Chapter Thirty-Six Bladestone Prison
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
BLADESTONE PRISON
This was not Reya’s first attempt at breaking out of prison. This was, however, her first attempt at breaking into prison. Though, strictly speaking, she hadn’t broken in anywhere; she’d walked through the front gates.
Reya ran her fingers through the wild tangle of her hair until they caught on the cloak pin she’d knotted in the strands after lifting it from the guard in the castle bailey.
The metal hook was forged at either end to look like the head and tail of the serpent in the Rhiterran crest, with a long needle and bar.
It helped that she’d been pushed into the guard, and that she’d managed to tear the fabric where it had tethered the cloak to his armor, making it look like an accident.
The man was probably still on his hands and knees searching for it.
“What are you doing over there, Red?”
Citrio had been placed in the cell across from her, which was now dimly lit by his pale green Ire.
Reya ignored him, using her teeth to bend the snake’s tail into the shape she needed. The sky had been darkening when they’d stepped into the prison, and Reya estimated it had been nearly sundown. That would be her only reference of time from this point forward.
She had expected it to be dark, but not like this.
Outlines in the walls where there had once been windows had been sealed with mortar and stone.
It was enough to drive a person mad without a single day of interrogation.
Time was something a prisoner could hold on to.
Without it, there was no end and no beginning to the pain.
This was a darkness of insanity, made so not simply by the lack of light but by the scent of fear.
It leeched from the stones themselves, layer upon layer of terror and blood.
While she worked, she counted—seconds, minutes, hours—as much to keep time as to distract herself from the cell that was getting smaller and smaller.
Reya forced air through her nose. Once. Twice. Breathing had to come first, and then she could do the rest.
Every cage has a weak spot. You just have to find it.
The question was, could she find it in time to save them?
Thance had told her they’d discovered a way out of the prison, an ancient passage leading out into the mountains that had never been sealed off. Inconveniently, he hadn’t mentioned where it was.
She had her theories. Reya knew a thing or two about Etellinian castles thanks to her father. Etellinian kings and queens were wise, and there was nothing they valued more than their steel. If there ever was a secret passage out into the mountains, it would be through the armory.
It made sense—if someone attacked your house, where did you go?
“Where all the weapons are,” Reya murmured to no one.
As most castle armories were housed on the ground level, and the passage Thance described would have to be a tunnel leading down under the fortress wall, it seemed highly plausible. But Reya wasn’t about to bank all their lives on plausible.
Thance could verify this, but for that she’d have to talk to him.
And to talk to him, she had to find him.
And to find him, she’d had to get into the prison.
And the longer it took to turn this cloak pin into a lockpick, Reya thought, nearly flinging the damn thing at the wall, the less likely Thance would still be in a state to show her the way out.
She’d once joked to Thance that she could take the prison with five good fighters and a pin. Well, she had the pin. And she’d get the fighters. Reya had a plan. A wild, reckless plan, in which countless things had to go right. Starting with getting out of these chains.
At last, she had two warped pieces of metal resembling the tools in her lock kit. She put the snake’s tail into the lock first, then the needle. The slack between the shackles was enough that she could remove one first and then the other.
It wasn’t perfect. But she managed. One shackle snapped open, and she moved on to the next. Wrists first, then her ankles.
The collar might have taken her longer, but she’d picked that type of lock once before—the night she’d freed Stellene and this whole mess had started.
She remembered how it worked, like a gear in a clock.
Though this time she was working the keyhole blind, from a terrible angle, and with the wrong tool.
“Come on,” she ground out, keeping tension on the barrel as she wiggled the pins into place. She turned the core forty-five degrees, and was ready for it when the tumblers snapped back up, starting the sequence a second time. The core twisted to ninety degrees.
Click.
The sound the collar made when it hit the floor of her cell was deafening in the silence of the hall.
She was ready for what came next.
Violet Ire raced down her skin, lighting up the darkness. The God Power flowed through her veins like boiling water. The floodgate spidered and cracked, and she knew her panic and worry would only make it worse. If she didn’t get control now, this would be over before it started.
She buried the image of Caelan’s lips, stained blue from Twilight, and remembered instead what they had felt like on her skin, the warmth in his touch.
How he’d looked at her like she was something worth living for, something greater than vengeance.
She couldn’t stop what she was feeling, but she could mold it.
Anger and fear hardened into resolve.
Reya sealed every crack in the floodgate with sheer force of will. As she stood in the cavern, in this place she had created in her mind’s eye, it finally dawned on her what material her subconscious had chosen for the wall. She couldn’t help the smile that played on her lips.
The floodgate was an Earth Star.
She stepped out of her cell in nothing but the plain white shift they’d given her, hair a wild tangle down her back.
Citrio blew out a long, slow whistle, lips twisted in a conspiratorial smile.
“I knew you were trouble.” He leaned forward, arms dangling through his bars as he watched her go to work on her cell door.
“Not that I don’t fully support you in this, but even if you crack that, how exactly do you plan to get out of here?
And if you do, might I ask that you bring a friend with you? I’m excellent company.”
“I suppose I’ll find out when I get there.” Reya pushed the door open with a whine of metal. “Stay put for now, frosty. Not a word.”
Hoping that any guard who made rounds in this corridor would assume he simply couldn’t see the inside of her cell because she was a demi-Sage, she shut the door behind her on a gaping Citrio and began walking, knowing she had to start somewhere, and it might as well be here.
She went right first, taking in each shocked face that cataloged her as she passed.
“Thance? Omira?” she whispered, swallowing. “Caelan?”
Some of the prisoners barely acknowledged her, their eyes glazed over with a hollow absence that she knew all too well. They couldn’t hurt you if you weren’t in your body.
Every few cells, she would find one empty. Thance said they’d once estimated the count of Sages in Bladestone to be upwards of two thousand, but Reya hadn’t even seen thirty.
Her plan was looking less and less promising. This was why she’d advised Caelan they needed months to plan something like this. Reya hadn’t even been given weeks, but days. Lennox’s lectures pounded at her temples.
Get surprised on a job, get killed on a job.
She’d broken her own rules in coming here.
On and on, the corridor twisted. Reya looked for a spark of hope in the Sages’ eyes, tried to find that All-Gods-given strength she’d come to know through the Alethians, if only to prove her plan wasn’t doomed from the start.
But she found only blank stares and despair.
Those who did acknowledge her barked warnings.
“What are you doing, half-breed?” snarled a male. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
Reya ignored him. “Omira? Caelan?”
Whispers followed her. How did she get out? Where is she going? Who is she looking for?
The cell block alternated with colors—red, green, gold, blue, and violet. Sages peppered between dark, empty cells.
What was the king doing with them?
Reya picked up her pace, stopping before every cell that emanated green or blue light just to be sure. Deeper and deeper she delved, until a stone wall rose up before her.
Dead end.
“No,” Reya whispered.
“Psst.”
She followed the noise to what, at first glance, appeared to be a vacant cell.
But where the other cells had nothing inside them, this one was covered in chalk drawings, and there was a plate of food in the corner.
There were figures of straw lined up by the door and an empty stone bowl.
Then a tiny face poked out from under a dark wool blanket.
It was a child.
He couldn’t have been more than seven. His Ire was a deep plum—a perceptor just like her. It wasn’t until then that Reya realized she’d never actually seen a Sage child before. All the Sages she’d ever met had been older. Much older.
“I’m Fionán. Who are you?”
Reya’s eyes burned. For a moment, all she could see was a red-haired little girl in a house of crates in the Heap, abandoned to die.
It was like looking into a memory, except far worse.
The Rhiterrans had locked a child up in darkness with nothing but a blanket and some chalk.
Her power reared up, and she shoved it back.
Fionán was an old name. An Etellinian name.
“I’m Reyanwyn,” she whispered. “But you can call me Reya.”
“Did you come to take the dead ones away?” he asked.
Reya blinked. “Dead ones?”
“If they take you away and put you back, you’re going to be a dead one. But I’m not a dead one, so don’t take me.”
“I won’t,” she said, trying to keep her words even. “How often do they come to take the dead ones away?”
The child shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Right. She tried another avenue. “Before they put them back, do you know where they go?”
“Who are you looking for?”
She swallowed. “My friends.”