Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOFIA
She turned left down a particularly narrow alley, hoping the shadows might hide her, but sharp footfalls echoed closely behind her.
As she passed under a gas lamp, she glanced back and saw that only one guard was following.
She could only hope Lumi and Flor had been smart enough to get away without being seen.
Perhaps she’d even saved the girl who had been on her knees.
The cobblestones were uneven beneath her feet, and it took all her focus to not trip in the dark. Her lungs were already burning, icy in her chest, and she knew she wouldn’t make it far.
She needed a plan.
“I’m coming.” Chalia’s voice was a distant rumble in her chest.
“No!” She almost screamed the word out loud. “Stay where you are until I tell you.”
Chalia’s coming would end any hope of Sofia getting information while she was here. She came to help her people, and so far, all she’d done is almost get Flor and Lumi caught.
A cough clawed up her throat, sharp and brittle. And another. She snatched the small token from her pocket, tossing it the moment she took her next turn, letting it fall behind a few crates. She’d rather not have anything traced back to the poor maid Lumi had stolen it from.
Her legs gave out as one, knees crashing against the stones as she fell. She prayed Lumi and Flor had escaped. She wheezed, her hand grabbing at her chest as if she might pull her lungs out and shake them for their nerve.
“You’re under arrest for attacking a man of the king, high treason, and resisting arrest,” the man said as he caught up to her.
His callused hands gripped her arms and yanked them back as she choked on her own breath.
Her shoulders throbbed in pain and her lungs ached, but she tried to remain calm, despite feeling Chalia’s panic escalating with every passing moment.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she chanted in her mind, half to convince herself as the guard hauled her to her feet and began dragging her back to the gate from where they’d come. She needed to think and plan. She needed information.
Her only comfort, as her breaths came in short bursts and coughs, was that the other guard was still there, blood dripping from his left eye and empty-handed.
“The girl got away,” he said.
“Don’t worry about her,” the guard holding her said, half-tossing Sofia to his companion. “We’ve got the important one.” He pointed at the poster on the wall, his smile wide. “The other dragon-filth will get caught before long.”
“Are you going to take her to the dungeons?”
“And let some other bastard take credit?” he said. “We caught the damned dragon witch. I’m taking her straight to the chief commander. There’s a stack of gold coins with my name on it.”
“You mean with our names on it. I helped catch her.”
“You let the other Dragonborn girl escape!”
“A damned bird came out of nowhere and nearly ripped my eye out,” the guard snapped as he twisted her around and snapped a pair of iron cuffs over her wrists. “Besides, yours already looks dead on her feet.”
Sofia didn’t bother trying to puff herself up and pretend otherwise. It was better that they think she was weak—even if it was half-true in the moment, as another cough reminded her.
Her head was spinning as they dragged her through the royal district and into the military district.
Harlow’s manor seemed to mock her as it came into view, towering in the ever-graying sky.
She could almost feel the undercurrent of unease at being taken to the front of the house instead of to the back servants’ entrance, and a small snort escaped her. As if that were the real problem here.
She took a slow breath, despite the ache in her chest. The air tasted acidic, so different from the forest. She could make getting caught work to her advantage. She needed information, and the chief commander was just the man to have it.
A hawk screeched from above. She couldn’t make out more than a shadow, but she knew it was Lumi.
“I’m glad I got caught,” she said, keeping her eyes on the sky. She needed Lumi to hear her. “I can’t wait to talk to Harlow about his murdering of the people of Suvi.”
“A resistance spy talking of murder?” the guard said. “How rich.”
“I forgot you don’t call it murder when it’s sanctioned by the kingdom.”
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 and darkened 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 expected to 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 before her.
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.
“What’s it saying? Is it telling you how cruel I am? About its spawn?”
“Where is your child?”
“They took him—to the mountains.”
Sofia’s stomach dropped. “The mountains?” The Dereyans didn’t travel to the mountains. They hadn’t in hundreds of sun cycles since King Erion forbid it.
“He’s found the nesting grounds. He sent an army out. I don’t know how long ago now. Time means nothing without Quelia’s light.”
Fox would have—
“Pale One is with them.”