Chapter Nineteen
My arrow hits its target.
The man collapses to the ground next to Ronan, his shadow dropping as he falls. I survey the box for other threats, but the shadows look clear, and Ronan, seeing the dead man on the ground beside him, lights it up anyway.
The man is dead, and I killed him.
My first real kill.
I thought I’d be sick with regret. I thought I’d agonize over what I’d done, and maybe I still will later.
But for now, I’m just relieved.
Ronan is alive.
Several of the guards rush into the box and start overturning chairs. One kneels to examine the dead man, and then another points out onto the arena floor.
Points at me.
Ronan, who keeps shrugging off the guards to stop them from moving him, looks out at me and starts gesturing and yelling.
“Go!” I yell, motioning for him to get to safety. I’ll be fine.
I watch as Taran finally convinces him to head to the exit, then I make my way to the nearest tunnel out of the arena. The crowd is half gone now, just as the amplified voice of Grand Vizier Cyrus urges them to calm down and not to push, assuring them there’s no danger.
I’m not sure I believe him. I didn’t see if the guards managed to get Calliope, but she certainly wasn’t working alone.
I’m nearly at the tunnel when I see movement to my right, and I just glimpse the guard’s charging figure before he knocks me to the ground.
“Wait! I’m trying to—”
I feel the heel of his blade impact my skull, and everything goes black.
I wake in a carriage. It’s enclosed, like the carriages we use in Nithyria, but there are bars on the windows.
“Go back to hell, Nithyrian cunt,” the same guard as before spits at me, and then I’m under again.
I wake again in a jail cell.
The stone floor is cold and hard beneath me, and my head and body are in agony. Based on the way the pain radiates along the side of me that’s on the ground, they threw me in here.
The cell reeks of blood and shit and vomit. I nearly vomit myself as I pull myself upright, my arm screaming in pain when I put weight on it.
What the fuck is happening?
“There you are, Nithyria,” says a woman’s voice from beyond the bars. It’s dark in the cell, but that’s not what’s making it hard for me to see. The guard must have hit my head pretty hard. “I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you. They think we’re in it together.”
That accent. I recognize it.
“Calliope?”
I pull myself up using the bars and peek through a gap.
It’s her, alright. She’s in a cell across from mine, slouched against the wall.
“No talking,” says a guard. He raps my fingers with his sword where they’re clutching the bars.
The impact stings. I pull back, but I lose my balance and fall to the shit-stained floor.
“You heard the man, Nithyria,” says Calliope.
The guard rattles his keys. “Speak again, and I’m coming in there.”
It takes a minute for my thoughts to collect themselves over the pain in my head.
They think I did this.
They think Calliope and I planned this together, both of us shadow-born, that we were all working together with the assassin who went for Ronan. That has to be the reason I’m in here.
Fuck. What am I going to do?
I was there with her on the floor. I shot an arrow in the royal box, right next to Ronan.
I’m from fucking Nithyria. Of course they think I was trying to kill him. He probably thinks I was trying to kill him.
How can I possibly prove that I wasn’t?
There’s only one tiny speck of relief in the shitstorm of my panic.
Ronan is alive.
Is he alive? He was alive before they knocked me out.
I know I shouldn’t antagonize the guard, but I have to know.
“Is he alive?” I call out, my voice smaller than I expected. “Ronan. Is he alive?”
The guard laughs, a cruel, bitter laugh. “Oh, you better believe he is. How does it feel, bitch? Your little plan failed. It failed, and you’ll die in here. That’s if he doesn’t kill you first. Both of you.”
“Please, I didn’t—”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE I KILL YOU MYSELF.”
I shut up.
Ronan is alive. He’s alive.
I saved him. I came here to kill him, and I saved his life instead.
Oh, fucking hell. Why did I do that? Even if I ever manage to get out of here, Adria is going to kill me.
I should have just let him die.
No, I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t have, and I know it.
What I don’t know is why. Why did I save him? What made me shoot my arrow at his assassin instead?
Has he gotten to me so thoroughly? Has his plan worked that much better than mine?
Godsdammit.
“—right now, so help me Vahlo if you don’t let me in there, I swear I’ll—”
There’s a voice coming from down the hall. It’s female, and it’s familiar, but it’s not Adria.
It’s Quinn.
Great. Just great. Just what I need, another person who hates me. Did she come here to gloat? To spit in my face? To kick me while I’m down as low as I can go, so low I can barely sit up?
Quinn’s short, red hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat. She’s wearing a full set of Royal Guard armor, and there’s dried blood on her cheek, maybe hers. “I always knew I’d find you here one day.”
“Go to hell, Quinn,” I say, but I cough up something that looks suspiciously like a blood clot as I do.
“Shit, Sylvie,” she says, rushing to the bars. “Let me in there now. RIGHT FUCKING NOW!” she screams at the guard.
He fumbles with the keys, and she snatches them from him, flinging the door open.
Oh gods, she’s going to kill me.
She rushes over to me, and I cower away from her, trying to drop a shadow but failing. “I was going to mess around with you for a bit, but I had no idea what state you were in. Can you walk?”
“What?” Is she…is she trying to help me?
“Oh, fuck it,” says Quinn, and she picks me up. She picks me up like I’m nothing. “Vayla help me, you smell like death.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting you out of here. I saw the whole thing. I know you saved him. Just hang on.”
The guard tries to protest, but she raises a hand beneath me, and I feel the heat of the flame in it. “Don’t even fucking think about it.”
“Bye, Nithyria,” yells Calliope as the guard lets us out the door.
Quinn runs me up the stairs and out of the dungeon. I can’t believe how strong she is. We pass a servant in the hallway, and she shouts at them, “Alchemist. King’s quarters. Right now!”
I moan as the room seems to darken.
“What the hell! Sylvie, did you do that? I can’t see.”
I think I might have. I try to let it go.
“Don’t you fucking die on me. I promised him I’d get you. He’s going to kill me if you die.”
We enter into a passage—it has to be one of the secret passages I’ve been looking for, but I’m too incoherent to see it—and we emerge in Ronan’s living room.
“Help!” yells Quinn. I raise my head weakly in time to see Ronan leap from across the room.
Quinn lowers me onto a couch, and Ronan places his hands on my body.
The relief is immediate. He touches my leg, my hip, my arm, and the pain just fades away. His hands are so warm, and the light is so bright and comforting.
“Ronan—”
“Don’t try to talk yet.” He gently lifts my head and reaches the big, angry bruise at the back where the guard hit me. Twice.
I flinch at the touch. The pain is deep there.
“I know,” he whispers soothingly. “It won’t take long.”
I let him touch me, and it hurts for a moment, but then the warmth spreads bone deep until it tingles and then vanishes, taking the pain with it.
“Ronan,” I say again. He’s looking at me, and his beautiful, perfect face is terrified. He’s so terrified of losing me.
I didn’t want him to die, I realize.
That’s why I shot the arrow.
I don’t want him to die.
I reach up and throw my arms around his neck, pulling him to me.
I hear a soft grunt as I knock the air from his lungs.
Then he relaxes into my embrace. His body is so warm against mine with the weight of his chest pressing into me, holding me tightly against him.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, again and again, his voice low and soft.
He gently strokes my back, and I just stay there in his arms for a long, comforting moment.
“Told you,” I hear Quinn whisper as I part from Ronan. Taran slips her a coin.
Ronan doesn’t ask them what they were betting on. I suspect he already knows.
Zara presses an elixir into my hands. “The light doesn’t always reach everything internal,” she explains. “This should help with the rest. You’ll need to take it every six to eight hours for two days, maybe three, just to be sure.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I take a sip from the cup she hands me. It’s warm, and it tastes of honey and a strange, woody herb that reminds me of the temple.
“Frankincense,” she says. “For the bleeding.”
“Sir, we need to discuss the tournament—” Cyrus begins. There are a lot of people in the room, I realize with some embarrassment.
“Quinn, can you take her to my bath? And see about those guards when you’re down there before I do something I’ll regret.”
“I’ll go too,” says Zara.
“I can manage,” I say, standing up. Really, there’s nothing wrong with me now, and I hate to miss whatever is about to be discussed. But I do absolutely reek of the dungeon floor. “I’m feeling fine.”
Ronan ignores me and nods to Quinn and Zara, who lead me through a passage—this time I see them press the stone on the wall to open it—down a spiral staircase and directly into Ronan’s private bath.
It’s a small chamber, but it’s not claustrophobic. The rock formations arch over the pool, which steams with heat. The servants there undress us all, and Quinn and Zara help me into the luxuriously warm waters.
Quinn narrates the entire sequence of events of the tournament to Zara, who was down at the Guild Hall when it happened.
“She loosed one arrow. One fucking arrow! Perfect shot. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she was trying to kill him but missed—so did the guards, apparently—until I saw the body hit the floor. Right there in the fucking shadows.”
“Ronan couldn’t feel him?” asks Zara.