CHAPTER FOUR ISI
CHAPTER FOUR
ISI
Go, I told Pherin. See how many are coming, but don’t let them see you!
She launched from my shoulder in a blur of motion. I closed my eyes, focusing on our bond until the world shifted and I saw through her vision.
Guards descended the stairs, their armor clanking with each step. The lead one carried a torch, drowning the stairwell with light that would expose me if they came in this direction.
I had seconds. Maybe less.
I pressed myself against the stone wall and reached for the shadows. Magic pooled in my chest, and I pulled it forward, imagining myself melting into the darkness, becoming one with the stone.
The magic flickered. Sputtered. And I remained where I was, clinging to the wall.
My heart slammed up into my throat.
“Please,” I whispered, trying to calm my racing pulse. “Please work.”
The guards’ footsteps grew louder, their voices carrying down the corridor.
“—waste of time patrolling. Nothing but rats and sleeping people down here.”
I was going to be caught. Dragged to my father. He’d know I’d been searching for Addie, and whatever bit of freedom I still possessed would be taken away.
My magic guttered out completely. The shadows slipped away from me, dancing beyond my reach.
Every beat of my heart thundered in my ears, each one counting down the seconds until discovery.
The consequences of capture swirled through my mind.
My own imprisonment. Addie left to whatever fate my father planned.
Trew waiting for a return that would never come.
Pherin flew back, landing on my shoulder.
A raspy sound came from the cell. The woman had rolled over and was staring at me through the bars, her hollow eyes suddenly sharp.
“The grate,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Closet at the end of the hall. Narrow tunnel in the ceiling. Goes up. Keep to the left at all times. You won’t like where the right one takes you.”
I stared at her, shocked. Why would she help me?
“Go,” she hissed. “I’ll distract them.”
I bolted down the hall to a narrow door in the end wall. As I yanked it open and threw myself inside, hauling it shut behind me, the woman wailed. Her shriek of madness and pain echoed off the stone walls and sent ice down my spine.
Darkness swallowed me and Pherin whole.
The space was barely large enough to be called a closet, my shoulders brushing both walls. The air reeked of mildew and something fouler that had soaked into the stone over decades.
Her wails grew louder. The guards shouted.
“What in the fates—”
“Shut up! Shut your damned mouth.”
“She’s mad.”
I tipped my head back, squinting up in the darkness, finding a faint outline of a grate in the ceiling, barely visible against the lighter stone around it. It was too high to reach by jumping.
With my back against one wall and the flats of my feet against the other, I began to climb.
The technique was one Addie and I used as children, wedging ourselves between narrow spaces and wiggling upward.
My muscles trembled with the strain, but I forced myself higher, ignoring the burn in my thighs and the way my arms shook.
My fingers hit the grate, the metal crusted with rust, the edges rough enough to cut. I pushed against it.
Outside, the woman’s screaming had dissolved into sobs. The guards were trying to calm her, their voices a mix of threats and awkward grumbling.
I pushed harder, and the grate groaned but held fast.
Think. Use your magic. Control it.
Taking a breath, I forced my panic down and placed my palm flat against the metal. When I reached for my magic again, I did it with purpose instead of fear.
I focused on the rust itself, on the way time and moisture had already weakened the metal. Encouraging that decay, I fed it with my power, accelerating what was already happening.
The metal crumbled, flaking away in reddish-brown chunks. The grate shifted and gave way entirely.
Pherin flew through the opening.
Holding onto the edge, I hauled myself up, my arms screaming in protest. The space beyond was much narrower than the closet below, a tunnel that angled sharply upward into absolute darkness.
Footsteps echoed in the hall.
Shoving myself into the tunnel, I pulled my legs up and slid the grate back into place as the closet door banged open below.
I froze as light spilled into the closet.
A guard poked his head into the small room.
“Nothing,” he called out, peering around. “You must’ve heard rats.”
It wasn’t until he’d shut the door and walked back down the hall that I dared to breathe again.
The tunnel was barely wide enough for me to fit. The walls compressed in on both sides, rough stone scraping my arms as I crawled up the steep slope. The air hung thick and stale, heavy with dust that made my eyes water.
I couldn’t see. I could barely breathe. The absolute, suffocating darkness pressed down on me like a boulder.
The old Amarissa would’ve panicked.
Isi kept crawling.
My hands found purchase on the rough stone, my knees bracing against the walls as I hauled myself upward, bit by bit.
Voices echoed from below, driving me to go faster.
The space grew tighter. My shoulders wedged against the walls, and for one moment I couldn’t move forward or back. The castle's weight crushed down, squeezing the air from my lungs. Stuck. Trew would wait forever; Addie would rot.
Fuck, no.
The voices below grew louder.
I reached for my magic, focusing on my body this time, making myself slippery, coated in a thin layer of power that let me slide across the stone.
It worked. I shoved harder, magic slicking my skin until I slid free. Suddenly, the tunnel widened, and I could breathe again.
Pherin flew forward before returning to land on my shoulder.
Keep going, she said. Way out.
How far?
Some.
Time lost meaning in the darkness. I may have been crawling for minutes or hours. My hands bled, my knees ached, and my arms trembled with exhaustion. But I kept dragging myself upward through the tunnel.
Finally, light pierced the darkness ahead, a thin line of it, horizontal across my vision. Another grate.
After listening and hearing nothing, I pushed against it. This one gave way easily, lifting with a crackling sound.
I tumbled out, the scent of baking bread a shock after the tunnel's rot. Standing, I found I’d emerged into another closet that smelled of dried fruit and herbs.
Through the crack in the door, I found the kitchen beyond, dark except for dying embers in the hearth and a cook slumped in a chair at the counter, his head pillowed on his arms. His soft snores rang out in the space.
The closet door creaked when I eased it open and I froze, sweat trickling down my face as I waited to be discovered. My legs nearly buckled after the long crawl.
After a snort, the cook’s snores echoed around me again.
Pherin flew ahead, scouting the corridor beyond.
Come, she said. Safe.
I moved through the kitchen like a ghost, not daring to breathe until I’d entered the hallway beyond. With Pherin flying ahead to scout, I ran toward my rooms.
The castle was mostly asleep, but guards patrolled, servants worked late, and voices reached me from upper floors.
I pressed myself into alcoves, slipped behind tapestries, and held my breath as footsteps passed within a breath of wherever I hid. Every second felt like an hour. Every heartbeat sounded too loud.
Finally, finally, I reached the corridor that led to my chambers.
Victor stood outside my door, awake now, peering left and right as if he hadn’t slept through some of his assignment.
I eased back and leaned against the stone wall, my mind racing. Getting past him wasn’t an option now, and I had no idea how to use magic to make him go back to sleep.
My gaze was caught by a door on my right, the room taken by my nanny when I was small. I hadn’t needed her for years, and the suite had remained vacant.
The windows were level with mine and separated by only a few feet of carved stonework that Addie and I had traveled across a couple of times as children, laughing as we clung to the few small stones jutting out from the wall.
We were crazy back then. Some would consider me crazy for what I was contemplating now.
When Victor turned and strode down the hall in the opposite direction, I raced across the distance and ducked into the room.
Drapes covered the furniture, creating ghostly shapes in the moonlight streaming through the tall windows on the opposite side.
I hurried over to one window and pushed it open, letting in the cool night air.
The castle’s exterior wall dropped away below me, a dizzying fall to the gardens far below. But the stonework between this window and mine appeared exactly as I remembered, a carved mess of vines and flowers, decorative columns, and the stern face of a gargoyle jutting out at the midpoint.
Fly like me? Pherin asked.
If only I could.
I climbed onto the window ledge, finding familiar handholds in the carved stone. Telling myself not to look down, I focused on the first grip, the first step.
The night air slapped my face, carrying the scent of flowers below. Wind tugged at my clothing, and when my foot slipped on smooth stone, I bit my tongue to keep from yelping.
My fingertips whitened on the jutting stone, the only thing between me and a fatal drop. A crow cawed nearby, startling me. The gargoyle’s stone face seemed to smirk, daring me to let go. Handholds crumbled under my grip, ancient slabs weakened by centuries of rain and frost.
I pressed myself against the wall, breathing hard.
When my shakes had receded, I reached for the gargoyle’s head, grasping its stone ears, and pulled myself across the front to the other side. My muscles burned, and I couldn’t wait to reach my room.
How many times had Addie and I snuck between these rooms, giggling at our daring? She should be with me now. She’d help me scale the castle walls, her laughter bright in the darkness. Instead, she may be imprisoned, and I still had no idea where.
My window lay ahead. Cracked open, thank the fates, just as I’d left it.
I reached it, tugged the window wider, and hauled myself through, collapsing onto the floor of my room in a graceless heap.
Pherin zipped in after me, fluttering above me.
I lay on the cold floor, every muscle screaming. My hands kept spasming, and my entire body shook with exhaustion.
I’d failed. Addie wasn’t in the dungeons. I had no idea where to look next.
I pulled myself to my feet and staggered to the bathing chamber, turning on the water. I splashed my face and washed the grime from my hands, tiny cuts stinging. My haunted face stared back at me in the mirror, my eyes too wide and my face too pale beneath the dirt.
After peeling off my filthy clothes, I hid them in a chest. I bathed, retrieved Trew’s tunic from the trunk, tugging it on, and crawled into bed.
Pherin curled against my head on the pillow.
I had two weeks to figure out where my father had hidden Addie, rescue her, and escape this trap with those doomed to die on the Day of Mercy.
Right now, the tasks felt nearly impossible.
I closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. My mind kept circling back to the woman in the cell, her hollow eyes and her unexpected help.
The grate, she’d whispered.
She’d saved me, which meant I had to find a way to save her.
I reached under the pillow and pulled out the striped stone, clutching it tight as I let my tears come.
I wasn’t done fighting yet.