68. Clash of Stone and Steel
Clash of Stone and Steel
EarlierTalyn
Talyn went down to the dungeon the next morning right after breakfast. She’d had to scrounge her own food from the kitchen since there weren’t formal mealtimes.
Sandrian, Magdalene, and now Morland apparently all took their meals alone in their rooms, so she hadn’t seen any of them yet this morning, which was for the best.
She’d made it down to see Lord Bressen again last night and had been able to get the caronium tip out of his shoulder. At least she hoped she had. She didn’t trust him enough to take him out of the cell and see if he got his power back, but she was reasonably certain she’d gotten all the tip.
She’d also thought last night about ways to get her, him, and Morland out of the castle, and she’d come up with an idea just before exhaustion finally overtook her. She planned to run it by Bressen now to see what he thought, and if it worked, they might actually be gone by dinner.
She shifted again to look like Magdalene and strode straight past the guard on duty, a different one than yesterday.
“My lady, wait!” the guard said as she pushed past him.
“I’m here to see the lord,” she said without stopping. “Stay here and don’t disturb us.”
“But, my lady, he’s not in his cell,” the guard said as he hurried along in her wake.
Talyn jerked to a halt and rounded on the guard. “Not in his cell? Why not? Where is he?”
“They took him upstairs a little while ago,” he said.
“Who took him upstairs?” she asked, trying to hold her rising panic in check. “And where exactly did they bring him?”
“The king’s man, Morland, came down with some guards. I don’t know where they took him.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Talyn turned and sprinted back up the stairs.
She’d told Morland to keep his hands off the lord, but she knew by now he didn’t like to take orders from women.
Why in the three hells hadn’t she thought to take better precautions to keep Bressen safe?
He’d agreed to help her despite everything. She owed him that much.
Talyn raced through the fortress, straight toward the throne room. She had a feeling Morland liked a spectacle, so she was sure he’d take Bressen somewhere public if he was planning to do something. She only prayed she got to him in time before Morland did anything irreparable.
The sound of jeering met her ears when she was within sight of the doors to the throne room, and Talyn knew she’d guessed right. She ported the rest of the way as fast as she could and appeared on her last leap in the middle of the room. What she saw made her stomach lurch.
Bressen knelt in the center of the room secured to the floor by a set of chains that held prisoners before the judgement of whatever lord sat in power. His hands were shackled behind his back, and she saw not one, but two caronium cuffs on his wrists.
He was naked. His clothes lay shredded on the floor where they’d been cut from his body, and dozens of dripping cuts crisscrossed every part of him.
His arms, back, chest, legs, and even the bottoms of his feet bore red slashes that bled onto the floor.
His face and torso, not yet healed from his last beating, showed evidence that someone – likely Morland – had taken their fists to him again.
Around the room, a dozen or so guards laughed and taunted Bressen as he struggled to hold himself upright, even now refusing to show weakness to his enemies.
Sandrian sat in his throne on the dais looking amused while Morland, in Aidan’s body, stood before Bressen with a large dagger.
It seemed to steam or smoke as if he’d just pulled it from the fire that burned in the hearth.
“What do you think, men?” Morland said gleefully to the guards gathered around.
He loomed over Bressen with the dagger. “Will his wife still want him if I remove her favorite part? I’ll send it to her after I cut it off.
She can have it stuffed. Maybe it will still be usable for a while until she finds someone else to fuck her. ”
Talyn’s eyes flared wide, and Bressen struggled against his chains as they both realized what Morland intended to do.
“What do you think, Bressen?” Morland sneered at him. “Will Cyra moan for me if I fuck her with your cock?”
Bressen rattled his chains again as the guards in the room erupted in laughter and jeers.
Morland bent toward Bressen with his dagger, but Talyn didn’t waste time trying to call out to him. She ported to Morland immediately, reared back her fist, and punched him across the jaw in a blow that sent him staggering backwards.
“You fucking bitch!” he spat at her as he looked up, but she grabbed his head and brought it down onto her knee. She heard his nose crunch, and he screamed as she pushed him back so he fell to the floor.
Talyn was beyond words. Aidan’s body or not, her sister’s murderer or not, she was going to kill him, right here, right now.
Talyn drew her daggers and dropped to her knees next to Morland, intent on plunging both blades straight into his heart.
“Talyn, no!” Bressen yelled, and the plea in his voice made her falter just enough for Morland to act.
Morland slapped his hand onto the floor next to Talyn.
She cried out as the stone turned to water, and her body plunged down into it.
She went under but managed to grab the edge of the floor that was still solid and pull herself to the surface, just as Morland turned the water back to stone.
Only her head, shoulders, and one hand now sat above the floor as the rest of her body was trapped within the stone.
“It’s time for you to learn your place, whore!” Morland seethed as he lunged toward Talyn’s head with his dagger.
She ported just in time so the dagger struck stone and the tip scraped across the floor. She was on Morland a second later. She ported onto his back and wrapped an arm around his throat. She dropped the dagger still in her hand and pulled one of the smaller ones she kept in her boot.
Morland screamed as she drove the dagger into his side, not a killing blow, but one that would slow him down long enough for her to figure out what the fuck to do next.
She didn’t get the chance to act further as lightning jolted through her and every muscle seized up. Her vision went white, and then she was on the ground blinking up at the ceiling. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out as the room rematerialized in front of her, but it didn’t seem like long.
“Talyn.” Bressen’s urgent whisper filtered past the ringing in her ears. “Talyn, are you alright?”
She blinked, willing the fog in her mind to lift. There almost seemed to be concern in the lord’s voice.
Well yes, he would be concerned. She was his only ally here, and he needed her to be okay to help him escape. That was now more urgent after what Morland had just tried. The time had come for them to leave.
Talyn tried to lift herself off the ground, but her body felt heavy.
Her eyes flared as she spotted the hairpin she’d given Bressen lying partially hidden under a scrap of his clothes on the floor.
If she could get it to him and distract Sandrian, maybe he could free himself.
He had two cuffs to remove instead of one, but it was their only chance.
“The hairpin,” Talyn whispered back to Bressen.
She let out a loud groan for Sandrian’s benefit as she pretended to collapse back to the floor. She reached out for the hairpin, and her fingers closed around it as she struggled to push herself up again. The struggle was real enough.
“What’s the meaning of this, Raptor?” Sandrian thundered as he stomped down from the dais. “I should kill you now!”
“I told you Lord Bressen is my prisoner!” Talyn shot back at him.
She struggled to her knees and crawled toward Bressen as she retrieved her two daggers. Next to her, Morland yelped as he pulled the smaller dagger from his side.
“I’ll kill you, you filthy little whore!” Morland raged as he tried to pull himself up as well. He turned to Sandrian. “I told you we shouldn’t trust her! She’s with them!”
“I’m not!” Talyn snapped back. Perhaps she might’ve been once, but not anymore. Even if she wanted to be.
“You lie!” Morland snarled, holding the dagger out toward her. “You let that gargoyle fuck that rotten cunt of yours. You reek of him, but I’ll help you get his stench off you.”
He lunged for her, but she dodged and shoved him to the side. She sliced her dagger across his forearm, and Morland cried out as the small blade fell from his hand and clattered on the stone.
“Enough!” Sandrian shouted.
He stepped toward her, but Talyn sprung toward Bressen, positioning herself behind him. She dropped one dagger to grab his hair at the back of his head while she put the other dagger to his throat. He gasped as a trickle of blood ran down his neck, and Sandrian stopped moving.
“I told you no one was to touch the lord without my say-so,” she said.
“I told you I owed him for what he did to me, and you promised I could have him, yet you let this cretin torture him without me. If that’s what your word is worth, I’ll just kill him now, and we’ll see how much leverage you have with Cyra when she comes to claim his body. ”
As she spoke, she let go of Bressen’s hair and let her fingers trail down his back until they reached his hands.
She placed the hairpin in his palm and felt his fingers close over it.
She considered trying to pick the caronium cuffs herself – she had much more practice at it – but if someone saw her, things would go from bad to worse even quicker.
She needed to provide the distraction while Bressen worked at freeing himself.
She prayed he could.
Sandrian held up his hands placatingly. “I never promised you anything,” he said. “Magdalene did. But surely you understand that Morland and I have a far longer history with Bressen than you do. The urge to play with him was too hard to resist.”