Chapter 18
I’m usedto utter and complete darkness. Being a creature of Shaelak comes with lots of experience in that department. What I’m not prepared for is the stench of rot and mold greeting me as I wake to a hint of starlight and lots of pain—and weakness. My limbs are like the tentacles of starfish, trying to stack themselves under my body as I pant at the stinging sensation in my shoulder that woke me mere heartbeats ago.
I’ve seen the dungeons in the palace in the Seeing Forest, have used them for one or the other prisoner, but this is worse than even those forgotten cells flecked with blood.
My legs are trembling from the effort to push myself up, and my hands keep slipping on the wet sheen on the ground. I don’t bother wondering if it’s blood or vomit or my own urine as I roll over to my back, forcing in slow, deep breaths.
“Myron,” someone whisper-shouts from not far away.
In reflex, I shoot to my side, managing to get into a kneeling position. Gods, whatever they did to us, it knocked me out so thoroughly I can’t tell what time has passed or if I am alive or burning in the pits of Hel’s realm.
Again, that voice pierces through the throb in my head, in my shoulder, in my entire body.
“Are you awake, Myron?” Royad.
Of course, my cousin would be here. He’d follow me even to Hel’s realm if it would ensure I’m fine.
I’m not fine.
I respond with a groan.
“Oh, thank Shaelak you’re awake. I was beginning to think they knocked you out for good.”
“Perhaps they should have.” Every word hurts.
“They gave you an extra dose of the drug.” I try to make out Royad’s form in the darkness, but my eyes won’t work the same way. They are weak the same way the rest of my body is. All I pick up is the glint of steel bars in the summer of starlight falling in through a tiny window far up in the wall. In fact, the window is the only reason I know it’s an actual wall. “They drugged Silas and Astorian again, too. They will curse the day they were born soon enough when they wake.”
“Why does it sound like you mean if they wake?” My voice scrapes through my throat like I’ve swallowed gravel.
Royad shifts, the leathers scraping over the stone floor as he comes closer. At least, my ears still work well enough to distinguish directions and haven’t given up on me the way my eyes have.
“Because who knows with the Fire Fairies and Ephegos.” The movement stops, and I know he must have reached the bars separating our cells or he’d already be at my side, helping me up. “They forced the drug down your throat in your sleep without regard for whether you kept breathing or not.” The panic in his tone tells me he hasn’t quite gotten over the memory, no matter that I’m awake and breathing now.
“Are you all right?” It’s more important than worrying whether Ephegos would have let me die that easily—again.
A long silence lingers in the stinking air of the dungeon—because that’s obviously what this is—before he speaks again. “As all right as anyone could be under these circumstances.”
A breath of relief leaves my lungs. “And what are the circumstances?” I remember the Fire Fairies capturing us with some substance they sprayed on us to annihilate our magic. The conversation with the female… And eventually?—
“Where are we?”
“Tavras.”
“Where in Tavras? Are we still at the Flame estate?” I wouldn’t put it past the Fire Fairies to have dungeons like these ready beneath their residence, just in case.
“Meer. We’re at the royal palace in Meer. In the dungeons of the royal palace in Meer, to be specific.” I almost laugh at the irony in his tone. “It’s where they brought Ayna.”
Everything stills inside me, and my hand finds my shoulder on instinct at the mention of her name. Ayna is here.
The breath stuck in my throat doesn’t move until Royad continues. “Apparently, that was Ephegos’s plan all along, seeing her to the King of Tavras. You know, with her history of looting the Tavrasian royal fleet, King Erina has an interest in getting his hands on her to exact justice.”
“For treason,” I repeat so pain doesn’t wipe my ability to think rationally. It’s one of the things I’ve perfected over centuries of living as a cursed king with one bride after the other dying under my fingers like withering flowers. Her becoming my bride was supposed to be her punishment even when it might have saved her.
The panic is insistent as it eats away at my forced calm.
But I died, and she was taken away from me. Now she’s in the enemy’s hands and?—
I pause. “How do you know all of this?”
“The guards checking in every other hour to make sure we’re still in our cells. Humans become surprisingly reckless around fairies when they believe we are powerless.”
“Which we are.” I flex my fingers, trying to summon my magic. Even a fraction of what I used to be capable of would be enough to blast a hole in the wall and set us free.
Nothing happens. Not even the slightest tingle. My powers are under lock and key behind the effects of the drug.
This time, Royad continues without my prompt. “What they want with us specifically, I can’t tell you. Can’t be anything good though if they need to drug us and throw us in the dungeons.”
I nod my agreement, wondering if he can see in the dark. “How long have we been here?” Gathering facts. That’s what I need to do until the rest of my body answers to me again. Gods, I feel like someone cut off a limb where my magic used to rush like an untamable beast.
“They put us in here a few hours ago. I don’t know how long the carriage ride was, but it must have been a few days. I only woke once, and they knocked me out with a fist to the face rather than the drugged water the way they did with you.” A familiar sense of anger rises in my chest, giving me more strength than my body can handle, and I stumble back to my knees as I attempt to rise to make my way to the bars to check if he’s all right. No matter if he’s told me that he is, I need to assure myself that there aren’t any other injuries he hasn’t told me about. He’s my only family, blood. If I can’t keep him safe, how can I rule a kingdom?—
A kingdom that no longer exists. What few Crows we left behind in the Seeing Forest are less than a usual court, and the Crow traitors who joined Ephegos I no longer consider part of my people.
“Can’t you two shut your mouths for a moment?” Astorian groans from a few feet away. “I have a massive headache.”
“As long as it’s only your head,” Silas retorts from somewhere behind Royad, and my cousin whirls around, judging by the suddenty of it, and rushes toward Silas’s voice. “My entire body feels like I’ve been dragged through the rubble of the Crow Palace.”
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Astorian comments as he scrambles closer until he appears near the shimmer of bars on my other side. Apparently, my eyes have adjusted enough to make out the outline of the fairy general. “Someone took away our powers.”
“Fuck.” Silas again. This time, it’s in clear agreement with Astorian’s assessment.
“That, and I’m going to tear someone limb from limb for letting me sleep in my own piss,” Astorian says as he holds onto the steel bars, eyes glinting with fury that makes them shimmer auburn in the near darkness even when the rest of the space is tinted in grayscale. It’s an eerie sight, and had I not been convinced Astorian is one of the strongest fairies in existence, I’d be now without a doubt.
I try again, harnessing the general air of vengeance filling the dungeon to push myself to my feet. This time, I make it all the five paces to Royad’s cell where I lean against the bars, panting as weakness threatens to take out my legs all over again. My cousin’s hand lands on my shoulder, a familiar touch that has helped me through a century of misery. He doesn’t deserve to be in this hole of disgrace with me. No one does. Not even the fairy general, whose alliance might be as fleeting as his interest in my wellbeing on the roof of the Fire Fairy estate.
“How exactly does one take a fae’s magic away?” Silas grumbles from his cell, his outline coming into view another few paces behind Royad. Those aren’t cells, they’re cages.
Above our heads, the bars bend inward to form a slanted roof following the angle of the low stone ceiling beyond before they blend into the wall with the window out of my reach. Whether they believe we could break through the stone ceiling even without our magic or because it was built this way to begin with, I don’t care. I’m in a cage like the animal I am—I used to be.
For long, long centuries, my Crow nature dictated my actions, my entire being, while the curse kept me from shifting out of my bird form entirely. Not anymore. Ayna freed me, and if I deserve this cage, it’s not because of the monster I am but because of how I’ve failed her.
“Stop wallowing over there, and participate in some strategizing, King, or we’ll rot down here while your precious woman is being handled by the King of Tavras.” Astorian’s remark brings me right back to the present where the stench is near-overwhelming.
My head is gradually clearing as I pace along the bars, grabbing onto them for support. Royad follows me on the other side of the steel fence, worry furrowing his brow.
“I’m not wallowing. I’m making a self-assessment. As a warrior, you, if anyone, should know how important it is to understand your physical and mental state before thinking about breaking prison—without access to a weapon.”
Free hand gliding over the belt on my hips, I confirm that I was stripped of all blades I brought on this journey. This will make things even more difficult.
“I self-assessed during the time it took you to get over yourself to stand up,” Astorian retorts, obviously grumpier than even Silas when he’s woken early from a bad night’s rest. “My head is hurting. My balance is shit. My magic is a song in the wind above the Quiet Sea. I haven’t eaten in days, and the aftereffects of the drug they gave us make me wish I hadn’t drunk in days either. My left ankle is bruised—no idea what they did to it, probably pinched it in the carriage door—and someone cut open my forearm—probably to taste the sweetness of fairy blood.” His growl makes me wonder if he is serious about that last part. I don’t know about Eherea, but stories about ancient Neredyn suggest that a lot of out-of-hand situations with the Crows occurred because they let humans taste their blood.
“Just kidding, Myron. No one will drink us dry in this shit hole.” Astorian’s teeth flash like moon-cast pearls in the darkness. “So, any ideas on how to get out of here?”
“And by out of here you mean wait until we have our powers back before we blast the entire palace to rubble?” Silas supplies so drily I barely realize he’s being sarcastic.
“Odds are we won’t have our powers at our disposal by the time we need to face the Tavrasian guards,” Royad argues, pragmatic as always. “There are no loose rocks or other items we could employ as weapons.”
“So hand-to-hand it is.” Astorian folds his arms over his chest, swaying slightly on his feet before bracing his shoulder on the bars as if to mask his imbalance.
Silas snorts. “You don’t look like you could do shit with hand-to-hand right now.”
The glare the fairy general throws him is anything but. “That’s because I can’t do shit right now. You’re not any better off, by the way.”
I slide down the bars into a sitting position, resting my head against the cold barrier cutting me off from Royad’s cell. “This is worse than presiding over the Crow assemblies,” I groan, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Both Silas and Astorian ask at the same time, and I can’t help but grit my teeth at an involuntary grin.
“Focus on that strategy of yours, General. I need to wallow some more.”
Astorian is smart enough not to push me. We are all weak and drained of our powers from the drug the humans gave us. Right now, it hardly matters how the substance works, only that we need to work around our limitations. Without food or water to recover our strength, it will be difficult to break free from our confinements. The alternative is to wait until someone comes for us and surprise them with an attack. For that, they’d have to open all four cells at once so we could fight together to overpower them. And again—without our strength, we might not be a match for armed human guards.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?”
Royad sighs in response, and Astorian kicks at a pebble which his magic could have turned into a liquid projectile with half a thought.
“From all directions.” Silas sits back against the wall, grimy black hair falling into his face as he shakes his head. “From all directions, my king.”