Chapter 36
Aloud clank stirred me from a fitful sleep.
My eyes popped open, and I sat up on a creaky cot. Bars encircled me.
I was in a holding cell inside the jail. Catcalls, whistles, and comments that made my stomach roil filled my ears as I glanced around. My body ached, and I let out a moan.
“Hush, Ar,” said a familiar voice.
Outside my cell, in the dim light of the single lamp affixed to the wall by the far door, stood my brother. In his hand was a ring of iron keys. My cell lock thunked faintly as it opened, and the door wheezed on its rusty hinges.
Bennett stepped aside. “Come on.”
Sneers and shouts of disapproval harangued us as we hurried toward the exit, Bennett holding my elbow as if I were his own prisoner. There were no guards in sight, the chair by the door vacant.
“Did Fairfax send you?” I whispered.
“That quack sponsor of yours? No.”
The word pricked at my skin a little. Not because I loved Fairfax at all, but because I’d thought he was at least an ally. Fairfax had clearly gotten himself out of jail, leaving me behind. But I didn’t really care who’d gotten me out as I hurried behind my brother.
The hallway leading through the constabulary was empty as well, eerily so.
We took a turn down a hallway I hadn’t passed through on the way in, and soon we exited through a small door that led into a neighboring building with velvet carpet that swallowed our footsteps.
Bennett walked these dark halls with determined steps, leading me first right, then left, and, finally, down a small flight of stairs and out a slim but ornate door that dumped us into a narrow alleyway where steam lifted from a manhole in the pavement.
No streetlights shone here, and when he shut the door behind us, it looked so nondescript and bland that I doubted anyone knew where it led or cared.
Without a coat, the air snapped harshly at me. I shivered and wrapped my arms around my torso. Then with a flush of panic, my fingers slipped down to my pocket, where I felt the comforting outline of a metal key.
“Don’t look at me like that, Ar. I just risked everything to get you out of there,” Bennett said, replacing his newsboy cap. On his wrist, between his leather glove and jacket sleeve, I spotted a new tattoo peeking out. The same interlocking S I’d seen carved on Rush’s skin.
I dropped my head. “You didn’t have to—”
He bent toward me, jabbing a finger at me. “Yes, I did. Ari, I heard what happened. What they did to you.” He pulled me into a hug, which surprised me.
“How?” I said, pushing back. “Who told you?”
“The duke’s boy. He’s the one who paid me the bond money to get you out.” I was too speechless to reply, so he kept talking. “Said it would be easier to hide his involvement if I did it.” He shrugged, pulling out a cigarette. “Guess that’s true.”
“If you paid the bond, why all the sneaking and whispering?” I said, recalling the vacant guard’s chair.
With his lips pinched around the cigarette, he mumbled, “Apparently the guards had been instructed not to let you out, bond or no.”
I stared at his flickering match, not wanting him to elaborate on what happened to the guards. Then I blinked as he shook out the small flame. “They tortured my dragon.”
“You too, from what the duke’s boy said.”
A faint nod. The memories were hazy. “But now they know the truth.” There was a finality to it that made the ache in my muscles and the pinch in my heart not feel so strong. We’d passed the test.
My brother coughed out an incredulous laugh. “They sent your dragon to be executed, Ari.”
My knees buckled, and I tipped forward. Bennett caught me, awkwardly, trying not to burn me with his cigarette. “Whoa, whoa.”
I caught my balance, head spinning. “Is he dead?”
I’d feel it. Certainly, I’d know if he were…
“I don’t know. That’s all the godspawn said.” His words were calm, apologetic. “I don’t know how or why you’re involved with him, Ar, but he’s dangerous. Going to school with those people doesn’t make you one of them.” At my glare, he said, “Come on; we can’t stay here.”
He led me back toward the main road and glanced both ways before nodding at a waiting taxi. This one was plush inside, curtained with velvet to hide us. There was no way Bennett could have afforded this.
“What now?” I asked as Bennett knocked on the window of the car and we rumbled down the road.
Bennett pulled a pistol from a holster hidden beneath his jacket. He emptied it of bullets and stowed them in a pocket, then replaced the gun.
“Were you planning to use that?” I asked him.
He sniffed and didn’t answer. “We need to get you the protection you need.”
“I’m never joining the Serpents. I’ve told you that.”
He leaned forward in the seat, elbows on knees.
His dark eyes, so like mine, held a fierceness, a sadness to them, that told me everything I needed to know about the Serpents.
“I can’t protect you on my own anymore. There’s turmoil in the streets right now.
Tensions are high. There’s talk that the Empire is weakening.
When word gets out that it was the duke who put you in jail, and now you’re out, legally or no, you will be target number one, not just for the duke and his muscle but for every trigger-happy fool in Treston.
If anyone thinks you’re something the duke wants, they’ll stop at nothing to get to you first.”
“Use me as a bargaining chip.”
“Yes,” he said, leaning back.
“Won’t I just be a bargaining chip for your gang, too?”
Bennett narrowed his eyes. “I won’t let that happen. And if you swear your fealty to us, we are bound to protect you with our very lives.”
“How poetic.”
He scooted forward, getting in my face. “You don’t understand what life is like out here.
You dance around in your dreams and willfully ignore the reality of what’s all around.
For the longest time, I loved that about you.
I wanted you to always live above the reality I know. But it’s time to wake up.”
My lips pinched in, and I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting again to disappear and awaken in the dream world I once lived in.
But Bennett was wrong, at least in one sense.
I had already left my dream world behind when I’d stepped into Cardan Lott, with its glittering halls and false nobility.
There was nothing noble about the traditions they treasured, their unwillingness to admit they were wrong.
Nothing noble about the way they’d treated me.
If the duke was planning to execute Myth, he would likely try to get him to flame first, so he could extract whatever magic he could get from it. Which meant Myth might still be alive. And if my dragon was still alive, there was still hope.
“Let me out,” I said.
“What?”
“I want to get out here.”
When he didn’t respond, I knocked on the car’s window. We slowed. A window between us and the driver slid open, and he looked at Bennett questioningly.
My brother looked over at me and reluctantly said, “Pull over.” When the man closed the small window again, my brother added, “I don’t know what your plan is, but you should stay off the streets. The duke put you inside the jail, in case you forgot.”
“I do have a plan,” I replied. It wasn’t much, and it was rapidly evolving with every dead end I mentally ran into, but I couldn’t run back to our apartment.
“But I can’t risk you following me or knowing where I’m going.
The duke won’t look for me where I’m going.
” Bennett had one thing right: the duke was clearly trying to keep me out of the way.
He must not want to reveal the results of my bond test but instead cover up the truth that was staring him in the face—a bottomsider had bonded to a dragon.
When I didn’t elaborate, my brother sniffed and crossed his arms.
I climbed out of the taxi and gritted my teeth against the cold air. I stood at the corner and watched Bennett’s taxi drive away, clutching the key to Rush’s townhouse so tightly in my fist that it drew blood.