Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Pip jerked awake from a light, restless doze at the sound of boots tromping down the stairs.
By the time she rolled upright, blinking at the weak light of dawn filtering through the windows across the way, a dozen guards had marched into the passageway.
Six of them headed for Prince Edmund’s cell while the other six faced hers.
Across the way, Prince Edmund struggled to push himself onto his elbows.
Pip forced herself to let go of the blanket as the guards unlocked the door to her cell. “Now?”
“Not yet.” Prince Edmund answered her dwarvish with the same language.
How long did he want her to wait until she revealed her magic? Was he going to wait until they were facing down the guns of the firing squad?
Probably. He was Fieran’s uncle, after all. She now knew where Fieran had gotten his flare for the dramatic.
Pip stood and didn’t resist as four of the guards entered her cell. They shackled her hands in front of her before shoving her into the passageway.
The guards shackled Prince Edmund’s hands before they dragged him from his cell. He seemed to be struggling to walk, his legs unable to hold him. She wasn’t sure how much was an act and how much of his weakness was real.
The two of them were marched up the stairs and through several corridors before they were hauled through a door into the courtyard that Pip had seen through the window of her original dungeon cell.
She and Prince Edmund were dragged to a spot where several buildings created a sheltered spot near the outer wall.
There, another dozen soldiers were loading their rifles as they stood behind a wall created by a double layer of straw bales. Likely to absorb any ricochets off the stone wall.
Pip swallowed and staggered closer to the guards dragging Prince Edmund. “Now?”
“Not yet,” Prince Edmund murmured, hanging nearly limp in the grip of the guards.
The guards hauled Pip and Prince Edmund to a spot in front of the outer wall of the castle.
When the guards released Prince Edmund, he crumpled to the ground.
One of the guards gave a huff, dragged Prince Edmund back to his feet, and shifted him to where a ring was set into the wall, likely for hitching a horse, back when horses were the primary transportation. He shackled the prince’s hands to it.
Prince Edmund gripped it, his legs still wobbling and sagging beneath him as he propped himself up against the wall.
Pip’s hands, too, were shackled to another metal ring. The guards probably thought that more secure than tying her to a wooden post, but she breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Only a tiny one. It was hard to feel too relieved or confident while staring down a line of rifles.
“Do you want a blindfold?” The guard next to Pip held out a black cloth.
Pip swallowed yet again, trying to get her voice to work. “No.” The word was a mere squeak of breath. She gave a shake of her head to reinforce her refusal.
She wasn’t particularly brave. Her heart hammered harder as she faced the line of soldiers with their rifles, although those guns weren’t yet pointed in her direction. Even knowing she could shield herself with her magic, she could barely breathe past the fear squeezing her chest.
But she needed to be able to see when it was time to escape, and she didn’t want to fumble around with trying to get a blindfold off.
Prince Edmund, too, shook his head, refusing a blindfold.
The guards retreated, leaving her and Prince Edmund standing alone in front of the wall.
Pip cleared her throat, her heart so loud she wasn’t sure she would even be able to hear his answer. “Now?”
Almost unbelievably, Prince Edmund’s mouth curved with a hint of a smile. “Not yet.”
How much longer would he wait? The sun was rising, the soldiers were ready, and she and the prince were standing with their backs to a wall. Any longer, and the firing squad would start shooting. Surely that would be pushing the dramatics too far, even for Prince Edmund.
More footsteps rang in the stillness of the early morning a moment before another group of guards rounded the corner of the buildings. In their center, Empress Bella minced along, leaning on the arm of her son.
Of course the empress wouldn’t miss the execution. She’d want to be here to witness the death of her spy nemesis.
This must have been what Prince Edmund was waiting for. Pip shifted from one foot to the other. “Now?”
“Almost…” Prince Edmund’s gaze sharpened, and he straightened somewhat. “Can you cast a shield around us and around the Mongavarian crown prince?”
Pip eyed the distance. It was harder creating a shield that wasn’t directly over herself, but in this case, the distance was short enough that she could do it. Besides, these were two tiny shields. Nothing compared to the large shields to hold off bombs. “Yes, I can. Over the empress, too?”
The empress sucked in a breath, her mouth opening as if she was going to start some kind of gloating speech.
“No, just the crown prince. She’d be too much of a hassle to take along, I think.
” Prince Edmund didn’t even seem to notice the men who were lining up, their rifles pressed to their shoulders, their elbows resting on the straw bales in front of them.
Instead, he glared at Empress Bella, his grin sharp. “Now.”
Pip reached into her chest and let her magic, finally, flare outward. A shield flashed around her and Prince Edmund. She had to concentrate harder to create a second shield around the crown prince, essentially imprisoning him in place.
The soldiers in front of them shouted. Several of them lowered their rifles and fired, the bullets pinging off her shield and ricocheting back into the courtyard.
The guards surrounding the empress hustled her away, even while the guards who were supposed to be protecting their prince bumped and slapped Pip’s shield, trying to free him.
Then the soldier at the end of the line reached down and fumbled with something. Something whirred to life before it latched onto Pip’s magic and tugged.
She cried out, stumbling, although the shackle attached to the ring in the wall pulled her up short. “They got…it’s…”
Prince Edmund swore in elvish and rattled the shackle on his hands. “Can you get us free?”
Her magic was draining, as if sucked down a deep mountain shaft. The shield around the Mongavarian crown prince dropped, and his guards grabbed his arms, hustling him away as quickly as they could.
Gritting her teeth, Pip poured more magic into the shield before her and Prince Edmund. If that dropped, she’d die. The soldiers facing her wouldn’t hesitate.
Creating a tendril of magic that the machine hadn’t latched onto yet, she shoved it into her shackles, not trying for any subtlety in preserving the metal. Instead, she ripped the shackles off as the metal flexed and parted.
With shaking steps, black spots dancing across her vision, she stumbled to Prince Edmund, gathered another wisp of her magic, and yanked the shackles from his hand.
But that was all she could tear away from the relentless pull of the machine greedily gobbling up her magic. She pressed a hand to the stone wall, trying to draw strength from its solidness, as she held her shield in place with every last scrap of resolve.
Thanks to the draw of the machine, her shield had been pulled forward, its leading edge now covering the straw bales and across the front of the machine. Parts of it were becoming filmy rather than a strong shimmer.
Prince Edmund shoved away from the wall, half-scrambling, half-crawling across the cobblestones until he fell against the straw bales. The top bale toppled to the side, revealing the machine that had been hidden, the extending wires invisible in the cracks of the cobbles.
The soldiers on the other side of her shield beat at it with their rifle butts, only inches from Prince Edmund’s head. Any moment now, and one of them would break through her weakening magic.
With a cry—of pain or determination or perhaps both, Pip couldn’t tell—Prince Edmund slammed what was left of his shackles into the part of the machine on their side of the shield. He did it again, then a third time.
Something shattered. The machine gave a shredding, grinding noise, giving Prince Edmund just enough time to roll to the side behind the protecting straw bales before it exploded.
The nearest straw bale burst into a cloud of golden stalks while the soldiers behind the machine went down with screams of pain.
Pip gasped as her magic snapped back into her grip with a painful lash across her senses. Her knees hit the cobblestones with another sharp rap of pain.
“Are you all right?” Prince Edmund grimaced as he shakily pushed onto his elbows.
“Fine, fine.” Pip gasped in a shuddering breath, trying to gather herself.
Somewhere in the distance, something exploded, the cobbles vibrating beneath her fingers. The crackling taste of both Fieran’s and Prince Farrendel’s magic washed through the air, sparking against her magical senses.
Fieran was here. He was coming for her.
That thought galvanized her, flowing into her chest and outward through her limbs.
She shoved more magic into her shield, even as she staggered back to her feet.
Her knees throbbed, but she was otherwise unhurt.
She’d lost a bunch of her magic, but she still had enough curling in her chest for what she needed to do.
Halfway across the courtyard, the crown prince was still being hustled away in the clutches of his guards, their progress slowed by the soldiers pouring into the courtyard from all directions, running toward this far corner.
Pip reached out, her brain struggling to compartmentalize the two streams of magic, and blasted a shield around the crown prince.
At that distance, she couldn’t create a more fiddly, exact shield so she caught the crown prince’s guards and a number of soldiers in the shield as well.
But it would do until she could get closer.
Hurrying forward, she knelt beside Prince Edmund. “Fieran and Prince Farrendel are here.”
She couldn’t help the grin that crossed her face. Fieran was here. Everything was going to be all right.
“That would explain it.” Prince Edmund smirked as another explosion roared, breaking the stillness of the morning. He gripped the straw bales next to him and tried to get his legs beneath him.
Pip grabbed him under the arm and pulled, heaving him to his feet.
Prince Edmund pushed away from the bales, and his legs promptly gave out beneath him. “Well, that’s going to make escaping somewhat slow.”
“I was hoping you were mostly pretending.” Pip propped herself beneath Prince Edmund’s arm, grunting as his weight settled heavily across her shoulders. Oof, he was heavy. Gritting her teeth, she took a step, telling herself that she was a dwarf. She wasn’t going to collapse under his weight.
“Nope, not pretending. Wish I was.” Prince Edmund gripped his shackles with one hand as he shuffled a step forward. “Ready to get out of here?”
“More than ready,” Pip gasped between panting breaths. She could do this.
Fieran was out there somewhere, and she was finally headed his way.