Chapter 20 #2
“I don’t know…” But Erich could see the power overcoming the guard, molding him into submission.
“I will go willingly into exile if you let me gaze upon her once,” he pleaded.
The guard rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Go quick, and don’t get caught or else…
” He wasn’t able to finish the thought before Erich was racing past him and into the hall beyond the guard.
Thankfully, it was empty, and he wouldn’t have to exert more of his power.
This was madness. If he were caught, he’d likely be arrested, and yet his feet did not slow as he ascended the stairs, guided by the raven, who flew ahead of him.
“Stay to the shadows,” it instructed.
Erich did as he was told and pressed his back against the wall.
In the same way Fritz could slip in and out of the shadows, so too could Erich blend in with the darkness.
Cloaked as he was by the night, he slipped past priests walking down the hall.
The raven landed on a windowsill beside the door he presumed was her chamber.
There were no guards outside her door, which felt like another stroke of luck.
Perhaps the Trinity was on his side after all.
He didn’t want to have to deal with Ludwig.
When he entered, the room was empty. Her bed was made, and the space smelled like her.
This did not please the dragon, who pulled and fought against its bindings as Erich considered his next steps.
Then the door at the far side of the room opened, and her maid, Luzie, walked in carrying a bundle that she dropped upon seeing him.
“Where is Liane?” Erich asked, not bothering to disguise the desperation in his voice.
She swallowed past a lump in her throat. “In the tower, in isolation.”
“Take me there,” he commanded.
“She’s meant to be purifying her soul. I don’t think...” she stammered.
Erich grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. He felt the hooks of his allure grasping onto her, forcing her to do his bidding. “Take me.”
She swallowed hard and nodded slowly. She had no choice.
Erich felt as if he were careening out of control, drunk on his own power and the dragon’s and urgent whispers in his ear from the raven.
There was no more room for reason or control.
He had to see her. They passed through the halls and went up a long spiral staircase.
The dragon was just beneath his skin, near ready to explode out of him. Erich grasped the doorknob, but it was locked. The dragon wanted him to break the door down, but he held onto that last tether of humanity to ask Luzie, “The key?”
“The Avatheos has it.”
“Who’s there?” Liane called out.
Her breath caught, and he felt it echo in his veins.
“It’s me,” he said, pressing his eye to the slot in the door that acted as a window.
It was barely big enough to slip his hand through.
Liane sat on a cot, with nothing but a stack of religious texts, a single candle, and a pitcher.
She was wearing a thin cotton sheath that hugged her body in ways that made his imagination run away with itself.
“Erich? What are you doing here?” She padded across her cell, coming closer to peer at him through the bars.
This is what he’d come to prevent. They’d made her a prisoner. Maybe now she’d realize how wrong the church was.
“I came to rescue you,” he confessed.
She inhaled a ragged breath. “You shouldn’t have.” She turned her back on him.
But he thrust his hand through the hole in the door; his hand was covered in scales. The dragon was taking over. He recoiled, but she grasped onto his hand, cupping his rough and scaled flesh in her soft, pale hands. She wasn’t repulsed by him as she should have been.
“Have they hurt you?” he gasped. He was fighting every single urge he had to rip the door from its hinges.
But on closer inspection, he saw runes moving through the wood.
Any attempt to break her free would result in an alarm at the least, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were reinforcements on the hinges and wood that made them impossible to destroy.
He couldn’t get her out even if she asked him to.
“I belong here; I killed a girl because I am impure.”
“You’re perfect.” And he meant it. She was radiant.
Even these dim and dreary surroundings hadn’t dimmed her luminousness.
He couldn’t fathom the circumstances in which she’d take a life.
It couldn’t have been intentional. But he also knew the weight of that might crush her, and more than anything, he wished he could hold on to her, provide her comfort for the shadows in her eyes.
She squeezed his hand. “You’re saying that because you’re corrupted and want me to join your side,” she said, but there was no conviction in her tone. He could hear the doubt ringing between them.
His hand flexed. The dragon wanted to tear down the door with his teeth, but he held him back from doing that. He wouldn’t take her against her will, not in this condition. He feared what he’d do if this door weren’t between them.
“You have to leave this place, Liane. They’ll destroy you if you let them. They’re already stripping away your humanity. You weren’t one to be caged before.”
“I’m doing this for the good of the empire. I have to let go of you and all vices in order to become pure.” She released his hand, and he felt cold in the absence of her touch.
The tone of her voice, the shame in it, it felt as if they’d dimmed all the light from her. And that was what they wanted, wasn’t it? To strip her of her humanity, to make her another faceless creature of their own design.
His anger and helplessness, and the closeness of the full moon, were having an effect on him.
He felt the tethers on the dragon snapping one by one.
His muscles strained, fighting back the change.
It wasn’t the full moon yet, but time was running out just the same.
He couldn’t save her, not yet. But he would come back for her.
“Liane, when you are ready, I will come for you.”
“Forget about me. Please, Erich, for your sake.”
His claws curled against the door, leaving deep gashes. He needed to get far, far away, so far that he could never reach her again, for both their sakes. And so he fled.