21. Chained
Chapter twenty-one
Chained
Scarlett
The dungeon hummed with silence, a silence that felt alive. Somewhere above, chains groaned, and torches hissed, their light leaking through the cracks between cells, like faint gold veins in black stone.
Scarlett sat with her knees drawn close; the nightgown clung to her like the weight of death. The cold floor bit into her bones. Her wrists throbbed where the iron cuffs dug deep.
Across the corridor, behind the shadows and the iron bars, Ace’s chains shifted. She didn’t look up until she heard him exhale—a sound of quiet fury held barely in check.
“Scarlett.” His voice was hoarse, low. “Talk to me.”
Her throat burned. She didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to give words to what had happened. But the sound of his voice—trembling, desperate—broke through the wall she’d built.
“I’m alive,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “That’s enough for now.”
Ace drew in a ragged breath. Metal scraped stone as he moved, the sound of shackles tightening.
“I should’ve stopped him. I—”
“You couldn’t,” she cut in softly. “That’s what he wanted. For you to watch. To break you with it.”
A pause stretched between them. The torches flickered. Footsteps echoed distantly—guards patrolling the hall above. They fell silent until the sound faded again.
Ace’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They’re planning the ceremony for sunset.” He sighed. “I never should’ve brought you to Spade territory. This is my fault.”
Scarlett’s hands clenched, the Null Veil pulsing through her chains, stripping her soul bare. “We’ll find a way through this,” she said quietly, determination threading through the fatigue in her voice. “I won’t let this be the end—for me, for us.”
“Scar—”
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t start, Ace. I can’t focus on that. Maddox and Arley didn’t give their lives for this. There’s no way this is the end I fought for. The end they stood by me for.”
Ace’s silence said everything.
“Cyrus will stop at nothing,” he murmured finally. “But I will stand by you, Scarlett. I won’t let him take you from me. We will get out of this.”
“He doesn’t get to own my fear,” she said softly. “He can take everything else—my crown, my freedom, my pride—but not that.”
The echo of her words lingered between them, fierce and fragile all at once.
Ace leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping low enough that only she could hear it through the dark. “There’s a weakness in the guard rotation. There always has been. Two guards pass this hall just before midday, but only one checks the cells, while the other waits near the stairwell.”
Scarlett lifted her head toward his cell.
“If we can get one of them inside,” Ace continued, “we take the keys.”
“And then?” She asked, exhaustion and fury tangled tightly together in her voice.
“Then we run.”
The iron around his wrists scraped softly against the stone as he shifted closer to the bars.
“There’s a passage beneath the Spade armory that leads through the mountain’s edge.
Most of the royal line doesn’t even know it exists.
The corridor outside these cells connects to it through a blind turn—no windows, no sightline to the throne hall.
If we make it that far, we have a chance. ”
Scarlett looked down at the bruises wrapped around her wrists, before staring toward the thin strip of torchlight cutting through the darkness. Her reflection shimmered faintly in the damp stone—hollow-eyed, bruised, barely recognizable.
But still hers.
“I took a pin from Cyrus’s desk before the guards dragged me down here,” she murmured. “If I can get these chains off, maybe my magic will return enough to cover us while we move.”
Ace nodded once. “Then we don’t waste it fighting through the fortress. We stay hidden until we reach the passage.”
Silence settled between them for a beat before Scarlett exhaled shakily. “We still need a distraction.”
A humorless smile touched Ace’s mouth. “I can give you one.”
Her stomach tightened immediately. “Ace—”
“He’s already waiting for me to break,” he said quietly. “Cyrus has spent my entire life expecting me to become exactly like him. If I lash out hard enough, scream loud enough, spill enough blood against the bars…” His jaw flexed. “He’ll send guards down here.”
Scarlett’s lips curved faintly despite herself, bitter and exhausted. “You’ve always been good at playing the monster.”
“And you’ve always been good at pretending you aren’t terrified,” Ace whispered back. “But I see it, Scarlett.”
Something in his voice nearly unraveled her.
She turned her face away, eyes burning. “If Maddox and Arley were alive—”
“They would have come for you,” Ace interrupted gently. The certainty in his tone hurt worse than doubt ever could.
He leaned his head back against the wall, shadows cutting across his face. “But they aren’t, and we need to survive. And when we get out of here…” His voice darkened. “I’ll burn everything my father built to the ground before I let him touch you again.”
Scarlett swallowed hard against the ache climbing her throat. “Then let’s live long enough to watch the mountainside melt together.”
Footsteps echoed suddenly through the corridor.
Both of them went still. Scarlett slipped the stolen pin deeper into the torn seam of her sleeve as torchlight stretched across the floor outside their cells.
Across from her, Ace straightened slowly, every inch of him sharpening into something cold enough to cut.
Between them, a single torch flickered in the dark, its flame twisting like a heartbeat.
And though chains still bound their bodies, the fire between them remained untouched.