Chapter 65
Locked securely within the heavy stones of Lysande’s chambers, they refused to grant me leave, save for a single hour each afternoon to attend the bathing chambers, where unknown maids would wash my ever-thinning body.
Not a waking moment would pass when I didn't think about Lys and what was happening to him in the dungeons below, and every night, the moment I closed my eyes, he came to me in my dreams.
Sometimes he was angry, sometimes happy, and sometimes he would watch me from a distance, and whenever he tried to approach me, Faran would pull him back with a noose around his neck.
Then my brother would laugh as he strangled him until blood filled his eyes and the light left his body.
On the seventh night of his capture and seven days before his execution, after dreaming of Faran strangling him with his own hands, I decided that I could not simply sit and wait for death to knock on his cage.
After the maids led me out of the bath room and Faran's hounds took over at the door, the moment I saw the corridor that connected the path between my room and the main corridor, I ran.
They shouted after me, and their heavy footsteps echoed behind me, but my steps were faster than theirs, more agile, and more familiar with the court than the knowledge of bastards brought here under the promise of gold.
I raced down the grand staircase, nearly losing my footing upon the polished marble, colliding with and scattering servants who chanced across my path,
forcing hundreds of astonished eyes to track my desperate flight in utter disbelief until I breached the narrow hallway leading to the King's council chambers.
Gerto and Tis, my father’s royal guards, stood at the doors, their expressions wavering between a stern scowl and immediate concern. As the clamor of my pursuers grew louder behind me, before I could even comprehend the sheer madness of my actions, I threw my weight against the heavy oak doors.
“Princess, cease!” a chorus of voices barked from both ahead and behind, but my legs, which yearned for nothing more than to flee this kingdom with my love and remain tangled with him upon the soft summer grass, were driven by the singular instinct to save his life.
Before Gerto or Tis could secure my arms, I shoved the doors wide and burst into the room.
“Daughter?” Father asked in shock, lifting his gaze from the papers on the table. Faran and Sando were seated on either side of him. “What kind of behavior is this?” he asked, furrowing his brows as he rose from the table.
I fell to my knees before them. I no longer cared about pride or reputation, nor about the fact that anyone could hear us.
“Please heed my calls, Father. I beg of you.”
My hair fell across my face as my eyes filled with tears.
The cold stone beneath my knees bit into my skin, but I didn't care.
Compared to what Lysande was going through now, this small humiliation was nothing more than what I indeed deserved.
“Daughter, go outside. The sentence has already been given.”
“I love him, Father. Please.” I choked the words out, but for the first time, his face did not soften.
I looked at the two men sitting beside him.
One had an expression full of sorrow and shame as he stared down at the papers on the table, while the other watched me with one eyebrow slightly raised, slouched in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest.
A faint smirk crossed his face when his guards entered the room and began pulling me backward.
They lifted me by my arms and shoulders, and I thrashed against them.
“Where is Meera, daughter?” Father suddenly asked, and I froze in their hands. My lips trembled, but I possessed no answer to give. Truly, I didn't.
When Sanaedeo lowered his gaze even deeper toward the papers, my heart sank. A wave of pure, unadulterated betrayal sliced through my chest and bit into my very soul. He had bartered Meera's secret to Father simply to secure a safer, more favorable position for himself within the court.
I pulled my cold gaze away from him and returned it to my father. “I do not know, Father,” I said honestly, but his expression did not change.
“Don't lie to me, daughter.”
Still lifted into the air, there was absolutely nothing I could do except shake my head. I knew this was punishment for all my sins, for all my lies.
“I do not know,” I simply said. “Punish me if you must, but please spare my knight, Father, for his only crime was love,” I said, but Father merely sat back down in his chair and picked up his quill.
?His crime is that he brought dishonor upon a princess of the realm.
From the stale crust of bread he was granted the luxury of roasted quail beneath my roof, yet even that was insufficient for his greed.
And nothing was ever enough for you either, daughter; you have utterly destroyed any promise of a future for a commoner who had only just crawled out of the mud,” he spoke coldly, lowering his eyes to the paper laid upon his desk
.Then, with a dismissive wave of his ink-stained hand, he commanded them to remove me from his sight.
I began screaming again, cursing and tearing myself from their arms, but theirs were still stronger.
I felt bruises forming everywhere their fingers gripped me, while the fabric of my dress tightened painfully around my neck.
Yet I found my voice one more time and screamed.
“Love is no sin!” Yet my words fell upon empty ears.
I screamed and repeated the same words, crying and fighting against their beastly hands, but this time, no one did anything.
When they finally threw me back into the chambers, Lys's chambers, which bore the scent of him and in whose darkness I had lived through every moment I had spent with him, I sat down on his bed, crawled beneath the blankets that seemed to hold the last traces of his warmth,
and remained lying motionless there for the next four nights and five days.
The only way I could chart the passage of time was by the taunts of the dogs stationed outside, who would snarl the number of days remaining until the execution.
Two nights and two days.
That was all the time remaining for the man who had brought light into my sinful existence, the man who had taught me how to feel, how to love, and how to breathe with new lungs, before he stopped breathing entirely.
The click of metal made me lift my head toward the door, dirty hair falling across my eyes.
I wrapped myself in Lysande's blanket and pulled my knees toward my chest.
The door opened, and Sanaedeo entered with his gaze lowered.
His hand was held tightly against his side, and avoiding looking toward me, he closed the door and sat beside me on the bed.
I turned my head away from him, and he remained silent. After several moments of silence, I chose to speak first.
“Did you truly sell me out to Father just to secure your place back on the steps of his throne?” I asked, turning toward him.
For a moment, he kept his gaze lowered, then lifted his head toward me. His eyes moved over my body for the first time, taking in five days of unwashed hair and an unwashed body, before returning to my face.
“Of course not. I didn't do it solely for myself,” he said before running a hand over his face.
He drew a deep breath before extending his clenched hand toward me.
“You were right, sister. Both you and Meera,” he said, opening his palm.
The sapphire glimmered beneath the firelight, but I only gave a dry chuckle.
“And what do I get now from being right?” I asked, and he closed his eyes for a moment.
“Sister, I told Father about Meera so I could return to him and take the place that belongs to me back from Faran's greedy hands. Not only for myself, but for you both as well, so I could help. And the morning after you threw this sapphire at me,
I understood what it meant and sent my most trusted spy to Three Stags.”
He paused for a moment, as though deciding whether he should accept the truth himself or see what I would say.
“And just now, a raven landed on my window carrying a letter. Faran bought these sapphires several weeks ago, about ten of them,” he said quietly, as though he feared that speaking the truth aloud would somehow make it worse.
Still, I felt nothing, because I had known this for a long time as the only truth.
For a moment, he sat there before finally rising from the bed.
“I will do my best to help you, sister.”
He clenched his jaw and removed a torch from the wall.
“Come with me now. I bribed Faran's men to let us pass.”
He said it, and before he even gave me time to understand what he meant, he walked outside.
“Where are we going, brother?” I asked as we descended the cold, dark stairs that led only into even more darkness.
He only clenched his jaw tighter and said nothing.
I bit my lip and wrapped the blanket more tightly around myself, only now noticing how cold it was down here. My skin prickled, and I didn't know whether it was from fear or the cold, but when the stench of death, decay, and heaven knows what else reached me, I realized it was the former.
And I realized where he was taking me.
I ran down the remains of the stairs, ignoring the smell that burned my nose, and raced past dungeons carved into stone and earth, rats scurrying across the path before my feet and drinking from puddles beside the bars of the cells.
I ran, looking into every occupied and empty cell, until I suddenly stopped in my tracks.
Stripped bare to his waist and hunched over upon the filthy stone floor, his broad back crisscrossed with deep, weeping whip wounds that leaked a sickening mixture of blood and grime, Lysande was leaning heavily against the wall of his dungeon.
From this angle, I could see only a fraction of his beautiful face, twisted in a mask of agonizing pain, shame, and fear.
So much fear.
“Lys.”
I fell to my knees before his cell. He turned slowly, as though he could not believe he had truly heard me. His eyes stared blankly at me for several seconds, trying to distinguish truth from imagination.
I hoisted the torch slightly higher, letting the light wash over his cage, and a sharp gasp escaped my lips. My eyes filled instantly with burning tears, and my trembling hand flew over my mouth to stifle a scream.
“What has he done to you?” I asked.
The realization that I was real seemed to finally breach his broken consciousness. Letting out a ragged, agonizing grunt that tore through my very heart, he grabbed the rough stone wall beside him, desperately attempting to hoist his massive frame onto thin, trembling legs.
My knight, my love, and the kindest part of my soul somehow dragged himself in front of me.
For a moment, I only stared at him, at his pale face, cracked dry lips, and bloody curls stuck to his forehead, at his sunken cheeks and the dark bags beneath his eyes. I stared at the wounds carved deeply into his skin with a knife.
I threw the torch down beside me and slipped both hands through the bars to touch him. He flinched at contact, but then he pushed his wounded face toward my hand.
It seemed that when Faran could not reach Corian, he had simply made a new one.
“My princess,” Lysande rasped out, his voice only slightly stronger than a whisper. His hand somehow rose toward my hair, and he managed to stroke it only once before it fell onto my shoulder from exhaustion.
“Do not shed your tears for me, my love,” he murmured, moving his face closer to the bars, and I did the same. I pressed my forehead against his, my tears falling onto his face.
“My Lysande, what has he done to you?” I asked, but he did not answer. He only placed his hands on my shoulders, then moved them over my arms and guided them toward my hands.
His weakened muscles, deprived of food for days, somehow managed to clamp around mine.
“Listen to me, my life,” he began, but I interrupted him.
“Lysande, please forgive me. You are here because of me, and I beg—”
He simply squeezed my hands as tightly as he could and, through his cut lips and wounded cheeks and all the pain, smiled boyishly.
“I have nothing to forgive you for, Princess,” he said, shaking his head before his dull eyes found mine. “Listen to me now, love. When I am gone—”
“No,” I choked out, but he raised his hand to my face again, his thumb moving across my cheek as though he were trying to memorize every part of my face.
“When I am gone, you will not mourn for me,” he said, and I shook my head again, but he continued, fighting to get out every word.
“You will remember me, but you will not cry for me. You will fall in love again, and you will have children with him. You will lie in the grass with them and tell them stories. And then remember me. Tell them about me, but do not be sad. Be happy, please.”
I cried, shaking my head, but he only smiled gently once more before taking my face in both hands.
“My Isolde, my Sol, there is no more beautiful day to me than the day I met you in that harbor, and if I could choose, I would do it all over again exactly the same.”
He pulled my face toward him and pressed my forehead against his again. Then he gently lowered my head, and his dry lips touched the crown of my hair for only a fleeting second.
I reached for his hands, but this time he pulled away.
“I love you, Princess.” He spoke from darkness still clinging to the bars.
“Isolde, we have to go,” Sando's voice suddenly broke through the silence.
Lys did not take his eyes off me. He only looked at my face with a faint smile. “I do not wish you to remember me like this. Please, only know me for our good times.”
“Lys, please.” I rose and stretched my hand through the bars, but he was too far away.
Sando suddenly appeared beside me and pulled me by the arm.
“Prince, please. You know what we agreed,” he said, and Sando only nodded with pressed lips.
“Come on, Isolde.” He pulled me away, but I tore myself back.
“Lysande, I love you,” I said, trying to reach him in the darkness, yet he did not come. “You are everything that is good in me, I beg you.”
His eyes filled with tears, and he tilted his head. He only smiled gently before repeating himself. “Go, Isolde. Don't remember me like this, please. Goodbye, my love.” He said, and then fell back down in his corner, his back turned toward me, the deep whip wounds visible across his skin.
Sando pulled me back, but this time I did not resist.
I was empty now.
Dead.
He left me on the bed and stood in front of me, but I could not even look at him. He lowered himself to his knees and hugged me tightly, but I did not hug him back.
The last thing he said before leaving was, “It will be held at the harbor. The execution. On the fifth bell after dawn. He asked me not to let you come.”
Then he closed the door and left.