The main floor of the tower here is huge, the ceiling high above in the darkness. All of the sounds I make echo, which tells me it’s larger than expected. At least I’ll have room to move about. I set the candle atop one of the trunks and get to my feet, brushing off my skirts…
…and I realize my bodice is gaping open, my breasts hanging out. Whoops. I quickly stuff them back into place, doing the laces up loosely. After all, no one’s here to see me.
Except the Fellian, I remind myself. That makes me lace a little tighter, because they saw me with my tits out, and the realization is a vulnerable one. I grip my knife tightly and pick up my candle again.
Time to explore my new home. Somewhere out there is the Fellian, but maybe they’re just as rattled as I am. Maybe they want to be left alone, too. If this room is any indication, there’s plenty of space in this tower for both of us.
I move around the bottom of the tower. There is a large staircase off to one side that goes up, and another across from it, going down. Along the wall of the staircase going up are a few old tapestries depicting religious scenes, and along the opposite wall, across from the stairs, is an altar to the three gods, each one depicted in an old-fashioned-looking triptych. There’s a scatter of ancient, faded rose petals on the altar along with gutted candles.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel much like praying at the moment,” I tell the altar. If anything, I have the urge to make a crude gesture at the goddess, but that won’t win me any favors, either, so I tamp it down and continue on. I expect to see a lot of dust and cobwebs everywhere, but there’s nothing. Unless someone came in and cleaned this place up for us (which I highly doubt) perhaps it’s been magically cleaned? Is there even such a thing? I have no idea.
I head downstairs first, and it looks like a kitchen below. I see a large fireplace and hearth set into a wall. There’s no wood, of course, and I have a momentary bout of panic as I realize I’ve got no wood with which to cook my food. How is it that we packed everything but wood? Then, I think about the trunks and the huge sled, and realize I’ve got that covered, at least. I’ll just have to be judicious with how much I use.
That’s something to worry over tomorrow.
The hearth is scraped clean of ash and has clearly not been used in forever. I step inside it and hold my candle up, trying to see if there’s daylight at the other end of the chimney. Maybe I can crawl up it and climb my way out of the tower if I get desperate enough.
There’s a small hole of sunlight at the top. A very, very small hole. Either this chimney goes up a very long way—all the way up to the battlements—or it’s a tight squeeze. Either way, it’s no good to me. Disappointed, I explore the rest of the kitchen. There are pots and pans, all of them battered and ancient looking, and I wonder if prior residents have left them here over the ages. There’s a spice rack and some dried leaves hanging up, but when I touch one, they crumble to dust. I find an old root cellar with a few shriveled roots that are probably older than my ancestors, but no food other than that. For water, there’s a well-pump over a large sink, and when I prime the pump like Riza showed me, the thing groans and a trickle of water comes out.
I won’t die of thirst at least. I eye the largest copper tub in one corner of the kitchen, and I suspect that’s where all the bathing is done. Ugh. At the palace, servants brought hot water up to a tub in my rooms and poured it out for me when I was done. I’m realizing the enormity of everything I’ll have to do here. Even the simplest of tasks is going to be a daunting one.
Cry about it tomorrow, I remind myself. Keep going. One foot in front of the other.
I head back upstairs with my candle, and this time I go up the other staircase. It curves around, the steps narrow and tall, hugging along the interior wall of the tower. There’s a few more narrow tapestries here, but they’re so faded and gray that I can’t tell what I’m supposed to be looking at. I count forty steps before I come to a landing, and, panting, I pause at the top and look around. On the first landing, there’s a large wooden door similar to the exterior door, and two smaller ones farther down the curving hall. After a momentary exploration, I pause in front of the largest door. Is this where the Fellian is? Or is this my room? Or something else?
I’ll never know unless I open the door, I reason with myself, and, with a burst of bravery, I push it open.
It’s dark inside, my candle flickering with the breeze the door creates. I hold my light outward, and then the green eyes blink into existence. Before I can suck in a breath, someone hisses at me.
“This chamber is mine .”
My lips part. I gape in shock and nearly drop my candle.
That is not a woman’s voice. It’s deep and rich and very, very angry .
For a brief moment, I’m terrified. Fear quickly gives way to indignation, and I draw myself up straight. What kind of fools sent me to live seven years in a locked tower with a grown man? An enemy man? Are they not concerned with my virtue?
(I mean, I’m not, but that doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be.)
“Excuse you,” I snap back at him. “I live here now, too. I’m trying to find out where my quarters will be, so don’t get snippy with me.”
“It’s not in here,” he snarls, nothing but a pair of glittering, unholy eyes in the darkness. “You can have the next floor. This one is mine.”
“Fine,” I retort. With a withering glare, I toss my head and march down the hall.
It’s only when the door slams shut again that I can breathe. I suck in a deep lungful of air, tremors racing through me. Fellians are devils. Worse than devils. And I’m trapped in here with an adult one. I’ve been trying not to think about Erynne’s warning, but knowing that my companion is an adult male changes things.
I might have to kill him after all.
I find the stairwell for the next floor and head up another forty stairs. By the time I make it to the top, I’m dizzy and nauseated, reminding me that I need to take my medicine soon. The thought of returning down the stairs and digging through all those trunks is daunting, though, and since I’m already up here, I figure I might as well have a look around.
There are three doors on “my” floor, and it seems to be laid out the same as the last one. I open the heavy wooden door and this time, I’m not greeted by an angry Fellian. This time, all is silent, and I step inside what must be my bedroom. There’s a fireplace, but a small one, and there’s no way I’ll be able to climb up the chimney here. An old, narrow rope bed is against one wall, but there’s no bedtick and I don’t know if I have one packed. There’s a small wooden table off to the side and a faded gray tapestry hanging on one wall and…that’s it. I think of my opulent quarters back at the palace, with the thick rugs on the floor and my oversized canopied bed. I think of the large window that overlooked the gardens and my attached bathing chamber, and my jaw clenches tight.
Wordless, I go to the next room. A garderobe, which is little more than a creaky wooden seat with a hole cut into it, the waste splashing down…somewhere. And the third door on this floor is a small storage closet, with a couple of old empty trunks left from prior inhabitants, as well as a few discarded pieces of ancient, outdated clothing.
I head upstairs, and the final floor in the tower seems to be nothing but storage for old, broken things. There’s a rotting trunk, what looks like scattered armor, and a few wooden candelabras. A table with a broken leg. A book that looks like it might fall apart if I touch it.
Junk. Nothing but junk.
For someone that’s supposed to be serving the goddess for the next seven years, this tower isn’t exactly welcoming. It’s not comfortable. It’s got the bare minimum of necessities. And it has far too many stairs for a gently-bred princess with a blood curse. Already I’m exhausted, and I haven’t eaten, haven’t unpacked, and certainly haven’t taken my medicine. I return to the floor below and to my quarters. I stare at the rope bed for a long moment, and then, fighting fatigue and helplessness, I set the candle on the table nearby and climb into the bed. The ropes dig into my skin uncomfortably, but I’m too tired and disheartened to care. I close my eyes and curl up as best I can.
Tomorrow, I’ll have a good cry about all of this. When I have everything put away, only then will I allow myself to break down.