Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I t took two days before I finally got a chance to sneak out while the rest of the castle is sleeping. Draven disappeared in the middle of the night, presumably something to do with the hunt for the Red Hand, and he left our rooms an hour ago. I left soon after, but through the window in my room rather than the door.
My heart patters in my chest as I close the final distance to the section known as the kennels . I had to use my magic to persuade one of the servants to tell me where it was, but now that I’m here, I still don’t understand why it’s called the kennels. It’s located on the ground floor, right next to the outer wall of the palace, so I had to climb down the side of the castle and then in through a window in the corridor a short distance away.
I flick my gaze back and forth as I make my way towards the door. But to my surprise, there are no guards here. They might be on the inside though, and there is no other way for me to check than by simply opening the door.
Stopping in front of the plain door, I draw in a bracing breath. Then I push the handle down. Slowly.
My pulse thrums in my ears.
But no alarm is raised.
I carefully edge the door open wider and peer inside. No guards. After casting one last look over my shoulder, I slip in through the door and close it behind me.
A room full of cages meets me on the other side.
I stop dead in my tracks.
Cages. Not cells. Cages . None of them are big enough for an adult to stand upright. I stare at them while dread and rage sear through my veins.
There is only one torch in the entire room, and it’s located close to the door, so the rest of the room is left in murky shadows. But if I squint, I’m fairly certain that I can make out two people sitting in the two closest cages straight ahead.
Swallowing down the storm of emotions inside me, I move towards them. As I get closer, the man in the first cage snaps his head up.
A pair of orange and green eyes and a mop of curly blond hair meet me.
Alistair.
He jerks back in shock when he sees me, and he blinks several times as if he’s trying to figure out if he’s hallucinating or not.
“Selena?” he presses out, his voice hoarse. His eyes are wide as he stares at me. “How are you here? Where is Draven?” Then suspicion flashes across his face, and he narrows his eyes at me. “Is this a setup?”
Coming to a halt in front of his cage, I study him while my heart squeezes painfully in my chest.
There was certainly no love lost between me and Alistair during the Atonement Trials. In my opinion, he is, and always has been, a bully. During all my time in the Seelie Court, I have only ever seen him be mean and do things to make other people feel small and weak and worthless. But regardless of his previous actions, he doesn’t deserve this .
He is seated at the back of the cage where he has a full view of the door. He’s still only wearing those tight shorts that look like underwear. The only other thing he has with which to cover himself is a thin blanket. He has draped that over his shoulders so that it protects his naked back from the iron bars of the cage that he is leaning against. Seated with his knees drawn up to his chest, he tries to wrap as much of his body as possible with the parts of the blanket that remain.
It takes me another second to remember that he asked me a question. While trying to block out the pain that is strangling my heart, I crouch down so that I’m sitting on my knees in front of his cage instead of looming over it.
“Draven is out hunting a human rebel called the Red Hand,” I reply. “I managed to sneak away after he left.”
I shift my gaze to the cage right next to Alistair’s.
And that pain that I was trying to block out hits me like a blow to the chest again.
Isera is seated at the back of that cage, in the exact same way that Alistair is. With a thin blanket around her shoulders, she is sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest and leaning her back against the iron bars. She is also still only dressed in those garments that look like underwear.
But as opposed to Alistair, she isn’t looking at me. She is just staring blankly at the white ice wall across the room. Her long black hair hangs like dark curtains around her face, and her blue and silver eyes show no signs of life whatsoever. If it weren’t for the fact that I can see her chest rising and falling, I would almost believe that she was dead.
“Isera,” I say softly.
She doesn’t reply. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t show any sign at all that she even heard me.
Swallowing, I shift my gaze back to Alistair. “How are you holding up?”
The moment the words are out of my mouth, I want to slap myself. In the history of stupid questions, that one must surely rank in the top ten.
Alistair draws his eyebrows down in a scowl. “How do you think?”
I wince and then nod to tell him that I also realize that it was a dumb question. Then my gaze slides to Isera again. She still doesn’t reply. Just sits there, staring at the wall.
“She’s been like that ever since they put the collars on us,” Alistair supplies. His eyes soften for a fraction of a second, and he heaves a sigh. “Ever since she found out what really happened to her mother after she won the last Atonement Trials.”
“She hasn’t said anything?”
“No. She doesn’t do anything at all.” The softness is replaced by an intense flash of disgust. “When the Icehearts come, she doesn’t even try to fight back. She just lets them do whatever they want. Like she’s a fucking doll.”
“Maybe she…” Dread crashes over me when a sudden realization hits me. “Oh Goddess above. She’s claustrophobic. Intensely claustrophobic.”
Remembering her fear when we had to crawl through that tunnel during the Atonement Trials, I quickly snap my gaze back to her and try to get her to respond or look at me or in any way acknowledge that she has heard my offer to take away her fear. But she just continues staring at the ice wall on the other side of the room. I usually only do things like this if I have the other person’s permission, but since I know what is making her disassociate like this, I decide to take matters into my own hands.
Since I’m not wearing a collar, I call up my magic and shove it towards the bone white spark of fear in her chest. I expect to find it blazing like wildfire. But to my utter shock, it’s not. In fact, it’s not even there at all.
Completely stunned, I release the grip on my magic and just stare at her. She’s not feeling claustrophobic? But then why is she this… catatonic?
Alistair, who couldn’t see that I was using my magic since my head was turned towards Isera, just answers as if I haven’t already confirmed that she isn’t lost in fear at all.
“It’s not just when we’re in these cages, though,” he says. “She’s like this all the time.” He lets out something between a sigh and a humorless breath of amusement. “And then there is that .”
Shifting my gaze back to him, I find him nodding towards the cage in the corner behind me. I turn around.
Shock crackles through me as I find a third person sitting there.
A gorgeous woman with flowing brown hair, pink and purple eyes, and a scar across her cheek and jaw is seated in the middle of the cage.
My jaw drops. “Lavendera?”
Lavendera Dawnwalker is sitting cross-legged there on the white ice floor with her hands resting in her lap. There is a collar around her throat as well, but as opposed to Isera and Alistair, she is wearing the same clothes that she wore when she was competing in the Atonement Trials with us. And as usual, she is staring into space as if she’s not really here.
But at the sound of her name, she tilts her head back down and shifts her gaze from the part of the ceiling that she was gazing at and instead fixes it on me. For a few seconds, that vacant expression remains on her features. Then she blinks hard a couple of times, and reality seems to snap back into her.
“Selena?” she says. Her eyes widen in what looks like genuine shock. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” I stare at her in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
She tilts her head to the side while a considering look blows across her beautiful features, as if she is recounting everything that has happened in the two weeks since the Atonement Trials ended.
“The Icehearts flew back to get me,” she says eventually. A bitter smile tugs at her lips. “They consider tree magic too important to let it roam free.”
“You mean too dangerous ,” I say.
That bitter smile on her lips widens.
“So yeah,” Alistair says from behind me. His voice is laced with bitter mockery and exasperation. “You asked how I’m holding up? I’ve got one person who’s completely catatonic and another who either just sits there staring into space or screams about how crowded it is in here.”
A sharp glint flashes in Lavendera’s eyes. “It is crowded.”
“Regardless, neither of you are doing anything to fight back.”
“Because it’s pointless .”
I’m stunned by the sharpness of her voice as she practically growls that final word at us. Shifting on my knees, I move so that I’m sitting at an angle where I can see both of them. Alistair is glaring at Lavendera, who looks back at him with equal steel in her eyes.
“It’s pointless to fight the Icehearts,” she snaps, her voice cracking through the air like a whip. “They’re too powerful. Too cruel. Too vicious. They control everything. How much food we’re allowed to eat. What we’re allowed to drink. How many children we can have?—”
A jolt shoots through me. “Wait, what?”
She continues glaring at Alistair for another second before she slides her gaze to me and shakes her head as if she doesn’t understand the question. “ What , what?”
“What do you mean they control how many children we’re allowed to have?”
Still seated there cross-legged in the middle of her cage, she stares at me in silence for a few moments, as if the answer should have been obvious. Then she cocks her head while a considering look instead blows across her features. “You really don’t know, do you? You’ve truly never suspected anything?”
“Suspected what?” Alistair snaps from my right, sounding as impatient as I feel.
“That they’re sterilizing us.”
My stomach drops.
For a while, only the faint hissing of the lone torch by the wall breaks the dead silence. Light from its flickering flame dances over the white ice walls, casting ominous shadows around the rest of the room.
“What?” I manage to press out at last.
Lavendera holds my gaze with serious eyes. “We didn’t always only produce one child. Back before the war, we could have as many children as we wanted. But after they trapped us in the Seelie Court, they began to sterilize us after we have given birth to one child.”
Ice spreads through my veins.
“Why do you think all the doctors in the Seelie Court are dragon shifters?” She shakes her head at me, as if she can’t believe that I had never thought about it. “After the mother gives birth, they give her something that they say will help relieve the pain. But it actually makes us sterile.”
“Why?” Alistair asks. He sounds as horrified as I feel.
“To produce strong magic users.”
Nausea crawls up my throat as her words clang through my skull. “They’re breeding us?”
“Yes. They think that having multiple children thins the magic in our blood, so they only let us have one to make sure that if that child is born with magic, it gets all the magic in that bloodline.
Dragging in an unsteady breath, I press a hand to my mouth. I feel like I’m going to throw up. We’re not people to them. We’re less than animals. A source to be controlled and bred.
And then, age-old guilt, guilt that I thought I had already buried when I left the Seelie Court, suddenly flares up inside me. They’re limiting us to one child to make that child’s magic stronger. Which means that I destroyed my parents completely simply by being born. More than I even knew. Not only because they sterilized my mother without her knowledge after I was born, but also because it made my magic stronger. Which ultimately ruined my parents’ whole relationship.
“And besides,” Lavendera continues. “How else were they supposed to keep an entire race contained inside just one single city? If we could have multiple children, we would outgrow the city and the resources it can provide.”
I feel like the entire foundations of my world are breaking. Desperately blocking out the torrent inside me, I try to keep it from shattering completely and burying me underneath so much rubble that I will never be able to climb back out. I can’t consider the full implications of this right now. I don’t even know if it’s actually true. If it was, we would have known. Wouldn’t we?
“How do you know all this?” I ask, my voice strained from how hard I’m trying to keep it together right now.
“How do you not ?” She shakes her head at me, almost as if she’s disappointed in me. “Have you never thought about it? If we truly could only produce one child, our species would have gone extinct long ago.”
“But then… won’t we go extinct now?”
“Since we live for so long, it will take a while. And I assume the Icehearts are planning on lifting the restrictions once we run the risk of inbreeding.” She gives me that look of absolute disbelief again. “Have you seriously never questioned any of this?”
“No,” I snap as a wave of embarrassment and anger crashes over me. Because deep down, I know she’s right. I should have questioned it. But instead, I reply, “I was… busy worrying about other things. Like how to survive. And eat.”
A harsh laugh escapes her mouth. Then she gives me a nod, as if conceding the point. “Yeah. That’s how they do it. Distract you with?—”
She abruptly stops speaking in the middle of her sentence. Her eyes go vacant for a second. Then they snap back in focus. A snarl rips from her throat, and she shoots up from the floor. But since the ceiling of the cage is so low, it only makes her bang her head against it. She crouches down and rakes her fingers through her hair, and then begins pacing bent over like that.
“Stop,” she growls. “It’s so crowded. It’s so fucking crowded.”
I stare at her, completely stunned by the abrupt change in behavior.
“Yeah, she does that,” Alistair says, and heaves a deep sigh.
Lavendera continues pacing while furiously raking her fingers through her hair. My heart beats hard in my chest as I watch her. I don’t know what suddenly triggered it from one second to the other, but I suppose I do understand it. If she truly has been living out in the thorn forest all her life, like people say, any kind of confinement must feel crowded. And this in particular.
My gaze shifts to Isera, who is still sitting immobile in her cage, staring at nothing. Then I flick another glance at Lavendera before I at last return my gaze to the blond fire-wielder in the cage to my right.
Alistair is right. We’re in bad shape. When I snuck in here, I thought that I would be able to recruit both Isera and Alistair to the resistance. But it looks like Alistair is the only one sane enough to actually help.
So I block out all the awful things I have learned in the past few minutes and instead focus on my mission. I can’t change what has happened in the past. And I don’t even know for sure if Lavendera is right. It’s still only her speculations. I need to focus on the things that I can change. Which is the future. I’m going to take down this whole fucking dynasty if it’s the last thing I do. And for that, I’m going to need help from Alistair.
However, when I turn back to him, I only find suspicion in his green and orange eyes as he locks them on me.
“You know, you never really answered my question, Soulstealer,” he says, using the nickname he and his friends used to call me back in the Seelie Court. “How are you here? If you managed to sneak away from Draven, why did you come here instead of escaping?”
Hesitation pulses through me. If we were back in the Seelie Court, Alistair is the last person I would trust with a secret as dangerous as this.
My gaze drifts down to the collar around his neck and over the thin blanket wrapped around his half-naked body.
Determination pushes out the hesitation. Alistair and I might have had our differences in the past, but right now, we want the same thing. So I decide to be honest.
His eyes widen as I explain about my escape and my meeting with the human resistance and the planned heist to cripple the Iceheart Dynasty.
“I will get you out of here,” I finish. “I promise. After the heist, I will get us all out of here. So you have to hold on. For just a little while longer.”
Sitting there at the back of the cage, he watches me in silence for a few seconds. My heart pounds as I wait for him to say something. To tell me that I’m an idiot. That I should have run when I had the chance. That I should try to steal the keys to their cages from Bane and Jessina and just get us all the hell out of here. But to my surprise, he doesn’t.
Drawing in a long breath, he instead says, “What do you need?”
“Maps,” I reply. “There are places that I can’t get into. Like the royal wing. I need to know the layout so that I can figure out where the treasury is and how to get there.”
Alistair grimaces, but then nods. “They keep us blindfolded when they take us out of these cages. But I’ll see if I can overhear something.”
“Thank you.”
He glances away and runs both hands through his curly blond hair. “Just… promise you’ll make a plan to get us out of here. Quickly.”
“Of course. I’ll…” I trail off as I notice something.
When he raised his arms to draw his hands through his hair, it made the blanket around him slide off his shoulders and expose his chest. My heart pounds as I stare at the vicious burn scars visible across his chest and stomach.
“Are those… burn scars?” I blurt out.
Panic flashes in Alistair’s eyes as he snaps his gaze back to me while quickly pulling the blanket back around his body again. His voice is tight as he grinds out, “Yes.”
“But I thought you couldn’t get burned by your own fire magic.”
“I can’t.”
“Then how?—”
“Just find a way out of here.” He shoots me a hard look, signaling that the discussion is over. “I’ll see what I can pick up about the location of the treasury. And I’ll keep an eye on Isera.” Then he nods towards the cell in the corner, where Lavendera is still pacing and snarling about how crowded it is. “Her too.”
“Thank you.” I hold his gaze. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He nods. Then a hint of desperation flickers in his eyes for a second, and he swallows. “Just… hurry.”
And before I can reply, he braces his forearms on his knees and lowers his head to rest his forehead against them, hiding the expression on his face. My gaze shifts from him, to the catatonic Isera, to the panicking Lavendera.
I desperately want to reach out with my magic and take away all the emotions that are hurting them. But I don’t even know what it is that they’re feeling, let alone how it would affect them if I took that emotion away. It might just make everything worse.
So in the end, I just give them all a nod that none of them can see.
And then I slip back out the door.