Chapter 16 #2
Beatrice waited another moment before she dropped her hand. Ariadne had already dropped her glamour, pushed past the two of them, and was partway down the passageway. She lifted the large locking bar from the brackets, unlocking the nearest door.
She glanced back toward Beatrice. “Grab the keys.”
Beatrice cast about, but there weren’t any keys conveniently hanging on a peg by the door. “There aren’t any.”
“Then we’ll have to hope this works.” Ariadne pulled a key from her pocket. As Beatrice and Benedict stared at her, she gave a faint shrug. “A master key.”
She disappeared into the dungeon cell, and a moment later, female voices murmured into the space. Ariadne had likely gone straight for her fellow swordmaiden to rescue her first.
Beatrice shook herself and set out down the corridor. She peeked through the tiny barred windows of each cell until she found one occupied. When she lifted the bar, nearly dropping it from the weight, she opened the door and stepped inside.
Demetrius sat against the back wall, shackles on his wrists and ankles. At her entrance, he lifted his head, squinting at her. His eyes widened slightly before he snorted and let his head fall back against the wall. “Borachio. I should have realized you would be mixed up in this.”
Oh, right. The necklace.
She pulled the necklace from under her shirt as she crossed the dungeon cell. She knelt at his side, keeping her voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “It’s me. Beatrice. Not Borachio, though he is a spy for Claudius. King Theseus should be arresting him right about now.”
Demetrius peered up at her, his hair more greasy and tousled than she’d ever seen. He was normally so put together, a proper fae lord and librarian. “This is quite the trick. Claudius is becoming quite creative with his illusions.”
“He won’t believe that you’re you.” Benedict stood in the doorway of the dungeon cell.
The amber necklace was now also on the outside of his shirt, revealing his true face rather than the glamour.
His gaze rested on Demetrius. “Claudius uses illusions to torture those imprisoned here. Sometimes those illusions are pleasant to torture you with hope. Other times they are terrible.”
“Like spiders.” She spoke softly, even as she eyed Demetrius. She didn’t want to risk him lashing out if he believed she was an enemy.
“Yes.” Benedict still wasn’t looking at her, his face etched with lines that made him appear far older.
Demetrius glanced between the two of them, a faint flicker of something giving life to his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Benedict? Is that really you?”
“It is. Though I understand if you don’t take my word for it.” Benedict stepped aside as Ariadne brushed past him into the room. “Even if you don’t believe me, please do as we say.”
Demetrius shrugged and didn’t resist as Ariadne unlocked his shackles with the master key. “Of course. Either this is all an illusion, and there is no point in doing anything but surviving it. Or this is real, and I wouldn’t want to mess up my rescue by doing something foolish.”
“Good.” Benedict gave a shrug, his head and shoulders bowed as if under the weight of his memories.
Beatrice shivered. Just how terrible had this place been to all those who had been imprisoned here? She dug into her pocket and pulled out one of the little red flowers that Munch had pressed into her hand. She held it out to Demetrius. “You’ll be back with Helena and the children soon.”
As his fingers, shaking slightly, closed around the flower, something sparked in Demetrius’s eyes. Something almost like hope.
Standing, Beatrice stepped out of the way as Benedict helped Demetrius to his feet. “Wait at the end of the passage. We all need to leave together. Could you make sure the others wait as well?”
Demetrius gave a nod, one hand still fisted around the primrose. At least he didn’t seem inclined to give them any trouble. The former prisoners making a break for it before everyone was ready to leave was one of their biggest concerns.
Once Demetrius had hurried from the dungeon cell, Beatrice moved to follow but Benedict caught her arm.
When she raised her eyebrows at him, he spoke in a lowered tone. “You shouldn’t show your face. It’s one thing for me—as one of the former prisoners—or Ariadne to be seen by anyone else, but no one can know you are associated with the Primrose.”
Right. There was already enough scrutiny on her family as it was, being the only humans working inside the Great Library. The fiction of who the Primrose was—male, fae, a lord—was a crucial part of her sister’s disguise.
Beatrice gripped the pendant of the glamour necklace again.
This time, she willed herself to appear as a goblin woman with pointed squirrel ears and a bushy tail and curly brown hair.
Since the goblins were generally looked down on by the other fae, such a disguise would make her all but invisible.
Certainly not memorable. The filmy, almost suffocating sense of magic settled around her, clinging to her skin in a way that made her itchy and scratchy all over.
At least she knew the glamour was working.
After tucking the pendant under her dress, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a bunch of the primroses. She held them out to Benedict. “Today, both of us are the Primrose. Give these people the hope you longed for when you were the one in this dungeon.”
For a moment, he just stared at the primroses. Then he took them, his fingers closing over them with the same trembling hesitation Demetrius’s had. As if, even now, he struggled to grasp the hope those primroses represented, even though he’d been free of this dungeon for a month.
Then he straightened his shoulders and turned for the door.
“Wait.” Beatrice hurried to him before he left the dungeon cell. “If you’re going to be distributing primroses, you probably should put a new glamour on as well. It’s one thing for you to be seen as a former prisoner. But it is another to wear your real face while handing out primroses.”