Chapter 10 #2
“I’ve seen more than enough of the splendors of your kingdom. Just take me to the dungeon already.”
“Dungeon?” He has the gall to sound confused—and amused.
“We both know that’s where you intend to keep me. Rowenna sent letters detailing everything about her time here.”
Alaric raises one dark brow. “I don’t know what your sister told you, but she never set foot inside a prison cell. We treated her with the utmost care and hospitality, as promised by the treaty.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“See for yourself.” He leads me up a twisting flight of stairs to a white-painted door. “Your sister occupied these very same rooms. Her belongings might still be in the drawers for all I know. We treated her exactly as we’re treating you.”
With a dubious scowl, I brush past him and prowl the perimeter of the room, blatantly checking for bars on the windows and padlocks on the doors. I find neither, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways of locking someone in and holding them captive.
The space is twice as big as my chambers under the hill, and every corner is filled with exquisite stone furniture—a pink quartz vanity, a set of upholstered jade chairs, and a sleigh-style bed made of carved onyx.
All of this pales in comparison to the walls themselves, though, which are made of gemstones from floor to ceiling.
Amythest protrusions bloom like violets to my left.
Emerald crenellations sprout like maple leaves to my right.
There’s turquoise, topaz, and opal, set ablaze by intense mountain sunlight that filters through the glass ceiling, filling the room with ever-changing rainbows.
It’s breathtaking and, at the same time, makes me want to vomit, dredging up old memories of King Soren’s first visit to Tashir—back when he still pretended to be our valiant rescuer.
I’ll never forget how he galloped through our fields on the shiniest horse I’d ever seen and vowed to save us from the Marauders.
He even brought gifts for Rowenna and me—round stones that looked like nothing special from the outside, but when he split them in two, the centers revealed a world of spectacular color, just like this room.
He called them geodes. I called it magic. Now I know it was an omen. Soren has me trapped in the center of a geode—threating to cleave me in two.
My haversack slides from my shoulders and lands with a thump on the carpet.
“Well, what do you think?” Alaric asks, even though my horrified expression makes my feelings perfectly clear. “You have an opinion about everything. Don’t hold back now.”
I glare and hold my tongue, just to spite him.
“I’ll leave you to settle in. My chamber is just around the corner, if you need anything,” he says. But his sharp tone and acidic smile make it clear I’d better not need anything.
Before he vanishes, I call out, “How can you live with yourself?”
Alaric pauses and scrubs a hand over his face—as if I’m the one who’s exhausting and unreasonable. “What are you talking about? We’re treating you like a queen.” He gestures around my glittering chamber, then widens the arc of his arm to encompass the entire walled city beyond.
“This is the room Rowenna occupied when she died. Don’t you find that a bit insensitive? Not to mention foreboding?” I give him a critical look. “Or have you already forgotten you were married to my sister first?”
“I do my best to forget irritating people. Now, believe it or not, I have work to do that doesn’t involve babysitting.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re busy planning the raid of another vulnerable kingdom,” I shout at his back. “Or perhaps the murder of your second wife!”
“The latter sounds more appealing every second,” he says, slamming the door in my face.
I continue standing there, heaving for breath, my thoughts as erratic as the rainbow light refracting off the gemstone walls. I didn’t expect a smooth transition to life on the mountain, but I didn’t expect everything to feel so horribly wrong either.
Nothing is what I expected—or how Rowenna described in her letters.
I’d blame the discrepancy on my poor reading comprehension or failing memory, but her descriptions were too vivid and visceral to forget.
She described these rooms like a prison cell: cold thick walls without a single window, and a reeking chamber pot beside the bed.
Technically, none of it is a lie. She said the room was like a prison cell, not that it was one.
And the part about the windows and chamber pot are true too.
But it’s hardly the whole truth. The entire ceiling is made of glass, so the room isn’t dark and dreary, despite its lack of windows.
And, in addition to the chamber pot, there’s an en suite bathing room almost large as this room.
“Was this truly your chamber?” I ask the echoing room. “If so, why paint such a grim picture? Why lead me to believe you were imprisoned here when this castle is finer than the hillock palace in every way?”
Ro remains silent for so long, I think she’s not going to answer. But then she says with a steely edge to her voice, A gilded cage is still a cage, little sister.