CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Every step through the corridors of the palace feels like a march towards the place of my execution now. The guards hold my chains tightly, as if they can sense my fear, making sure I’ll have no opportunity to run or break free.
I look around as we walk, hoping with every step to see Alaric letting go of an illusory disguise as he leaps forward to take the guards down.
Why isn’t he here? Why isn’t he saving me?
I know why. I know he can’t hope to succeed here.
Despite that, a part of me keeps insisting that he’ll come to help me, even as far more of me is grateful that he isn’t throwing his life away like that.
When we reach the doors to the Senate, I freeze. The guards yank me forward, and I know they'll drag me into the chamber if they must. My only choice is whether I go to hear the verdict with dignity or not. I shuffle forward as quickly as my chains allow, stepping into the senate chamber once more.
The public galleries are full again. The Senate must have allowed people in, even as they sent for me. Selene will want as many people as possible here for this spectacle. The guards lead me to the middle of the floor, then tug sharply at my chains.
“Kneel, prisoner.”
I hesitate. I wasn’t required to kneel for the trial, so why should I do it now? That hesitation is enough that the guard hooks a foot behind my knee, sending me tumbling to the floor.
“I said kneel,” he snaps.
There’s a burst of laughter from the viewing gallery above.
It’s clear the people there are enjoying my humiliation.
It’s a sound that reminds me too much of the colosseum in the old days, when people would seem to love a fighter, but they would love seeing them fall just as much, would cheer to see them beaten, their blood upon the sands.
I’ve been turned into a figure of hate within the city, so people are only too happy to watch me humbled.
So I kneel and wait, watching the faces of the senators.
Marcus won’t meet my eyes. Olivia looks me over with a smile I can’t decipher.
There’s silence in the senate chamber now, seeming to stretch out, filling with tension.
My heart is hammering as quickly as if an opponent were standing over me with a sword.
“Lyra Thornwind, you have been accused of the worst crimes it is possible to commit,” Selene says, breaking the silence.
She steps forward, standing only a little way from Rowan’s seat.
I’m surprised she’s the one speaking when he’s the First Senator.
Is this her way of asserting greater authority than him?
“You have been accused of treason against Aetheria, and you have openly admitted supporting the so-called resistance, which works against the city at every turn.”
She pauses for effect, her violet eyes locking onto mine as the certainty of what she’ll say next settles on me, stealing away my breath and making it feel as though a dagger has been thrust through my heart.
“The senate has voted, and you have been found guilty of those crimes.”
There’s a roar from the gallery, approval mixing with disapproval.
“Traitor!”
“Scum!”
The insults wash over me. I realize now that the verdict was inevitable.
The moment I set foot in this chamber, the trial wasn’t going to go any other way.
Selene would never have had me brought here if she had any doubt about getting her way on this.
She would simply have had me disappear instead, somewhere I would never be found. That, or quietly murdered.
Selene waits for the noise to die down before she begins the next part of her speech.
“For these crimes, as well as the numerous others you’re no doubt guilty of, you are hereby sentenced to death.”
Those words catch me by surprise. I knew a sentence like this was a possibility, but I assumed that the Senate wouldn't want to do it, and I thought Selene didn't want it either.
I'd been prepared for imprisonment, but this…
if I hadn't already been kneeling, I would have fallen to my knees, without the strength to stand.
“You will be taken from this chamber to a place of impalement,” Selene says. “There, you will be killed as the crowds watch, and-”
“No!”
Rowan's voice bellows through the chamber, the very stones of the Senate shaking with his power as he says it.
Selene turns to him with a sweet smile upon her lips. “No, First Senator? You would overrule the verdict of your fellow senators?”
"I would!" Rowan calls out, but then seems to realize the position he's been put in. "At least regarding the sentence. Octavio, as First Senator, do I have the power to grant Lyra clemency?"
The aging senator stands. “The emperor had that power, of course. We never truly decided the role of the First Senator in this matter.”
“I claim that right here,” Rowan says, in a voice that allows for no argument. The stones of the senate chamber are still shaking, in a way that threatens to bring the whole building tumbling down around us if anyone tries to gainsay him. “Lyra will not be executed.”
Selene nods. “As you command.”
She leaves it at that for a moment, making it clear to everyone watching that this is just happening at Rowan’s command. Even as she seeks to become a tyrant, she portrays him as one.
"Lyra Thornwind will be imprisoned instead.
She will live out her days at the Senate's pleasure," Selene says.
She makes it sound like mercy, but I understand now that it's what she intended all along.
She told me she wasn't going to kill me.
All of this was just a ploy to make Rowan overstep and weaken whatever hold he has left within the Senate.
It's just one more step along Selene's road to total power.
The guards grab me, lifting me to my feet and forcing me to march from the senate chamber. I manage one last glance back, and now Marcus is looking after me. He looks distraught for the briefest instant, but then the expression is gone, replaced by the empty look of a true politician.
The guards take me back to the entrance to the catacombs and the spiral staircase leading down. They push me along casually, not caring that my ankle fetters make it impossible to stride forward the way they want me to.
“You know, the First Senator told us we were to make sure you were treated gently,” one of them says, close to my ear.
He’s too close to me, close enough that I can smell the stink of stale sweat, feel his hands on the small of my back.
“But I don’t think he’ll have power much longer, do you?
And we’ve been given other orders when it comes to you. ”
Suddenly and sharply, he pushes me over the edge of the stairs.
I cry out as I fall, seeing the ground far below, certain that I’m about to tumble to my death. I can’t do anything to stop it, can’t begin to save my life.
Then I jerk to a stop, my shoulders and wrists in agony. The guard who shoved me has a grip on my chains, holding me dangling above the drop like a marionette.
“Trust me, prisoner, there will be nothing gentle for you here,” the guard says. “You aren’t in control here, and neither is the First Senator.”
He and the other guard haul me up, and I all but collapse onto the stairs, terror and relief combining in me.
They don’t give me any time to gather my wits, though, but instead force me to my feet and make me march down the stairs once more.
They drag me through the prison, the traps around me briefly glowing, then fading to a low hum as we pass.
The screams of prisoners come to me as I’m forced to walk.
I hear the whistle of a whip, followed by sobbing cries that make me wince as I wonder if I’ll suffer in the same way soon.
The guards take me to the high security section, leading me to a cell and taking the dampener from me now we’re here.
I have a moment to feel the malevolence of the guards thanks to my powers, a moment in which to start to reach out for the animals of the prison, but then the guards send me stumbling into a cell, and the sigils around the edge glow as they work to shut down my magic.
Once again, it’s as though I’m deaf and blind and helpless, all at once.
The barred door slams shut, leaving me in a dimly lit cell. It isn’t the one I was in before, but it might as well be. It’s the same kind of empty space, with a grate in the middle of the floor and straw at one edge.
I’m less interested in that than in the figure sitting at the far end of the cell, the man who stands as I stumble and nearly fall, looking me over.
His hair is shaggy, and his beard is unkempt, with several months' worth of unchecked growth.
He's stick thin and pale from being in the half light of the prison for so long.
His eyes are wide and staring, obviously adapted to that light by now, and he's wearing little more than rags, bloodstained in places in ways that suggest old beatings.
All of those things are true, but I still only need a second to recognize him.
I’ve been thrown into a cell with a man who has every reason to hate me, every reason to hurt me, if he can.
With a man who once sought to become emperor, and who only failed because of me.
Selene has inflicted the ultimate irony on me, throwing me into prison with exactly the man I was trying to reach here when I was caught.
I’ve been put in a cell with Domitian and, without my powers, I don’t know if that’s something I can survive.