Chapter 36
There weren’t any other children in the castle.
It had been hours since she’d seen an adult, actually. Cyrus had left her with one of the maids, but the girl had quickly returned to work in the kitchens. So here Arla was, wandering the huge corridors of Castle Grey again with nothing but her own thoughts for company.
She tried not to think of her mother and father – of what she’d seen from that crack in the dresser – so she spent hours and hours wandering the many levels of the palace, wishing she could wear the same pretty dresses that the ladies in the court wore, or have a nice horse like the men in the paintings that hung on almost every wall she passed.
It was cold down at this level; probably because it was close to the dungeons, she imagined with morbid delight. It had taken her all morning to make it this far beneath; she’d had to avoid the tight servants’ staircases and the corridors that were so narrow they made her heart race.
It took all her strength to push open the heavy wooden door, her hands pressing into the metal bands running across it. It creaked open on loud hinges, and a gust of cool, strange-smelling air hit her head-on.
She thought for a minute that perhaps she should be scared, walking into a dark corridor this far from the inhabited levels of the palace, but they’d left her in that room with the books and piano for so long that she didn’t care to head back up there.
So she crept forwards into the smoky, sulphurous tunnel, dragging her soft fingertips over the rough edges of the wall.
She must be a long way underground here, she thought, because she’d never seen walls made of this sort of rock before, as though they’d been carved out of a cliff.
She kept walking, her feet echoing in the empty space.
Something whispered to her. Something whispered constantly in this castle.
Not that anybody else ever believed her when she spoke of it.
They all thought she was mad, probably. But Arla had never felt alone here.
There were always strange whispers that she couldn’t understand, and there were always invisible eyes on her.
‘Arla!’ a worried voice called, and she turned to find Perry hurrying towards her. ‘You shouldn’t be down here,’ he panted, wrapping a gentle hand around her arm and guiding her back towards the light.
‘I was bored.’
‘I know, sweetheart, but you can’t be down here on your own.’
She let him lead her away, smirking to herself in the low light as she slipped one of Perry’s gold buttons into her pocket.
* * *
Someone was banging.
And … shouting.
‘We do as we always do. He’s not exactly in danger, is he?’
‘He’s a fucking prisoner, Kase,’ a male voice replied, followed by another bang, this one quieter.
Arla had lain silent and still before on other jobs, and it was a skill she’d taught herself so she could obtain information under the guise of sleep.
This was different.
Everything came flooding back to her in a rush: the slaves, the camp, Hark…
She bolted upright, wincing at the pain in her head and the black spots merging in front of her eyes as she took in where she was.
Shadowy light curved around her, and there was nothing but pressing walls and a round windowless chamber to give away that they were back in Vorstrum. She lay on a cot by the fire, blankets piled on her but her clothes… Gods, where were her clothes?
‘I wouldn’t move too quickly,’ a soft voice said, and Arla turned her head slowly to see Sebastian leaning against one of the tunnel openings that led from the chamber. Kase stood across from him, a scowl pinching her pretty face into something wicked.
‘What happened?’ Arla demanded, trying to stand before a wave of dizziness overcame her and she lowered herself back onto the blankets.
‘Easy, Reinhart.’ Jaz sat on the other side of the fire on a similar cot, a bandage wrapped around the upper half of his arm. ‘You’re safe. You took a blow to the head.’
‘How long have I been asleep?’
Jaz’s face was grim. ‘Three days.’
Three days.
‘No, that’s— That’s not possible, I can’t—’
‘Easy,’ Jaz said, reaching for her. ‘You’re lucky you’re not dead. Took quite the battering. It was chance that we had a healer there to tend to you. You might not’ve woken if he hadn’t got to you so quickly—’
‘I don’t care about me,’ she snapped, slamming her hands into the side of the cot just to channel her confusion and frustration somewhere. ‘What happened at the camp? Are the slaves safe? Did anyone get hurt? Hark, I saw him go down, I saw him—’
‘Hey, hey,’ Sebastian started, reaching across to place his hand on hers. ‘It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.’
It wasn’t. Gods, it wasn’t, because where was Hark?
Kase stepped forwards, her expression grim and her hair marred with streaks of red and something darker. ‘Hark went down and you got struck with the pommel of a sword. I got to you, but by the time I’d checked you were still breathing, Hark—’
‘What happened to him?’ Arla shouted, kicking her heel into the ground, and welcoming the dull bite of pain that came with it.
‘He’s alive, but the soldiers took him back to Kastonia. The latest information we have suggests he’s being kept in his rooms in the palace.’
‘And the slaves?’
‘We got them all,’ Sebastian smiled softly.
‘All of them?’ Disbelief clouded Arla’s voice because she’d seen how outnumbered they were; she had seen the four of them overwhelmed with the number of blades coming their way. So to get out of that alive, let alone with every single slave, and to get them to safety…
‘Jack arrived at the last minute to help move the slaves. They were out in minutes, and they took us with them,’ Kase said, and then it all began to become very clear to Arla what had happened.
‘Magic,’ she whispered, finally believing in it after a lifetime of swearing against it.
But she’d seen it with her own eyes, and there was no other way they could have escaped without something …
otherworldly aiding them, be it the gods or the blood magic Elrod wanted.
She reached for the dragonhart brooch still safe in the pocket of her trousers.
It warmed beneath her fingers, a comfort and a bolstering presence at once.
‘That’s why I told you to leave the children,’ Kase said, sitting down beside Jaz and pulling a blanket over her damp clothes.
‘They were there as bait, as a distraction for the soldiers so the soldiers would kill each other. The children were safely behind the wall no more than a second after you saw them disappear.’
‘What wall?’ Arla asked, her hands trembling at everything she was trying to comprehend.
‘I did try to tell you it was real, Reinhart. The magic-wielders moved to the mountains years ago, but it’s no secret that it runs thick in the Kastonian mountains.’
Burning fucking gods.
Later. Later she would let shock course through her. But now…
‘We’re getting Hark out.’ She was sure she heard Sebastian mutter a Told you. ‘And Elrod will be made to step down as king. The bastard can burn for what he’s done.’
Her voice didn’t falter as Arla squared her shoulders and stood.
‘You might be King’s Assassin, Reinhart, but you’re crazy, or stupid, if you think there’s even a chance you’re getting into that castle and removing Hark Stappen from it.
They’ll gut you before you enter Larkire – and Elrod would sooner die than give up his throne.
’ There wasn’t anything mocking or cruel in Kase’s words, just raw certainty.
‘I won’t be breaking into the castle,’ Arla began, and each of Hark’s friends looked back at her as if she’d gone mad. ‘I’ll retrieve Hark without your help. And when I bring him back, we’ll storm that city and burn its king to ash.’
A promise. One that wouldn’t be broken.