Chapter Fifty-Five
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Mira
Victory sometimes required bold moves. Dangerous ones.
Adopting a confident stride, I rounded the corner and approached the two guards at the entrance to the dungeons. ‘I’m here on Mask business,’ I said, my heart pounding.
They looked me over, taking in my fighting leathers and ornate mask. Then the senior of the two shook his head.
‘I wasn’t informed of any official visits.’
‘Do you really want to question Zandri on this?’ I challenged. ‘She won’t be pleased to know one of her operatives was detained.’
The guards exchanged a look. Just as I’d hoped, the risk of Zandri’s displeasure was enough to make them hesitate.
‘Make it quick,’ the older guard instructed.
I didn’t thank him. I strode past without acknowledgement, thinking that even Zandri might have been impressed by my haughty demeanour.
The dungeons were dank and cold, the cells windowless and dim. I shivered as I passed each one, darting a quick glance inside. None of the figures looked up at my presence, and none of them was Darius.
Each step into the darkness made me increasingly uneasy. The longer I took, the more suspicious the guards would become. I needed to make this a quick trip, but down here, surrounded by criminals the world had forgotten, it felt like time had ceased to exist.
I quickened my pace. The sound of my boots against the stone caused some of the prisoners to stir, but none seemed lucid. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like for them, being left to waste away for months or years. I didn’t want to imagine.
‘Wait.’ The word was quiet, so faint that I could almost have imagined it. ‘Please.’
I turned slowly towards the sound. A young woman climbed to her feet and wrapped her hands around the bars of her cell.
‘Please,’ she said again.
I knew who that voice belonged to. Even hoarse from disuse, there was a quality to it – a richness that only nobles could possess. Although I never would have expected to hear Odessa Tiran beg.
‘Kasmira.’ Her eyes were red from crying, though there was no trace of tears now. There was only desperate, heart-wrenching hope. ‘What happened to my parents? No one will tell me. No one will tell me anything.’
‘They . . .’ I swallowed, feeling like my throat was filled with glass. The hope guttered out in Odessa’s eyes, leaving them blank and empty. ‘It was quick,’ I said, the only comfort I could give her.
Odessa nodded, but it was the automatic action of someone whose mind had gone somewhere very far away. She released her hold on the bars, sinking to her knees. Her white dress pooled around her; even coated with dirt and grime, she managed to maintain her dignity.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I breathed.
‘I laughed,’ Odessa whispered, and for an instant, I feared that her mind had snapped. Then her eyes met mine, filled with unexpected gravity. ‘I laughed, during your mother’s execution. My friends were talking about something else, and I . . . I barely noticed. Not until you started screaming.’
I stared at her, unsure what to say. What did you say, to something like that? Odessa had callously watched while my world was ripped apart – and now I was responsible for destroying hers.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I said firmly, unsure which of us I was trying to convince.
Odessa smiled, but there was no warmth there. Only resignation. ‘Does it ever go away?’
I knew what she meant. The pain. The grief. The anger .
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘It doesn’t.’
To my surprise, the smile stayed on Odessa’s lips. It was sad, but it was real. ‘Thank you for stopping.’
Those words – and the gratitude in them – nearly broke me. They nearly made me confess everything that I’d done, every terrible outcome I’d been responsible for.
Instead, I forced myself to keep walking. I made it a few steps before her voice called me back.
‘The only thing worse than being irrelevant to Cassius,’ Odessa murmured, ‘is being of interest to him.’
I paused, surprised by the warning. And in that moment, I thought I understood.
‘You’re scared of him.’
Odessa’s face was little more than a shadowy outline in the gloom. ‘Only a fool wouldn’t be. You don’t see it now, but you will.’
I already did, but I didn’t say so. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold snaked down my spine. Even as I left Odessa’s cell far behind, her warning lingered. Reminding me why I was here – and what I had to lose if I failed.
The tunnel widened into a larger cavern. It was clearly built for a singular purpose, with tools of torture laid out on iron tables.
I avoided looking at them as I approached Darius’s cell. His shoulders stiffened at the sound of my approach.
‘Darius?’
He looked up, drinking me in like a man starved of human contact. When he moved towards the bars, I heard his breath rattle in his lungs, as if he’d been left in the cold and damp too long.
‘You can’t be here,’ he said, every word an effort. ‘It’s too much of a risk.’
‘Let me worry about that.’
Even as I said it, though, unease ate at me. I’d been hoping to be back in ten minutes, but I’d spent five walking here and five with Odessa. I was already out of time.
‘I have a proposition for you,’ I continued, trying to keep the worry off my face.
The barest hint of a smile curved Darius’s mouth, some of that old confidence entering his expression. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘I want to escape on the governor’s ship, along with you, Jadis and Elian.’ I lowered my voice even further. ‘But I need the resistance to stage a diversion while we make our move. And I need your contacts to get a message to the Kalurians, to tell them we’re coming.’
Darius considered me for a moment. ‘The odds of success aren’t high,’ he said at last. ‘It’s more likely you’ll end up in an adjoining cell.’
I folded my arms. ‘I’m going to try either way. At least this way, you have a shot at survival, too.’
He smiled a little, as if at my daring. ‘You’ve done well to get this far. Still, there’s a world of difference between sneaking into the dungeons and helping a prisoner escape.’
He hesitated, and I could see him scrutinising my masked face. My Ravalian-style clothing.
‘They killed my mother,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I’m not one of them, and I never will be. This is the last chance for all of us to be free.’
Finally, he nodded. Wetting his lips, he said, ‘I’ll give you a coded phrase, so Jadis knows this order is coming from me. But you’ll have to trust her to coordinate this. We’ll need more people if we’re going to succeed.’
It should have been good news, but the more people who were involved, the more that could go wrong. And no matter their goals, the resistance was made up of criminals – men like Wyatt, who had betrayed us to the emperor’s soldiers.
Darius’s long-ago words came rushing back to me: How much is a promise from a criminal really worth?
Perhaps he saw my doubt, because he asked, ‘Can you think of a better alternative?’
‘No,’ I said, after a pause. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘Well then,’ Darius said with a sly quirk of his lips. ‘I guess we’ll just have to trust each other.’