Chapter 38
Durvla
I’m on edge as I pace my bedchamber—not mine for much longer.
I’m stuck in my own world without anyone to tell me what’s going on.
I’ve since changed out of my ballgown and into a lightweight slate blue dress with loose sleeves.
My bare feet throb as badly as my head does, but I can’t sit down.
I can’t quell the unease inside me or the suffocating stillness that filled me after I put the bracelet on.
I’ve tried convincing myself that it’s all a coincidence. I’ve worn this bracelet for as long as I can remember. There’s no way that it was a dampener or whatever Kilkenny called it. There’s no way that I’m … like him.
I can’t get the sound of his voice out of my head. It was both entrancing and disturbing. I want to believe that it was some kind of trick—that it wasn’t magic—but I can’t remember when last I heard anything with such clarity.
You’re braver than you give yourself credit for, he’d told me. Keep being brave. Don’t break.
I laugh at the memory of it. Brave. Right. I’m anything but brave. All I want to do is go home and not have to deal with princesses and sewing and overly flirtatious cooks and servants. Not to mention explosions.
Stalking toward the window, I draw back my curtains and glance out.
Thick, grey smoke billows against the midnight sky.
My chest tightens as there’s a sudden tremor behind me.
I turn quickly—my door has been broken down by a royal guard in maroon.
Two brig guards in charcoal livery storm in, one holding a set of iron manacles.
Not again.
My heart starts to beat in triple time and my head lightens. The soldiers march toward me, and I back away, hitting the windowsill.
“Durvla Garrick,” says one guard. “You stand accused of treason by the decree of Her Majesty Queen Morwenna Meredyth, the Good.”
Treason? Has Kilkenny finally exposed me as an Undesirable? Did they discover that my bracelet was a dampener? That I have … magical dreams?
Whatever the guard says next, I cannot decipher behind the black spots waxing and waning in my vision. The room feels smaller than the crawl space where we’ve kept Taig hidden during raids. The air is too dense to breathe.
I barely feel the soldiers latch the manacles onto my wrists.
My limbs grow heavier as they tug me out of the room, my feet stumbling along numbly.
My pulse rushes in my temples, sweat cooling on the back of my neck as the soldier continues to haul me away from my freedom. I was almost home. Almost.
But treason is a death sentence.
A fresh wave of dizziness hits me like a swift kick.
They’re going to hang me. I’ll never see Taig or Osheen or anyone back home again. My breaths come in fast puffs. I gulp down air as my vision spots until I’m rendered sightless.
The floor rushes up toward me with no return.
I come to with a gasp for air, jolting upward against something hard. Pain blossoms in my wrists, and my head hammers painfully. An image of a large figure swims in my bleary vision as I try to focus.
A pair of mismatched eyes, one clouded and scarred stares back at me. “Welcome back,” says the soldier woman. Sergeant Angharad.
No …
I look around frantically at my surroundings. A single lamp barely illuminates the room; the walls are dark stone and the floor unfinished. I’m in a chair, my hands manacled behind my back. I tug against them but the metal bites into my skin and I swallow a gasp of pain.
“Answer truthfully and you’ll be released from this room,” says Sergeant Angharad.
I turn her words over in my mind. Released from this room … I’m not going home, am I?
“Do we have an understanding?” Angharad asks.
I nod, my chest heaving, tightening painfully.
“Have you ever consorted with faeries or any being from the Otherworld?”
I almost bark out a laugh. “No.”
“Have you harbored an Undesirable or covered for someone who has?”
“No.” Gods, I hope my voice sounds steady.
She leans in, her eyes narrowed, and my heart is ready to break through my ribs. “Are you sure?” she asks me.
“Yes.”
She doesn’t turn away from me, but she shouts, “Bring them in!”
Spittle lands on my face, and I want desperately to wipe it away.
The shackles bite into my skin as I move my hands, and I remember that I’m bound.
The room brightens slightly from the oil lamps beyond the door as it opens.
In a flourish, Cadet Bronn marches in, his pale, bald head shining in the flames.
My cheek immediately smarts with phantom pain as I remember when he struck me weeks ago.
He’s tugging a chain attached to manacles on the wrists of a taller man.
The prisoner’s auburn hair glints in the lanternlight. His face is bruised and scratched, a trail of blood congealing on his broken nose and down his chin.
Panic surges within me and his name rushes out along with the air in my lungs. “Osheen!”
“Durvla,” he says. “I’m so so—”
Cadet Bronn sinks his fist into Osheen’s stomach and Osheen drops to his knees, his body shaking with violent coughing. I yank against my chains, thrashing my body even as the chair goes off kilter.
Angharad grabs the arms of the chair, shoving it back onto all four legs. “I’m going to ask you one last time,” she says. “Have you ever harbored an Undesirable?”
Heat floods my veins. “Where is my brother?”
Angharad straightens and steps aside as Bronn hoists Osheen to his feet.
“Where is he?” I repeat to Osheen.
There is pain all over his bloodstained face. “I don’t know! We got separated.”
An icy fist squeezes my heart with unrelenting force.
Another soldier grabs Osheen, hauling him away as Cadet Bronn marches toward me. My stomach churns, pinpricks racing across my skin. I blink as black spots fill my vision. One moment Osheen is there, the next he’s gone from my sight. Again. No …
More black spots. My head swims. Lungs constricting. The soldiers tug me out of the room.
If Taig is here … all alone. Gods …
Dinner churns in my stomach and dizziness renders me intermittently blind as the soldiers drag me along.
I was so close to going home. So close.
Pain erupts through my knees as I’m flung onto the rough stone floor of a prison cell.
I scramble to my feet and run toward the cell gate just as it closes shut and a guard locks it.
Grabbing the bars, I shake them with all my might, the manacles chafing my wrists.
I throw my shoulder into the bars and cry out when pain shoots down my arm.
Sobs tear through my throat, even as I scream to be released. Even as I beg them with all my heart and soul to let me see my brother. My Taig.
My energy dwindles, and I throw my shoulder against the bars one last time before dropping to the floor like a rag doll. I squeeze my eyes shut against the image of Osheen, bloodied and battered. My stomach roils at the memory of that dream—his throat split from ear to ear.
At least he’s alive, but he’s been taken, along with Taig, and I have no clue where.
Not that it matters. There’s nothing I can do about it.
With a grunt of frustration, I pound my fists against the ground and suck in a sharp breath when pain flares in my hands as well.
Don’t break.
Find your center, Garrick.
A huff of despairing laughter rushes out of me, Kilkenny’s words lingering in my mind.
I’ve managed to survive a month in Paramount, under the constant scrutiny of Mainlanders.
I’ve made friends and even a home here. Perhaps the others will find out that I’m down here and vouch for me. Perhaps they’ll help me find Taig.
Deep breaths. In. Out. In … Out. I close my eyes as my tears continue to flow. I sit, breathing slowly, letting the heat and tumultuousness flow from my body and the physical pain pour in.
Everything hurts but I won’t break. I have to stay strong for Taig.