Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
SEBASTIAN
Iwas pretty sure that I was dying. Every part of my body throbbed from my shredded skin to my dehydrated cells.
Beaumont never explicitly said that he would kill me, but he also never said that I wouldn’t die, either.
Which I was okay with, because as long as I was in this cell, it meant that she was alive.
I had started seeing things, too. Weird things.
Especially in the middle of the night, when the only evening guard dozed off on his watch.
I heard clambering and growling, and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought Beaumont had some ruthless guard dogs.
But that prick didn’t have it in him to take care of his kingdom, let alone a pet.
Today was the worst of the beatings I’d received. I didn’t think there was a square inch of my skin that was free from injury. I was an abstract painting made of blood, sweat, and bruising. I doubted there was an area of my body that would be recognizable if I were to look in a mirror.
On the bright side, I was no longer alone in the dungeon.
The girl that had shown Kohen and me to Draemor’s archives was at last caught, stored away in a cell just like mine.
I could hear her crying for most of the time she was awake, and the sound cut me deeply.
She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my fuck up.
At least by the sounds of it they hadn’t hurt her yet, but I was sure it was only a matter of time.
I overheard her name when they brought her down here yesterday morning. Leighton. Pretty name. Would look nice on her headstone—there was no way that Bitchmont would spare her life.
The light from the small, barred window of my cell had faded with evening’s arrival, leaving only a small sliver of moonlight caressing the floor.
Beaumont left my hands and feet without bounds, knowing damn well I couldn’t go anywhere if I tried, so I crawled over to the steel door, glancing around to see if the guard had fallen asleep yet, and to no surprise, he had.
I pushed my back against the door of my cell, my breath snagging on my ribs in the process.
Moving any part of my body was a struggle, granting me a feeling of agony throughout every motion.
My finger followed the slow movement of the moonlight on the ground, and since no one was around to see, I let a single tear drip out of my swollen, blurry eye.
I’d accepted that I would die down here, and I was surprisingly okay with that.
All of the bad shit I’d done was finally catching up to me, and if it was my time to meet Caius, then I would welcome life beyond the veil.
I only wished I had been able to patch things up with Maeve before I left this world, or that we had more time together before I foolishly destroyed everything.
She had every right to hate me, I knew that.
But fuck, did the pain from the realization hurt more than everything Beaumont had done to me in this cell.
If I knew that when I got out of here she would be waiting for me with open arms and her lips, maybe I would have had a little more motivation to try and escape.
But at this point, death seemed like the only option anyway, so why fight the inevitable?
I wasn’t one to give up, but in this situation, the least I could do was grant myself mercy and accept what was coming for me without the added pressure of a mental battle with myself.
The finger that traced the moonlight twitched as a spasm shot down my arm. I cranked my elbow, stretching my arm back and forth to try and alleviate the burning ache. My head fell back, smacking into the bars where I found sleep—or unconsciousness, I didn’t know.
What I can only assume was hours later, I jolted forward at the creaking sound of a door that was only audible when someone was entering the dungeon. Grasping a bar with my left hand, I pulled my body to the side, forcing myself to face out so I could see down the dingy corridor.
Footsteps crept down the cement stairs so quietly, that even if the guard was awake, I doubted he would hear them. I was surprised I could even hear them with the blood that filled my eardrums, so maybe it was just another hallucination.
Regardless, I grasped the bars harder, my heartbeat quickening with each pump of blood. I watched closely, keeping my swollen eyes peeled as wide as possible for a new cellmate.
Slowly and forcefully, I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, the guard who had fallen asleep had become headless, his skull rolling into a crack of early morning sunlight that brightened the disgusting floor.
All my energy shoved my body backwards. I scrambled further away from the bars, the adrenaline ceasing the ache in my bones for a moment. What the fuck? My breathing picked up. Was this it? Had Beaumont finally come to kill me, murdering his poor excuse of a prison guard in the process?
“Hawthorne?” a somewhat familiar voice whispered my name.
A man approached, garnished in all black aside from a set of shining armor—his skin a shade deeper than my favorite whiskey. He gripped the bars of my cell, his golden eyes peeking between them.
“Fucking hell, Hawthorne. You’re in worse shape than I expected.”
I never thought I’d admit this, but relief encased me when Kade came into view. “Lyrise?” I managed to mumble out despite the gashes in my mouth and on my tongue.
Kade fiddled with the lock. “Back up,” he said, and as I tried, he shoved a key—that I assumed he stole off the dead guard—into the lock. He yanked the door back, and I tried to get to my feet, but fell to my knees.
Weak. Too damn weak.
I hung my head, shaking it in genuine embarrassment.
“It's okay, Hawthorne. I didn’t expect you to be walking. I got you, let's get out of here,” Kade assured me—the first semi-nice thing I think he had ever said to me.
Despite my pride, I allowed Kade to lift me up by the arms. I swung one of them around his shoulder and he practically dragged me out of the cell, my broken ankle lagging on the floor behind the rest of my leg. We started towards a stone staircase, but I paused.
“Wait.” Turning halfway, I pointed to the cell that Leighton was in. “She helped Kohen and me. It's our fault she's in here.”
“We don’t have time—”
“Open it,” I demanded.
Kade groaned, but leant me against the wall and moved for the girl’s cell.
Leighton's eyes shot open as she arose from a dead sleep to a stranger unlocking her cage, before he tossed the keys to the ground. Her eyes found mine, and I held a finger to my lips, quieting her before she could verbalize her fear.
I ushered her to follow us, and she did, even helping me walk by supporting my other side.
The two of them dragged me up the stairs, a wince of pain escaping me every time my heel hit the floor. When we reached the top, I was met by another hallucination. One so horrific and terrifying that I heaved, though I had nothing in my stomach to release.
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered to myself. In the moment, I began to wonder if Kade was even here, or if he was another thing created by my bleeding mind.
The creature before me resembled a mortal, but was clearly no such thing.
It was naked, its ribcage expanding far past its shoulders with each growling breath it sucked in.
Its jaw was distended and sharp, like it had been torn open and never healed.
Dark hair laid messily atop its pale, grayish skin, and along the knuckles of its hand were jewels. Five of them, each a different stone.
My knees threatened to fall out from under me as I allowed the delusion to consume me, but reality found me at the sound of a voice.
“No way,” Leighton breathed, then stuttered in fear, “I didn’t think it was true. That’s impossible.”
Frozen to the floor, Kade mumbled without moving his lips. “What is it?”
“I thought I was making this up,” I garbled, my sense of consciousness fading by the second.
“Shh,” Leighton silenced us, hiking my arm back over her shoulder to better support my weight. “Go. Back. Down. The. Stairs,” she enunciated each word.
Carefully we backed up, creeping down the stairs and back into the dungeon as the creature wandered further down the corridor above us and out of our vision.
“What was that?” I repeated, my words cut off by a low roar coming from the creature.
“We need to find another way out,” Leighton said, disregarding my question and tucking her matted, black hair behind her ears.
“What was that thing?” Kade enunciated each word, demanding an answer.
“He calls them his children,” Leighton whispered.
“Who? Beaumont?” I asked for clarification.
She nodded. “Yes. Listen, I will explain, I swear, but we need to get out of here first. There are more of them, I’m sure of it.” Her head shot side to side, then she pointed to the other end of the dungeon. “That way. I think there's a tunnel at the end of this row of cells.”
We followed her lead, and the further we got and the more energy I used, the weaker I felt. Slowly, darkness crept up on me.
“Stay with me, Hawthorne,” Kade said under his breath, and I tried, I really did.