Chapter Nineteen #2
The laundry fell to the floor, tangling in our legs as we struggled.
I grabbed her wrist, fingers curling in enough to drag a cry out of the woman as she tried to retreat, taking me with her until the bed caught the back of her legs. She lost her footing, falling backward. I went with her.
We both struggled for the top. And as strong as I had gotten recently, it was nothing to a lifetime of stirring clothes with a wooden spoon in a massive vat, scrubbing them against a board, then wringing out the excess water.
The woman gained the advantage, rising over me, her legs pinning mine as we fought over the arm with the hollow needle.
She yanked her arm free of mine, then quickly tried to plunge the needle into my arm.
I grabbed her wrist with both my hands, pushing with everything I had, making my arms shake with the effort.
“What the fuck?” Jet’s voice roared.
I watched as the laundress’s eyes went huge, as horror filled them when she became very aware of her fate.
Jet’s footsteps thundered across the room, grabbing the woman about the waist and pulling her, flailing, backward.
“Watch her hand,” I demanded, folding upward, panting for breath.
Vishen ran forward as Jet held the wriggling woman, grabbing her wrist with one of his bandaged hands, pulling the needle out with the other.
“Bellhush,” he said, sniffing it.
The woman’s mouth parted and I knew what was to follow.
I flew across the space, grabbing the needle from the unsuspecting Vishen, and jabbed it into the woman’s arm.
“Serin…” Jet said.
“She was going to scream,” I told him. “Did you want anyone rushing up here and asking what was going on? We don’t need to ask her anything. We know who she works for.”
The men shared a look, then a shrug, just as Nira came walking into the room with a large tray. The smile on her face fell away at the sight in front of her.
“What the hell is this?”
“We found who drugged her,” Jet said.
“The laundress,” Nira said, shaking her head. “She wasn’t even on our list. She wouldn’t have been hauling water.”
“We were probably too distracted to realize it was her.”
It sounded awful, but even being at the palace for such a short period of time made it so the faces of the staff started to blur together for me. I imagined that was amplified when you spent your whole life seeing them all milling about.
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked, watching the woman’s mouth open and close like a fish, no sound escaping.
I remembered that feeling well. That bone-deep helplessness that came with having no way to beg or scream for help, to explain yourself.
I knew I’d been the one to do it to her, but there was no stopping the swell of empathy I felt. For the fear she must have been feeling right then. In the arms of the Dark Prince, knowing how brutally the crown handled traitors.
Sure, aligning herself with Grimwood was, to me, insane. But if she’d been living under the reign of a mad king for years, I understood the desire to look for a way to escape the uncertainty. She likely had no idea how wicked Grimwood was. How much worse he could be for her one day.
Jet and Vishen exchanged a look, and I got the impression, as I often did, that the two of them were somehow capable of conversing without words. This was thanks to being close for so long and needing to be careful about what they said and who might overhear them and their scheming.
“She probably wanted a better life,” I reasoned with Jet. “We can’t assume she knew how evil Grimwood is.”
In Jet’s arms, the laundress struggled silently before settling back down, realizing it was useless.
“She doesn’t deserve to be tortured in the dungeons,” I told him. “She didn’t actually hurt me.”
“The work camps aren’t any less brutal,” Vishen said.
“But we can’t let her go and seek out Grimwood,” Nira said after putting down our lunch on the dresser.
“I’m open to ideas here.”
“Does she have a family?” Nira asked.
“No,” Vishen supplied.
“The tower?” Nira suggested.
“The tower?” I asked.
“The old observation tower. It’s been closed for years, but I broke in a few nights ago—”
“You what?” Vishen asked, his tone sharp.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Like I wasn’t going to explore the palace while everyone was asleep.
Please. Anyway. The old guard tower. The windows are too small for escape.
There’s enough room for a small mattress.
There’s already a toilet. The door is solid and easily barred from the outside. No one goes up there.”
“And, what?” Vishen asked. “Daily meals with a dose of Bellhush?”
“Yes.” Nira’s chin rose at the other guard’s dubious tone. “It’s not forever. If things go how we want, in another week or two, this will be all over. You can let her go. Banish her. Decide some other fate. She doesn’t have to get hurt. But we keep her from ruining everything in the meantime.”
Jet sucked in a deep breath.
“Fine. But make sure she is dosed enough and that there is no chance for escape.”
With that, he handed the struggling woman over to Vishen. He and Nira moved out of the room together, ready to set her plans in motion.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m thankful for all the training I’ve been doing because I would have been helpless if I was the same woman who first came here.”
Jet moved toward me, grabbing and pulling me against his chest, his arms wrapping me up tightly enough to make it hard to breathe. But that didn’t stop me from hugging him back as tightly as I could.
“I don’t like these close calls.”
“They’re not exactly a day at the lake for me either,” I agreed, nestling into his neck. “But I wasn’t hurt. And now we know who poked me that time.”
“Yeah,” Jet agreed. “But I can’t help but wonder if she was the only traitor in the palace.
I leaned back, smiling up at him.
“You mean… aside from all four of us?”
That got a little laugh out of him.
“Touché.” He leaned down, pressing his forehead to mine. “I like how quickly you moved there,” he told me. “There’s a little dark in this princess.”
My mind wandered to the poison steeping under the bed.
He had no idea.