Chapter 58 Ellowyn
Ellowyn
The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming, noxious smell; human excrement and the tanginess of blood were intermixed with wet hay and the distinct scent of mold and decay.
Breath and bile caught in my throat with an audible sound before Alois gestured for a guard to cast an air bubble around my nose and mouth.
Fuck, that was a stench.
My eyes watered from the memory of the smell still caught in my nose, and I nodded my wordless thanks to the Lord of Vespera.
He smiled thinly at me, the motion tugging at the corners of his eyes.
There was something different about him lately—he was always chaotic and a little cold, but now he seemed almost resigned and repentant.
I shook away the errant thought; I no longer had the capacity to care about what my husband wanted or felt.
It was more than evident that he cared little for me beyond how he could use me.
Even now, dragging me down to this dark and wet dungeon as a “favor” was a way to manipulate me; he dangled information in front of me, and I knew he would want something in return.
Even as my heart thudded erratically at what favor he would come to collect, I couldn’t resist the pull to find out what secrets were guarded here.
The short hallway opened into a large room, though it was still dark as night.
The walls on the right held barely illuminated Mage Orbs spaced at odd intervals, the cast of their glow never fully reaching the cells that consumed the entirety of the left half of the room.
There was a faint, constant dripping like a pipe was leaking somewhere nearby, but it was nearly completely muffled by the muttered groans of pain and incoherent rants of the prisoners.
I stepped lightly into the shadows on the left and squinted to gain a better view of what—or whom—was inside.
The cells—if you could call them that—were not tall enough for a grown person to sit straight in, nor were they long enough to allow a person’s legs to stretch out completely in front of them.
Water and wet, maggot-filled hay adorned the bottom of each of the cells, and it was abundantly clear that there was no room for the prisoners to move around to relieve themselves.
That explains the smell.
“Why did you take me here?” I whirled on Alois, my stomach roiling with the truth of what the Lord of Vespera did to other people.
It was all here, plain as day—he tortured and imprisoned Mages and Vessels; cut off their access to their magic and reduced them to nothing more than whimpering piles of bones and flesh.
Barbaric.
He was no better than the monsters who destroyed Cellia.
Alois’ face was grim but unrepentant; there was no remorse for those trapped inside the cages. It was clear he saw them as little more than rabid animals.
“These . . . prisoners,” Alois began as he adjusted the cuffs of his tunic, before making unnerving eye contact again as hard and unyielding as the rest of him. It was a wonder that I had found any qualities redeemable in him.
“These prisoners are people,” I admonished, my voice cracking like a whip in the silence of the space. “And you have chained them like dogs. Reduced them to nothing. They are dying here, and you do not care.”
Alois set his jaw, his molars cracking with the effort of restraining his tongue, before he gestured to a cage behind me.
“That man there raped his neighbor. They were friends and she trusted him. His neighbor was eleven.”
My eyes widened and the muscles in my back tensed.
“W-what?” I stammered but Alois simply continued, gesturing to another cage to the right of the child rapist.
“That man? He ran an ‘orphanage’ that attracted young, destitute boys. He then used his position of power to rape them and sell them to other men with the same abhorrent proclivities.”
My mouth gaped open as it went on and on, each of the men and women trapped in those cages imprisoned for heinous and disgusting crimes.
“They . . . they could have lied,” I brokenly whispered, but shook my head as Alois raised a condescending eyebrow at me.
“Blaming the victim now, hm?” I instantly shook my head.
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Nausea boiled in my gut, and I held a hand to my mouth to contain my disgust.
Alois grunted before turning back to the cages. “Even if they did lie, I would know. Perks of being the last Truthsayer, I suppose.”
Silence hung between us.
“This is a necessary sin, an allowed evil, to keep the streets of Vespera safe. Why do you think refugees flee here? Why do we have men and women signing up for our army in droves? Newly-Awakened men and women applying to be part of the elite group of soldiers the Academy produces?” He paused before gesturing to the cages.
“Because I can keep them safe. Both from internal and external threats.”
I chewed my lip, my hand falling to my side.
“So you brought me here to show me the . . . less savory part of being a ruler?”
He bobbed his head back and forth.
“Yes. And no. There is something else you need to see.” He turned and began walking further into the dark room. “Come.”
I hesitated briefly and watched as the child rapist turned sharp, beady eyes on me before smiling, a jagged sinister thing. I gulped before turning on my heel and jogging after Alois.
“The prisoners in the front of the room are reserved for those who commit crimes within the walls of Vespera. The prisoners back here, however, are the political prisoners. Ones that tried to dispose of me or create an external threat that had the ability to bring the Northern Alliance to its knees. You saw today what can happen when a city has no one to protect it, when there is no alliance, when rebellion is free to roam unchecked and unchallenged.”
I nodded my head, agreeing at least with his confidence in the necessity of alliances and protecting the smaller, weaker cities.
Alois stopped suddenly, his features sharp in the pulsating glow of the manufactured blue light from the Mage Orb on the wall.
“Remember, I am a Truthsayer. I can separate lies from truths as easily as breathing. No one in these cells is here by chance or improperly imprisoned.”
I nodded my head, my hands twisting together as I anxiously waited to see who Lord d’Refan would show me next.
“A queen must learn to be impartial. Must separate her personal feelings from what is best for the realm. Must make a decision based on fact and not impulse. Can you do that, my wife?” Alois asked sharply and I nodded my head.
Alois paused for a moment, his eyes shaking in their sockets, before he nodded gruffly and tapped the Mage Orb, extending its circle of light.
I watched as the cages across the room were slowly illuminated, the prisoners shrinking back from the front bars as far as possible to escape the onslaught of bright light.
Squinting, I edged toward the cages; not close enough that the prisoners could grab me through the bars, but near enough that I could see who was imprisoned.
There was a man on the left, a woman on the right. Both were ghastly thin, their threadbare and dingy clothing hanging loose from their frames with lanky, oily dark hair. It was impossible to discern their identities until the man turned back toward the front of the cage.
A small gasp inadvertently left my lips and I stumbled backward, losing my balance and falling directly into one of the many puddles that dotted the prison floor.
There, staring directly at me, was a pair of familiar grey eyes; ones that once held endless amounts of love and sparkled with intelligence were now dull and listless, narrowed in hateful recognition.
“Hello, Ellowyn,” my father rasped.