Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
Prisoners
MAGNOLIA
It was eerily quiet as I led Hael down to the dungeons in Moriann the next day. There were so many parts of the castle that I wasn’t familiar with. When I was Dahes’ slave, he rarely let me out of my room, but the dungeons I knew better than anyone.
I’d spent so many nights dragging bodies down here. I’d watched him haul prisoner after prisoner out of these cells, watched their punishments, watched some beg, watched most die…
All of that was ending now.
I held my hand up, smiling softly as the bars clicked open. I’d seen Dahes do it a million times, had known that the cells were touch activated, and now they opened for me.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the rings still around my eyes—if he left traces of himself in me—or if it was because I was the one who killed him, but the castle, the monsters, all of Moriann… it answered to me.
It was the only good thing that came out of this—I could right some of my wrongs.
I let every single prisoner out of their cage.
I realized that it might not have been the smartest move considering I put many of them in there.
Most remembered me. Hael had to punch a few of them that tried to attack me the second they were free.
I understood it—they needed an outlet for their vengeance, and I was always with Dahes down here.
I would hate me too.
But I didn’t care if this decision came back to bite me in the ass. I was doing it. Every single one of these people deserved to be free.
I was about to open another cell when I paused. Hael was holding a single torch that barely gave us enough light to see.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, seeing me halt. My hand was an inch from the metal. I was so close.
The male in the cage stood with a gaping hole in his face. He wore a sneer across his lips as he spat at me. “Come to take my other one, you cunt?”
Hael looked the prisoner up and down. “Apologize to her right fucking now,” his voice was low, menacing. “Or I’ll rip your other eye out of your head, then shove it back into its socket only to do it again.”
“I—” Kip stuttered as if he only just noticed Hael behind me. His eye was raking in his looming height, his muscles, his glare solely fixed on him.
“It’s okay,” I said to Hael, finding my voice again. “I deserve it.”
I felt his gaze shift to me, knew he was pissed, but now wasn’t the time to talk about my frayed humanity. Later, when we were alone, we had a lot to talk about, but not right now.
“I’m sorry,” I turned to Kip. I was about to say I didn’t have a choice, but I did. I could have picked anyone that night. Hell, I knew I should have picked myself. I should have been the one with only one eye right now, not him.
“I can’t take it back,” I continued, “and you have every reason to hate me, but hate me outside of here and be free.” I finally touched my hand to the metal and the bars groaned open on a phantom wind.
“I don’t care what happened,” Hael snapped. He’d been so calm down here, so quiet as he let me do this, that seeing this emotion was jarring. “Touch her and I’ll fucking kill you.”
Kip looked between me and Hael before bolting out of the cage and running down the hall.
I inhaled, forcing myself to breathe, but it was too shaky. This was opening so many wounds. It felt like I was rubbing black sand into every new cut, like I was carving a path down my flesh that led to my heart until I was filled with it.
I did so many terrible, Suns-awful things I could never take back.
There was one more cell to open, one more wound I had to face. I was saving them for last.
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.
“Come on,” I said, after I did my cycle of breaths. “I want to finish this.”
The triplets stood when I silently unlocked their cage.
“You can go back to Viven,” I said. “There’s a sabberneath just up the stairs. It can take you back if you’d like.”
“Why would we believe anything you say?” one of them sneered.
I flinched. I couldn’t even look at the one whose eye I ripped out. Nuna—her name rang through me, sinking into my bones.
“You don’t have any reason to,” I admitted, “but either way you are free. Dahes is dead, so you can go back home, or you can stay in Moriann if you want—”
I stopped talking as their breaths hitched. Finally getting the courage to look up at them, they didn’t look surprised.
“You knew I was going to kill him?” I asked, realizing it was true as soon as I said it.
“Why are you suddenly helping us?” one of the sisters said, pointedly ignoring my question.
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
I felt myself shift under her assessment as she studied my face. Suns, I ruined their lives. Exiles weren’t supposed to be a one-way ticket into the dungeons. I drugged them, dragged them all to Dahes, deformed one of them…
The triplets moved past us and out into the hall. They didn’t say anything else as they ran away. I meant to tell Nuna I was sorry, to beg her for forgiveness, but they were already gone.
I knew there would be things I couldn’t fix, too much damage done that I couldn’t take back.
I sucked in a breath, because the last thing I needed to do, the second reason I wanted to come to Moriann, would be even harder.