Chapter 5
five
My time wasn’t running out, it was gone. It had slipped through my bloodied fingers like the shifting sand of an hourglass until the dreadful glow of first light touched the brickwork.
I adjusted my grip on the rusted chain as my slick hands continued my fruitless and tireless work.
I’d spent the night building a tower of reeking buckets to yank free one of the many remaining shackles hanging from the ceiling.
It was rusted enough to snap and throw me to the ground, nearly breaking my arm and dislocating my shoulder.
But a broken arm was preferable to a missing head.
Despite the wall of anguish, I looped it through the lock and pulled as hard as I could muster.
Again.
And again.
And again, until I had to wrap it around my waist to escape my blood-slicked hands. If the rusted chains could snap, that blasted lock could too.
I didn’t cease my cyclical, mechanical motions until the horrible clank of armor echoed down the hall. It wasn’t a single set. No, it was an army of guards, with Hrothgir leading the charge. He had returned to drag me to my death.
I’d sold my soul for nothing except weeping wounds and futile work.
He said nothing as he unlocked the cell, and that resounding click snapped something inside me. I wouldn’t go easily.
The door creaked open, and he motioned. “Come out, Lorelana, the kingdom is waiting.”
Bastard.
I charged him, certain he assumed I’d lunge for his throat.
He braced like he thought I would, his hands just below.
I whipped the chain toward his exposed cheeks, and smiled as it parted his skin and spewed crimson.
I’d gotten him just below the eye, with slightly better aim, I could’ve permanently maimed him. Good.
He howled and threw me to the floor. The cobbles dug into my face and bruised the last of my unmarked skin.
Pain bloomed across my cheeks and spine as he shoved his metal boot into me.
I squirmed and thrashed, but it was useless.
He pressed his foot deeper, eliciting a wail that I knew brought a smile to his bloodied face.
I thrashed again, but if he pressed only a tad harder, my spine would snap like a twig.
So I went slack and stopped fighting, and only then did he relent.
He removed his foot and yanked me to a stand, ripping at my shoulder blade painfully.
He wrenched my arms behind me and leaned in until his reeking breath was the only thing I could focus on.
“Be thankful you didn’t take my eye—had you, I would have gouged yours.
There’s still time before the execution, and your suffering can be worsened. ”
Death isn’t the worst fate.
My heart skipped a beat, nearly halting in my chest as Hrothgir shoved me forward—but that wasn’t what terrified me.
That thought hadn’t been my own. I searched for it inside, seeking the voice that felt so familiar yet so far away, but I couldn’t find it again as they marched me through the long corridor.
Just ahead, I saw flashes of Deldren. They kept him far enough away that I couldn’t speak to him, but close enough he must have heard every last scream.
Had he heard me sign away his life, too?
My mouth grew dry, while the weight of guilt settled upon my shoulders. But I shook it away; after all, we were going to the same place: to die together.
I tried to sing, but my voice was gone—lost somewhere in the cell without water.
So I hummed, at first soft, but my voice grew slowly until it was a resounding thunder that buzzed across my chest. I hoped he heard the liturgy I hummed for us.
It was of death, its inevitability, and walking in stride with Ovatar.
I licked my desiccated lips as they shoved my head down for the stairwell. Hrothgir’s fingers clawed until I cried out, and we emerged before the waiting crowd.
I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t the wall of shouts and screams, clamoring for our heads. It wasn’t a single voice, or even ten. No, this was a cacophony of nobles and peasants alike. Then they began chanting bastard, useless, and whore.
The sunlight finally touched my skin, but it burned.
This wouldn’t be a quiet execution, bringing the cold release of death.
We would go painfully, with a crowd of people who thirsted for our blood.
If anyone from the Underquarter protested, their words were drowned out, meaningless in the river of hate.
The raving peasants complicated the trip up the long stairs to the courtyard.
I feared the peasants might sweep us away, but we marched until the cold dais appeared.
The people before us parted, driven by the wall of guards who forced them back with the promise of violence.
Banners and flags still flapped in the wind, but their knocking was inaudible over the jeering.
As we rose the final set of stairs, I raised my chin.
There were only six steps, but climbing them might as well have taken an eternity.
Once I planted my feet on the last stone, I finally caught sight of my mother.
They'd torn her to shreds, with no skin spared from the brutal crimson lashes.
Worse was the filthy, bloodstained rag covering her eyes.
They took her eyes.
A chill bloomed across my skin, and I searched for any out, gazing across the vast horde and adjoining horizon. Somewhere in the distance, something glinted, but it was brief. It must have been a trick of the light, my mind searching for what I wished to see.
The ebony block next to the dreaded spikes and the missing magical threads drew my attention back into sharp focus. Many previous executions had worn a deep well in the center. Ilyatria was no stranger to the brutal will of the crown, nor was I.
Hrothgir once told me the chopping block used to be a beige yew, but the scars left from the evil it culled painted it black.
You could wash that memory from stone, but it seeped into the wood to leave their story behind.
Would mine be imprinted onto it as well?
Or would I be forgotten, just another body thrown into the burial wells of the Underquarter?
I licked my lips again, swallowing the lump in my throat. Hrothgir forced me to my knees beside my brother. The metallic odor of blood and sweat assaulted me, baked brighter by the sun.
The guards shifted uneasily to our rear, sorting their weapons, testing the weight of the halberds—and a single axe. My stomach flipped, and bile rose.
Deldren’s cheeks were painted in the colors of pain: black and blue, with long strokes of fetid green.
He was the picture of perfection a few days prior, but now his hair was greasy and dripped with sweat.
His crooked nose that he’d proudly worn was now bleeding and broken, smashed into his skull.
With his hair filthy and matted with blood, he looked no more than a small, sad child.
One that I needed to wrap my arms around and protect.
All the pride in the world had slipped from him in less than a few days.
Is that all it took? A day to shatter someone’s will?.
So I forced a breath, and our song. “No matter what, I promise to stay.”
He caught my gaze immediately, shame shifting in his. That shattered me. This wasn’t his fault. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
“Every single day, I’ll be there with you in stride. You need not be afraid.”
His chest heaved, and his gaze dropped to his bloodstained clothes.
“I won’t let you travel the shores of death alone,” I sang, my throat cracking.
In a low voice, he replied, “You’ll walk among us, one of Ovatar’s own.”
When the tears came, I didn’t fight. I let them slip down my cheeks freely. It was painful to know he still remembered, but I was thankful he never forgot. The reality that I’d given up his life for my own, even if fruitless, haunted me. That reality was agonizing.
I lowered my head in shame as I felt a familiar form walk behind. The limp was no longer there as he strode behind us, his head held high. He didn’t so much as glance at us.
Father.
He was as plump as I remembered, wrapped in fine furs, while we kneeled on the filthy stone, bound like cattle. He still had his beard and tired look, but beneath that, a fire blazed. One that was unknown to me.
Captain Hrothgir reemerged with a sharpened axe in hand. This wasn’t the normal one I’d seen before. Instead, he wielded a war axe, double-sided and intended to cleave men limb from limb. He waited at the edge of the stage, running his fingers along the hilt. I shivered in the warm sun.
Something in the distance stirred again along the horizon. A silvery flash that I swore had the silhouette of curling horns and wings. A metallic gem that glittered in the sky.
“Dragons?” I whispered. It couldn’t be, but it had the distinct image of the ones I’d seen painted in the Hall of Echoes.
“General,” my father said, drawing my attention away from the flash, enough that it had disappeared when I searched for it again.
My fingers dug into my knees—for some reason, I was the only one left unbound. I lifted a hand to my brother, one small sign of comfort, but the guard behind me hissed, “Hands to yourself or I will remove them with or without the king’s orders.”
The king’s orders. Those words haunted me.
I caught my brother’s eye. Ovatar, please spare him.
“General!” My father called louder.
Hrothgir turned. Father must have given him a promotion in the few days I’d been in a dungeon. So much has changed in such little time. Why couldn’t we go back?
My hand flashed with pain, spreading outward across my palm. The rune lit briefly, then evaporated back into the skin. And then, the long shadow beside me from the morning sun—shifted.
When we come, kill him.