Chapter Seventy-Seven. A Declaration.
Seventy-Seven
A Declaration.
The shape resumes the position it was in behind the mesh.
“Please,” I shout. “I … if I bring the stone back to you, will you hear me out and spare my husband? It’s in the mural … I’m supposed to be here. That’s why you had me brought to you—”
A hidden door off to the side opens and the white-haired woman in the black robing steps out. “Enough.”
I wheel on her. “No, it’s not enough. It’s there, on the wall.” I jab my forefinger at the pictures. “That’s me. I’m supposed to bring the stone back. But I’m not going to unless she agrees to speak to me and spares my husband’s life—”
The woman calmly walks over.
And slaps me across the face.
“I am the grande vizare of this court, and you will arrest your tone when you speak to me.” She tugs her long sleeve back into place. “And may I remind you that you are under criminal charges for trespass—”
“Your guards opened that gate,” I grit out as half my teeth hum. “We didn’t even ask for the invitation.”
“—and that I will add to those offenses impertinence to the Queen.”
Marching up onto the dais, I point to the empty socket at the top of the ornate back. “If you want that stone back, I’ll get it for you. Unless you like things the way they are now.”
She is so shocked at where I’m standing, she needs a moment to recover. But she doesn’t call for the guards, which I think is interesting.
“We are doing quite well,” she snaps.
“Not according to this mural, you aren’t.”
The woman’s regal bearing goes downright imperial. “I’ve had quite enough of you—”
“You’re not in charge.” I look up to the oculus, where the shape is still in place. “She is.”
Stepping back, I make sure that the Queen can have proper sight of me. “I need my horse and my pack. You already hold my husband here. There’s no chance I will not come back as long as I know he’s alive—”
“Your husband,” the woman in black cuts in, “is a dead man. Whether you are here or gone will not change his fate—”
“He’s no spy for another court and neither am I!” As I ignore the vizare, it hardly seems helpful to mention that Merc kills people for money. “He came with me to protect me on my travels to see you, Your Highness.”
“And you hail from where,” the advisor says in a bored tone.
Ignoring her, I focus only on the oculus. “I am from a small village outside of Prosperitus. I come bearing news that the Fulcrum is failing and demons are afoot. Anathos needs you and your army to save us from the Dark King—”
The woman in black barks out a command, and a flank of guards stream in from the hidden door.
“I beg of you!” I shout. “We need you to fight the evil before he grows too powerful to defeat! We are on the verge of a war that Anathos has no defenses to, and you are the only one who can save us! I have the crown of war and shadow you will wear—”
I am grabbed on all sides and pulled back.
“Please!” I yell up. “You know this is what has been foretold! It’s on the very wall behind your throne—”
At once, I’m dragged through the hidden door, the panel closing with a finality I cannot live with. “Let me go! I have to talk to the Queen—”
The advisor steps in front of me, but talks to the men who hold me in place—in my language, no doubt so I can understand my reward for offending her: “Take her back where she was. And let the lieutenant know that she is available for his pleasure.”
As she waves her hand in dismissal, the guards follow her order, picking me up by the armpits and carrying me over the marble floor of the antechamber.
“Wait.”
The vizare’s voice stops them and they wheel me back around to her, my feet dangling.
“He is not to kill her,” the Queen’s advisor says sternly. “She is to be beheaded in the square with that spy husband of hers first thing in the morning.”
The woman turns away, her plaited hair swinging like rope down her back as she glides away through yet another seamless panel.
The guards spin me round once again, and off we go, their grips biting into my arms, my stomach flip-flopping in fear.
They proceed a different way than I was first escorted, heading through a doorway, into a corridor, down a set of stone stairs, and into another part of the dungeon below.
The stench of fear sweat, damp stone, and old blood is the same however, and as I start to choke, I open my mouth to breathe in hopes of not throwing up from the stench—
The hooting and hollering starts as we take a corner and begin down a long, narrow block of cells.
The men in them are dirty and wearing tattered clothes, their hair and beards grown out.
Through the bars, they reach for me, yelling obscene things that I cringe and look away from.
Just as we reach the final cells and are about to make a turn—
Merc is there on the left, sprawled out against the stone wall, blood oozing, glossy and alarming, from his shoulder, his eyes closed, his chin down on his chest. He’s been stripped of his chain mail and all his weapons, and they’ve even cut off the beads from the ends of his braids, the pieces unraveling out of their weaves.
“Merc!” As I scream his name, his eyes open and his head lifts. “Merc—”
I renew my fight against the guards, and against everything that is logical, Merc somehow jumps to his feet and throws himself at his cell’s bars.
“Sorrel!”
With a full-body yank, I slip free of all the grips and careen over to him. He’s pale, and there is blood in his hair, on his throat, down his long black shirt and leather britches.
“I tried—” I start crying. “I tried to get us free—”
“Are you all right—”
One of the guards re-grabs my arm, and Merc thrusts the heel of his palm forward, catching the man on the chin. As the latter stumbles back from the impact, the other guard jumps in to pull me away—
The first man in uniform is caught by the inmates across the way, and he lets out a scream as they start to claw at him. His comrade has no choice but to release me and run to his aid.
Separated by bars, I search Merc’s eyes. “I’m so sorry—”
He strokes my hair back. “No apologies. Not from you, ever.”
Our lips meet, and then I say it, the words I have known in my heart for the longest time … maybe even that first night back at the Gauntlet when I smelled him.
“I love you.”
The expression of pain that contorts Merc’s face is something I feel in my own chest. I can’t believe we end here, like this. After coming so far—
“Sorrel, I—”
The guards get free of their tangle with the prisoners, and I’m grabbed around the waist and hauled away.
I’m yelling Merc’s name as the men march me around the corner.
The last sight I have of the man I love is him straining against the iron bars, his arms outstretched, his black and white eyes full of tears.