Chapter 5
Ice crackled in my stomach like the slow frost of a lake as temperatures dropped below freezing.
Had I died in the pool at Azurann? Had they left me there to perish?
No, Hames wouldn’t let them, even if everyone else wanted me punished for treason.
But Kier? After I’d betrayed him a second time, after I led him there to his death, he’d never forgive me.
My eyes burned, but I forced them open, struggling to sit up at the same time I reached up to rub my eyes. I froze. Cool glass wrapped my wrists, binding them together.
A lump rose in my throat. So they’d arrested me and locked me up after all. I wish I could say I was surprised.
I used my bound hands to rub the grit from my eyes, blinking them open at my surroundings. I’d never seen this place before, but it looked like no prison cell I’d ever been in. It was the size of a church for one, and entirely circular, with whorls cut into the dark blue stone beneath me.
I gave my body a quick sweep and when I found no chains or magic coiled around my ankles, I stumbled to my feet, wincing at the pain that snapped through my gut, bringing tears to my eyes. Well, there went my delusion that I’d fully healed.
It wasn’t glass around my wrists; it was solid lapis lazuli.
I painstakingly inched up the loose black shirt I’d been dressed in—I would stress about someone seeing me naked later, once I was out of this place—to assess my wound.
There was no gauze or bandage, but a light blue scar marked my torso where the wand had stabbed me, a slash that sat unnaturally against my tanned flesh.
“Oh, good. That’s not worrying at all,” I murmured, my voice hoarse like I’d been screaming while unconscious.
I looked around for a glass of water—or, hell, a puddle—but there was nothing except me, the cavernous room, a statue of the Mother in the heart of the space, and the twenty four arches that ringed the space. I counted them; it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.
I turned, surveying the space, wondering why they’d locked me up here instead of the prison I knew sat on the edge of the capital city.
Maybe because the Haar still surrounded Skayan?
Or maybe Kier was so ashamed of me that he’d hidden me away, where no one would ever learn the Bluescale princess had betrayed them to the Greenheart queen.
I froze. Waited for Cleodora’s voice to slide like silk through my mind. Usually, thinking about her summoned the monster, so it wouldn’t be long.
But after a few moments of true, total silence, with my breath fogging the cold air in front of my face, the only sign of movement in my new prison, I realised I’d been spared her smug voice this time.
It wouldn’t be long; she’d be back. She always was.
I shook off the memories that formed, sickly with the feeling of ratting out my own people, giving her information she’d use to kill whoever remained of Bluescale.
I hated being alone with my own thoughts.
Loathed it. I rubbed my arms as the chill of the cavern prickled my skin.
(I had to rub each arm one at a time because a huge slab of blue lapis trapped my wrists.)
Speaking of blue stones… What was that gem Odele used to free me of Cleodora’s compulsion?
I noticed it was no longer on my chest, only my own necklace hanging there, but I’d caught a glimpse of it during the chaos.
A flat, circular blue gem, clearly dosed with magic. How did Odele know it would work?
“Better question,” I said to myself, because I was already going mad locked here on my own; I might as well speed along the insanity by talking to the voices in my head. “How do I get another of those things?”
That stone cut Cleodora’s voice out of my head and meant she couldn’t compel me. I needed to get my hands on another. But first, I needed to get out of this place.
“It’s nothing you’ve not done before, Letta,” I coached myself, setting off across the smooth midnight-blue floor, eyeing the spirals and ancient symbols carved in it, like a map of the stars or a sea chart.
“Remember that time Marc the Scythe locked you in the cellar and left you for dead because he thought you stole that box of gold coins?”
What I actually stole was a shiny dagger with a bright yellow gem embedded in the hilt.
Lesver, another of Marc’s gang, stole the coins.
I was just the one stupid enough to get caught raiding Marc’s vault.
He threw me in the cellar, deprived me of light, food, and water, and gave me a dwindling supply of air.
I should have died down there, but I made it out with the help of a rusty bit of plumbing, a harrowing scream that brought one of the gang to see what the noise was, and my perfectly timed period that horrified the old man with the sight of blood trickling down my thigh.
I whacked him on the head, escaped through a window, and the rest was history.
“Right,” I agreed, as if my mind and my mouth were two separate people having a conversation. Just normal, perfectly sane stuff. “Plumbing, plumbing…”
I searched the walls for an exposed bit of pipe, maybe a rusted section near the edge of the low ceiling.
“Fuck, those are low ceilings.” I hadn’t noticed because the place was so huge and cavernous, but I was noticing it now, and the back of my neck prickled. Sweat beaded on my upper lip.
“This is fine,” I laughed, a little raggedly, as I gave the statue of Gaia and her dragons a wide berth.
The last thing I needed was to risk pissing off the goddess by accidentally knocking the head off one of her stone dragons.
“This is totally fine. I’m not getting claustrophobic.
I’m totally good with enclosed spaces. Not that this is an enclosed space; look at all this wiggle room. ”
I did a little pirouette to prove my point about the spaciousness, my bare feet skimming across the carvings on the ground. This cavern had an old, heavy feel to it, like maybe Gaia had actually lived here if she was once a living person and not just a story goblins made up.
I killed my little spin, and paused, listening, as if someone was in here with me.
“Who’s there?” I demanded, because I was a walking cliché.
Aerona would have rolled her eyes so bad she’d have strained them if she was here.
Fuck, I wish she was here. Not that I wanted my little partner in crime to be locked up, too, but gods I wanted company.
Ryvan would have been a great cell buddy.
He’d have kept me laughing, and taken my mind off the fact that the walls were closing in and I swore there were more arches than I’d first noticed and my mouth was worryingly dry and my husband hated me.
My throat tightened. I ignored it, stalking across the space—hard to do when you were cuffed and barefoot in leggings and an oversized shirt—towards the nearest arched space, peering into it with every muscle in my body tensed.
I waited for the darkness to shift, to coil into muscles and limbs and a monster waiting in the shadows, but it was just a dark alcove.
I pressed my hand against the wall set back into the arch, searching for vulnerabilities and finding none.
There were no pipes in the cavern, either. Nothing except the Mother’s statue, and I wasn’t quite desperate or insane enough yet to risk breaking off a piece to work at the mortar between these bricks. Emphasis on yet.
I moved onto the next arch, finding much of the same.
And again at the next, and again and again until I’d come full circle.
My shadow cast strange patterns across the carved floor, and I squinted, trying to figure out where the light was coming from.
It took me long minutes, during which I had to stop to wait out two dizzy spells, but I eventually found a blue stone embedded in the top of the arched ceiling.
I stretched my hand out to grab it, but contrary to my paranoia and claustrophobia, the ceiling wasn’t actually pressing on me.
And unless I miraculously learned how to jump six feet higher, I wasn’t getting anywhere near the stone.
I eyed Gaia’s statue.
“Neither of us is going to enjoy this,” I told her. “But it’s an emergency.”
The emergency being my breath was short and I was starting to hyperventilate and I needed to get out.
I grabbed hold of Gaia’s shoulder, the move awkward with my hands bound, and pushed off the floor, wincing at the way my thighs shook.
Whatever getting stabbed did to me, it had left me weak.
I didn’t want to think about the magic that must be rampaging through my human body right now, or what it could be doing to my insides.
Being stabbed by a magic wand must have left a residue—my scar was blue, for fuck’s sake.
“Don’t think about that,” I panted, searching for a foothold against Gaia’s knee as my arms began to shake. “Just think about the glowing blue stone in the ceiling.”
Glowing stones meant magic, and I could use it to get out.
Whoever had dressed and bound me had taken my rings of power, so I couldn’t feel Valour or Baby.
My heart convulsed with a pang. The last I saw of Baby, Jyrard kicked him into the pool, and I didn’t even see what happened to Valour, if she ever got out of the ropes.
I knew she was weak; I’d felt her rage and helplessness.
I related a lot to that right now, as I hooked my bound hands behind the Mother’s head and braced the balls of my feet on her knees, pushing up.
Years of climbing the roofs in Seagrave, sneaking from hideout to hideout, meant I knew how to balance my weight, to scale impossible heights, but I’d never climbed a statue before.
At least Gaia seemed sturdy and pretty secure on the ground.
I pulled myself up until I sat on her shoulder, reaching up towards the glowing stone.
“You know,” I muttered, out of breath. “This would be a lot easier with my hands free.”