Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Joy
Queen Alanna glanced over her shoulder. “Guards!”
The ornate doors exploded inward with a thunderous crash, and half a dozen armored guards poured into her private chambers like a black tide. Their boots hammered against the marble floor in perfect synchronization.
The lead guard scanned the chambers as if looking for danger, reminding me of Enzo. “Yes, my queen?”
“Bind her powers and take her to the dungeon.” Ice dripped from every syllable as she turned away dismissively. “She defied me and must pay for her actions.”
Terror locked my throat tight as a guard withdrew twin bracelets from his belt—dark metal that seemed to absorb light itself. They were different from Marsha’s but I knew what they were—binding bracelets.
I stumbled backward, wildly looking for a way to escape, but Ari’s fingers dug into my arm like talons. “Not so fast, little shadow,” he purred against my ear, his breath hot and rank.
I thrashed wildly, desperation lending me strength, but it was useless. A guard’s gauntleted hand seized my wrist with bruising force. The first bracelet snapped shut with a sound like breaking bones, then the second.
Agony exploded through my veins like liquid fire. My shadows didn’t just disappear—they were ripped away, torn from my very soul. I screamed.
“Stop! It hurts!” The words came out ragged and breathless.
Queen Alanna’s hand fluttered in bored dismissal. “Take her away.”
I dragged my gaze to Ari through the haze of pain still radiating from the binding bracelets. He gave me a slow smirk that didn’t reach his icy-blue eyes. “You shouldn’t have defied me, little one. You should know by now that I show no mercy.”
My defiance sank, and I stood there trembling like a little girl surrounded by monsters. Two massive guards flanked me, their gauntleted hands clamping around my arms like iron shackles. Without ceremony, they hauled me toward the doors, my feet barely touching the polished marble.
“No, please stop!” I dug my heels into the floor, fighting every inch as they wrestled me forward. The marble was too smooth, too slippery—I couldn’t find traction.
The head guard’s hand shot out, fingers tangling brutally in my hair, and yanked my head back so hard I saw stars. Pain exploded across my scalp. “Silence.”
Tears welled in my eyes, blurring my vision. Dungeon. Just the word broke my resistance. What horrors waited down there? Rats scurrying in the darkness? Or worse—things with teeth and claws? Would it be cold enough to freeze my breath? Would the air reek of decay and despair?
The binding bracelets made escape impossible. My shadows—my only weapon, my only tool for breaking free—were gone. I'd be locked in the dark with no power, no way out, completely at the mercy of whatever the queen decided to do with me. The dungeon wasn't just punishment. It was a tomb.
As the guards dragged me down the endless hallway—my legs useless, my hope defeated—I caught sight of Brynn.
Her face a mask of helpless sorrow, her dark eyes brimming with unshed tears.
Her hands cracked and bleeding, the skin raw and red from scrubbing grease pits or whatever other menial tortures they’d subjected her to.
She had warned me about Queen Alanna—defy her and she’ll throw you in the dungeon. Or cut off your head if she’s feeling merciful. I should have listened. God, I should have listened.
Ahead, clusters of courtiers lingered in the torchlit hallway—men in midnight velvet discussing in hushed tones, women draped in gossamer gowns that sparkled like captured starlight. Their conversations died the moment they spotted our procession, crystal goblets pausing halfway to painted lips.
They recoiled as if I carried plague, silk skirts rustling as they pressed themselves against the tapestried walls.
Their faces transformed into masks of cold indifference—no, worse than indifference.
Disdain. Their perfectly sculpted features radiated disgust, as if my suffering was nothing more than an unwelcome stain on their pristine world.
A woman in emerald silk actually sneered, her jeweled fingers covering her nose as if I had offended her delicate sensibilities. A man in burgundy velvet turned his back entirely, as if a girl wasn’t being dragged to torture mere feet away.
What was wrong with these people? The question hammered in my skull as my heart shattered a little more. Didn’t they have any compassion, any shred of humanity like Brynn? Or were their hearts as frozen as their queen’s—beautiful on the surface but made of ice underneath?
The guards hauled me past the cluster of beautifully dressed monsters, too weak to fight anymore. Finally, we reached the end of the corridor where a massive door loomed before us—black iron reinforced with silver runes that seemed to writhe in the flickering torchlight.
The head guard raised his free hand, and said, “Mor’thek vel’shan dorium.”
The ancient lock clicked with a sound like breaking bones, and the door groaned open on rusted hinges, releasing the stench of damp stone and something far worse—despair made manifest.
A winding stone staircase spiraled downward into suffocating darkness, each step worn smooth by centuries of condemned prisoners.
Thick cobwebs draped from the vaulted ceiling like funeral shrouds, their silken strands catching in my hair as we descended.
Ancient dust motes danced in the amber glow of flickering torches mounted to the damp walls, their flames sputtering in the stagnant air.
The shadows they cast should have been mine to command, should have bent to my will and helped me escape. Instead, they mocked me—twisting and writhing just beyond my reach, as useless as I was thanks to the cursed binding bracelets that burned like brands around my wrists.
“No, please.” My voice cracked on the words, another plea joining the thousands these stone walls had already ignored. I thrashed desperately against the guards’ iron grips, my shoulders screaming in protest, but I might as well have been fighting marble statues.
Without effort, they hoisted me completely off the ground, my feet dangling uselessly in the frigid air. They carried me down the endless staircase as if I weighed nothing more than a child’s doll, their armor clanking with each measured step that took me further from hope.
Cold seeped through the thin silk of my gown like icy fingers, raising goosebumps that rippled across my exposed skin in waves.
My teeth chattered so violently I bit my tongue, the metallic taste of blood flooding my mouth.
I couldn’t tell if the trembling was from the bone-deep cold or the terror shaking my body.
The delicate taffeta gown—so beautiful when I’d been forced to wear it for the queen—now felt like tissue paper against the brutal chill. It offered no protection, no comfort, only the bitter reminder of how helpless I’d become.
Enzo. His face blazed in my mind like a beacon—those dark eyes that could be so fierce yet so tender, the way his jaw tightened when he was worried about me.
God, what I wouldn’t give to have him here now, to feel his strong arms wrap around me and pull me against the solid warmth of his chest. To hear his voice promising that everything would be alright, even if it was a lie.
But Enzo was a world away, and I was descending into hell alone.
The winding staircase finally ended, depositing us into a nightmare that was somehow worse than anything my terror-soaked imagination had conjured. The dungeon stretched before me like the maw of some ancient beast—a cavernous stone chamber that reeked of human misery and things best left unnamed.
Rusted iron cells lined one wall like gaping mouths, their bars thick as my wrist and stained with what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
But it was the opposite wall that made my stomach lurch—chains hung from metal rings bolted into the stone, some empty and swaying gently in the fetid air, others. ..occupied.
I wasn’t the only prisoner down here.
A chorus of moans and whispers echoed from the shadows—broken voices speaking in languages I didn’t recognize, or perhaps they’d simply forgotten how to form coherent words.
Something skittered across the floor in the darkness beyond the torchlight, and I caught a glimpse of pale, emaciated fingers reaching through the bars of a distant cell.
But it was the man chained to the wall directly in front of us who commanded my attention.
He dangled from shackles that had rubbed his wrists raw and bleeding, yet his silver eyes tracked our movement with dangerous intelligence.
Long, matted curls fell past his broad shoulders, framing a face that might have been handsome once—before whatever horrors had carved those hollow cheeks and left that network of scars across his chest.
Tattered rags barely covered his muscular frame, hanging like grave clothes on his powerful body. But despite his obvious suffering, there was something unsettling about the way he watched us—not with the broken despair I’d expected, but with the patient gaze of an apex predator temporarily caged.
When his lips curved into what might have been a smile, I saw that his teeth were stained red.
“Ah, another soul joins our merry tea party,” he rasped, his voice like gravel grinding against bone.
My spine turned to ice, then my lungs froze up as the guards dragged me across the filthy stone floor toward the chained man.
The cursed shackles clicked shut around my wrists with brutal finality, suspending me barely a foot away from him—close enough to smell the copper scent of old blood on his skin.
The guards’ boots echoed as they retreated up the stone staircase, abandoning me to the darkness and whatever horrors awaited. Their torchlight faded, leaving only the weak flames of the dungeon’s ancient sconces.
“You must have done something really bad to end up next to me,” the man said, his voice oddly conversational for someone hanging in chains.
“Why?” I whispered, though part of me didn’t want to know the answer.
“Because the only people who get tortured are the ones chained to this fucking wall.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
My legs turned to water, my full weight sagging against the chains. The queen didn’t just want me imprisoned—she wanted me broken, piece by agonizing piece.