Chapter 72
The term “basement,” I learned, was a euphemism for the word “dungeon.” We climbed down endless flights of cobblestone spiral stairs illuminated by the lantern Aegir held out before us. The heavy air became cooler with every downward step, turning my exhales misty.
Flickering torchlights illuminated the basement’s passageway as we walked past prisoner after prisoner who occupied both sides of the iron-barred corridor. None of them were Marshen.
Aegir opened a bolted door that stood solitary at the end of the corridor. It led to another set of stairs and to another bolted door. Two guards tensed on either side of it. Then I realised that this was the basement—the dungeon’s basement.
“Your brother locked him down there, on his own?” I asked, starting my way down and giving Aegir a sideways glance. He did not have to reply. “Your brother’s a dick.”
“Tell me about it,” he mumbled, following my steps.
“What are you waiting for? Open it,” Aegir ordered.
“Sorry, we cannot let anyone through,” the left guard said. “We have strict orders from King Ryvar,” Right continued.
“As if you don’t know who I fucking am. We’re obviously getting in whether you let us or not.”
“But the king—he threatened us. We would lose our jobs,” Right stammered.
“But did he threaten to snap you in half and feed you to the wolves?” Both stiffened. “Didn’t think so. Now open this godsdamned door before I make an opening through it the shape of your bodies.”
Left gave in and spent awkward seconds trying to find the matching key. He let out a relieved exhale as soon as the key found the bolt’s entry. He rotated the lock thrice.
“You two, wait upstairs.”
“Yes, Prince,” Left and Right said in unison before scurrying away. Aegir lifted the metal crossbar with his right arm and threw it to the side. The effortlessness of it made the solid piece of steel seem like it weighed the equivalent of a wooden log.
I was about to go in when Aegir wrapped his hand around my arm and tugged me towards him. “I warn you, in there is not for the fainthearted.”
I nodded. “It’s all right. I would like a few minutes alone with him. Will you go fetch your brother?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” He leaned in and brushed a soft kiss on my lips.
More stairs.
The first thing that hit me the second I landed was the smell of damp stone and rusted iron.
It clung and conveyed as old suffering, instantly confirmed by the long walls mounted with a cornucopia of tools of torment.
Ropes, whips, hooks, chains, a collection of knives and swords, not to mention the guillotine that occupied the centre of the prison cell.
Barred and caged at the very end of it was Marshen Deucane. He sat on the cold, damp floor, his back to the stone, his arms wrapped around his bent knees. Strands of platinum hair partly covered his lowered face.
I could tell that he lifted his head as I moved closer to the metal bars, but I refrained from fully meeting his gaze.
“Delia?” He rushed to his feet and moved as close to me as the metal bars allowed him to. My gaze remained directed at his boots.
“Thank Boreas you’re alive!…Delia?…Are you all right?…Delia?”
My low words were aimed at his feet. “I’m here, aren’t I? Quite the convenience for you.”
“I overheard the guards talking. They said you fell into one of the king’s traps. I thought you were dead.”
“I survived. Again.”
“Did you melt the ice?” And that was when I finally met his stare.
“Boreas, Delia, your eyes. And yeesh, your scent. I noticed it shifted. Twice. You smell like him, you smell like you, and you smell like you and him. You bound yourselves, didn’t you? I told you you were made for each other.”
“Well, you seemed to be right about many things. Even those you kept from me.”
Marshen scratched his crown. “Yeah, about that, I’m sorry for not telling you. You must hate me for it. But I was afraid that if I told you, you would—”
“I would what!?” I snapped at him. “I would stay behind, remain hidden with them like some coward. You thought that I wouldn’t have tried to get them found anyway?
That I would have let you go to Silch on your own?
Is that how little you thought of me?” His face became the definition of shame.
“I don’t hate you for not telling me, Marshen, I hate the reason that kept you from doing so. ”
His eyes shunned mine, but then he looked at me and said, “There were so many times when I wanted to tell you—Boreas, so many when I almost told you. Things would have ended differently if I had, I know that now. But I always found some excuse not to. The voice inside my head betrayed my better sense. ‘What if she decides to remain with her people?’ or, ‘It’s way too late now, what if she gets pissed off and runs away? She left her prince, what makes you think that she would stay for you?’ or, ‘What if she thinks that I’m feeding her lies so that the king would accept her as a Hydran?
’ I cannot go back in time to change things, but know that I will carry this shame and regret for the rest of my life. Which is until Sunday, by the way.”
I imagined the different ways the cell I was standing in could be utilised to efficiently execute someone. It was well equipped for a tormenting journey of excruciating pain and suffering, the last of feelings before life was bittersweetly taken away.
My alone time with Marshen was limited, and I didn’t want to waste a second of it, so with a firm tone, I said, “Tell me this, and no more bullshit, no more half-truths, no more lies. What happened with Blanca? Why are you here?” I clenched my hands around two metal bars and made him look me in the eye.
“When Blanca was ten years old”—Thalassa drown me, I didn’t expect him to go that far—“her grandfather heard her say that when she grew up, she wanted to become an Ice Priestess. He took those words to heart, so much so that his dying wish was for her to enrol as an acolyte. She was seventeen then. Her parents arranged for her to come to Nivaria, to spend some time at the Ice Castle before entering the Ice Temple. We met a few months before her initiation and were instantly drawn to each other, like two magnets, pulled closer together by unseen forces. She opened up to me, told me that she was being forced into all of it. Blanca told her parents that she didn’t feel Boreas’s calling, but they ignored her pleas.
She begged them not to send her away, but they would rather fulfil the wishes of a dead man than their own daughter’s desires.
King Ryvar became her custodian while she lived under his roof, promised her mother that she would be well taken care of and that he would see to it personally.
But our bond tugged at us both, drew us to each other with such compulsion—you know what I mean.
But some asshole whispered in the king’s ears, making him aware of our frequent encounters.
Ryvar ordered me—or more accurately, threatened me—to stay the hell away from her.
I—I simply couldn’t, my soul wouldn’t let me.
“We used to sneak into the abandoned houses behind the old district and watch the moon and the stars from their rooftops, the aurora borealis on clear nights. We always got ourselves lost in long conversations—for hours we talked, planning and devising our future together. She said she wanted to live a simple and content life. Her dream was for us to live in a small cottage surrounded by trees and flowers close to a riverbank, and I was very happy with just that. We both wanted more from each other. But I wished to respect her virtue, and she didn’t want me to face any legal implications; she had just turned eighteen for Boreas’s sake, and I was what?
An old centenarian. So we decided to wait for another year, until she reached her age of majority.
“On the eve of her initiation, we met at our usual spot. My heart ached—the thought of spending months apart made me weak and irrational. I just couldn’t keep my hands off her.
At some point, we were both half naked, tangled in each other’s arms, my mouth at her neck.
I was so lost in her that I didn’t even scent his approach.
If Ryvar hadn’t stopped us, I don’t think I would have been able to do so myself.
I lost all shred of control. He had me arrested and sentenced to execution, dragged Blanca all the way to the Ice Temple.
Boreas, the way she screamed my name that night as they hauled us apart.
Every night I hear those same cries. She probably doesn’t even know I’m alive, not that it matters now anyway.
I would have done anything just to be with her and I fucked it all up. ”
Marshen looked at me with pleading eyes.
“When the king executes me, will you go to the Ice Temple for me? Tell her that I’m sorry I failed her, tell her that in the next life, I will have a cottage ready for her and that—” I watched a tear slowly streaming down his cheek.
I impulsively reached for it, then jerked at the sound of the door behind me being thrown open.
My thumb went to my mouth. King Ryvar entered the basement, Aegir at his side.
“He made us open the door,” Left said as he stumbled inside the room of torture.
“He threatened us,” Right stammered behind him.
“You are both fired and stripped of your duties,” Ryvar said flatly. “Now get out of my face.”
Aegir’s next words had Ryvar giving him a dead, piercing glare. “You are now guards serving the Vanguard of Ice. Go find Joel and tell him that you’ve been assigned.”
Left and Right both gawked. I suspected that what Aegir offered them felt more daunting than redundancy.
“But we—”
“That’s an order,” Aegir growled.
They nodded and rushed away.
“Why did you make me come down seventeen flights of stairs?” King Ryvar all but spat as he scanned me from toe to head. He stiffened the instant he met my stare.
“His end of the bargain entailed him returning to Silch with a Nymph or a Water Wielder.”
The king nodded. “So we’ve been through this.”
“His end of the bargain was fairly met. He did not lie earlier; I am indeed a Water Wielder.”
“It’s true, brother, I’ve seen it.”
“Wield, then,” King Ryvar dared, offering me his waterskin. I gave him a piercing look and he scoffed at me. “Hmm. Just what I thought.”
“Come on, brother, you can see her eyes.” Aegir’s words were spoken low, tinted with persuasion.
Ryvar’s brow lifted. “Did you put Amani up to this?”
I squared my shoulders and spoke, drawing King Ryvar’s attention. “It was a spell that masked my true identity, but now, I’m free of it. I remember who I am now.”
I also remembered the spell by heart. A once-thought lullaby that had been swirling in my head, over and over for the past month.
“I’m a Hydran. A Water Wielder. So you can set him free now.” My tone didn’t sound as persuasive as Aegir’s, yet my soulbound still looked at me with pride in his eyes—it warmed my heart.
Aegir looked at Ryvar and said, “If you don’t believe us or the change in her eye colour, you can certainly notice the shift in her scent.”
“Indeed. Congratulations, brother.” Then he shifted his gaze towards me and said, “I’m a fair king, a reasonable one.
” I couldn’t disagree with him more. “In fact, I’m such a fair man that I even gave him the benefit of the doubt,” he said, gesturing at Marshen.
“I already did my research. Turns out there is no mention of a Cordelia Wildheart in Ilma but there surely is the mention of a Cordelia Wildheart in Ramel. Your name came up twice. At the Orphanage of Dunes and at the castle of King Belzari himself. You couldn’t be any more Earthen. ”
“There was no mention of Cordelia Wildheart in Ilma because there isn’t one!” Silence. I lifted my head before proudly saying my own true name. “I am Princess Elara Briartide, and I order you to release him under my care.”
The king let out a hysterical laugh. One that had him leaning his head back, then doubling over, arms around his belly. His waving palm neared my face, the gesture meaning, Stop it or I’ll die from laughter.
“The Princess Elara? Oh, you’re going too far with this now,” Ryvar said, wiping away a tear with the back of his hand. “Tell me you don’t actually believe she’s the princess?” the king asked his brother.
“No, she’s not the princess,” Aegir replied. “She’s the queen.”
“Elara died in front of thousands. They watched her body turn headless, then ashen, all of them did. How could you possibly explain that?”
I called out his name so proudly, the mention of it caused two pairs of forest eyes to snap my way: “Galen Myrchorn.”