Chapter 35
“Rowan.” A hand clamped over her shoulder and shook her awake.
She rolled over to swat the hand away and pain exploded in her head. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. She placed a hand to her temple and groaned.
“Shh. Something’s happening above. You need to wake up.”
“Do I?” She rubbed her gritty eyes with her hands, trying to force them open. Then she remembered that they were open. It was just impossible to see anything down here. “Maybe it would be better to sleep through whatever it is.”
Asher breathed a laugh. “I doubt she’ll let you sleep through anything.”
The darkness was absolute—a living thing that pressed against her clammy skin.
The air in the dungeon was thick, heavy with the smell of rot and a sour animal muskiness.
It swallowed the sound of her breath and the clink of her chains as she shifted.
A wail sounded from above, pained, hopeless.
The blood drained from her face as she considered what might have prompted one of the familiars to make a sound like that.
“Maybe it’s Casrian coming for us,” she said, pushing herself to a seated position, finding the wall with her fingertips and then moving back to rest against it.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like an attack. The witch is strongest at night. The men will wait until dawn.”
“It could be day. We wouldn’t know.”
He didn’t answer, allowing her that hope if she wanted to cling to it. It slipped right through her fingers.
Asher sat down beside her, his nearness reassuring even though she knew he couldn’t protect her from the witch. There was a sound above. A heavy, scraping movement, like a stone moving across the floor. Or maybe an old gate grinding open. Then, silence.
“It’s been like that for the last hour,” Asher said quietly. “Like they’re preparing for something.”
Good. It probably meant that Casrian was here.
The silence wrapped around them. Heavy. Menacing. She hated this place.
“Would you say a prayer with me?” She couldn’t believe she’d asked the question. Her mother had stopped asking her to join her years ago. It just…seemed so dark and she felt so alone even though Asher was right beside her.
“You don’t have to,” she hurried on. “I was just… Forget it.”
It wasn’t like God would listen to her anyway, but he might listen to Asher who had a wife and a baby and spent his life protecting the kingdom.
He didn’t belong in a place like this. And prayer reminded her of her mother who was probably praying for her right at this moment.
It reminded her of Casrian and his men kneeling in a circle with the sun coming up behind him.
All of those threads of connection, like the trees.
It reminded her of her childhood when she still believed in such things, before she learned that everything about her was wrong.
Maybe if she said the right words, it would work like a spell and they’d both make it out of this place alive.
“Here,” Asher said. “Give me your hand. Of course I’ll pray with you.”
A strong hand reached out for her, bumped against her arm, slid down, stilled when it reached the iron clasped around her wrist and then closed warm and tight around her fingers.
“You’re freezing,” he said, moving closer until his shoulder was pressed against hers. The edge of his thigh against her leg. “Got you. You start. I’ve been at it all night. Probably sick of my voice.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
He was silent for a moment and then he breathed, “Father of mercy, shield us in this shadowed place. Draw us beneath your cloak as the night closes in. Though we are bound, let our souls be free. Though our flesh may fail, let our hearts not falter. Guide us through this darkness and deliver us from the evil of this place.”
He paused, leaving an opening for her to add her own words.
“The witch doesn’t belong here. Please help the witch hunters to end her, and keep them safe while they do your work. Please get out of here…”
She trailed off, feeling like she’d stepped off the edge of a cliff and was flailing as she fell. What a hopeless prayer this was.
Asher squeezed her hand. “And if it is not your will that we escape, please let it be a quick end. Take us away from the darkness into your everlasting light.”
He paused but there was nothing more.
She said, “Amen,” and he echoed her.
“It will be all right,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens will be all right. She cannot destroy us, not truly, not unless we allow it. She can’t keep us here forever.”
Rowan shook her head and immediately regretted the motion when her stomach gave a nauseating lurch. “Why is she doing this?”
“The witch isn’t really the one responsible for this. There’s nothing human left inside that body. Have you seen her?”
“No.” Though she had seen something in the woods. An illusion, she’d thought, to draw her away from Casrian. And again when Emrys captured her to bring her back here.
“It looks like a corpse, but with bottomless black eyes.” His voice was strained.
“The demon has fully possessed the witch. Why this started… Whatever the witch wanted to do with the power she sought doesn’t matter anymore.
The demon doesn’t want things like we do.
It’s driven by pure hunger, a ravenous, aching pit of need.
It’s drawn to life, but it destroys it where it finds it. ”
“How do you kill something like that?”
He paused as another despairing wail sounded overhead.
When it faded, he said, “We cut off its connection to this world. We destroy the body it inhabits completely. Disable it and then burn it until it’s nothing but ash, then we douse the remains in holy water for good measure.
” He breathed a laugh. “If only I had my sword, torch, and flask, we could do it ourselves.”
“Once we find a way to see in the dark and fight past the familiars?”
“Right.” He sighed. “She might be distracted by the witch hunters camped at her door.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“No. We are here in her grasp. She’ll cause what misery she can before the end.”
Her chest constricted and her breathing grew shallow.
She didn’t want this to be the end. She wanted to see Casrian again.
She’d fucked up everything there. She never should have told him about the trees or let him see the tracking trick Tilly had showed her.
It had put him in an impossible position.
She’d been hurt by his rejection and she’d lashed out.
He hadn’t been the one to put her in irons though.
He’d made a sheath for her knife, told her she reminded him of starlight and given her a blessing sealed with a kiss.
There wasn’t any future there. He was right about that.
Even if she did make it out of here alive, what future could there be for them out in the real world?
He was a witch hunter, the grandson of a duke, a baron.
She was the outcast daughter of a witch.
She was feral and strange and didn’t belong anywhere except the woods.
He thought she’d hallucinated her ability to talk to the trees.
He’d call it witchcraft if he believed it was real.
Still, she wanted to see him again and…and…she just wanted to see him.
She wanted to know that her mother was safe.
It seemed impossibly unfair that her mother should lose her husband and her home and her sight and her only child. She hoped Casrian survived even if she didn’t make it. He would take care of her mother. She knew he would. Duty and guilt would compel him if nothing else.
Her mother would take care of him too.
“Tell me about something good,” she said to Asher, needing the distraction from the direction of her thoughts.
“Something good…” Asher’s hand tightened on hers. “I have a daughter.”
There was such warmth and joy in his voice when he said the words, it took her a minute to realize the implication.
“A daughter,” she repeated, mouth gone dry.
“She’s only four months old, but she’s a holy terror.
We haven’t slept a full night since she was born.
I was almost happy when we were called for patrol.
” There was a catch in his voice. “I thought it would be a chance to catch up on sleep. My mother-in-law came to help. I suppose she’ll stay now. ”
He fell into a heavy silence and she swallowed past the lump in her throat. “What does she look like?”
“My mother-in-law?” There was a note of amusement in his voice.
She nudged his shoulder. “Your daughter.”
He sighed. “She’s the most beautiful infant to ever grace this world.
Pink cheeks and the softest blond hair. She has the longest eyelashes and the most perfectly formed nails.
She looks like an angel when she sleeps…
which is not nearly often enough. Cala. We named her Cala, after my sister, who passed two years ago of a fever. ”
“It’s a beautiful name.”
“It means fire in the old tongue.”
Something about that pulled at her attention. Fire. A way to kill the demon who would surely come to them soon. Sword. Holy water. Fire.
Her knife was lost, and there was nothing holy to be found in this place, but fire…
“Asher.” She twisted around but, with her hands bound, she couldn’t reach it. “I need you to put your hand in my pocket.”
He turned toward her. “Which one?”
“My left hip…I don’t know if it’s still there.”
He fumbled for a moment and then his hand stilled. When he withdrew his fingers, he was silent for a long moment. “Is this what I think it is?
“It’s a charm.” One Casrian had missed. Tilly had given it to her days ago when she’d brought her the eggs. It hadn’t been with the others. “It’s to start a fire when the wood’s wet.”
“We can’t use a witch’s charm against a witch,” he said, sounding just as judgmental about it as Casrian would have been. His captain would be proud.
She found his hand and took the charm from him before he decided to do something stupid like throw it into the dark.
“I say we give it a try.”