Chapter 41 No Visitors #2
Thank the fucking gods. He couldn’t help it, he smiled. “Gods, I love that smart mouth of yours; I thought you were going to give me the silent treatment until I had no choice but to leave.”
Hazel crept forward out of the shadows on her hands and knees. She was dirty and disheveled, her hair a matted mess and her face coated with dirt and blood.
“Don’t know how to stay out of trouble do you?”
“Is this a joke to you?” Her face was twisted with rage, tears welling in her eyes.
She scooted further forward on her knees.
She was in a tunic, shredded and dirty, looking and smelling as though it had been worn by one hundred or more people before her.
“I said, is this a joke to you?” Her voice trembled, the voice of a woman about to break.
And this was not the place for her to shatter. Not again.
His eyes landed on the onyx shackles around her wrists. Her skin was chapped and torn where she’d obviously been fighting to break herself free. Good. That meant she still had a will to get out. To live. It also meant she wouldn’t be able to explode as long as she wore them. Probably for the best.
“Slaide fucking Elias, answer me right now. Do you think this is all a big joke? My father is dead. He’s fucking dead! And for what? To protect Agnes? To protect me? And now look at us both! He died for nothing. Nothing!”
Slaide was not prepared for this conversation. Not right here, not right now. That guard would be back any minute.
He got down on his knees and grabbed the bars between them.
“Listen, Hazel,” he pleaded softly, hoping that if he avoided pissing her off too much, she might listen.
He had to get her out of this enraged state if he hoped to reason with her.
“I know you’re in pain, physically and emotionally.
We don’t have time for my traumatic backstory right now, so you’ll have to trust me when I say I get it.
I’ve been here, in this exact cell. But no one came for me. ”
She stared at him blankly, her eyes still threatening to overflow.
“I am here for you Hazel, but you have to let me help you. Hate me all you want, but love yourself enough to live. You owe yourself that. Hel, you owe your father and Agnes that much.”
“You said before you weren’t helping me, you were helping yourself. And you just told me you don’t lie. So which is it then?”
Fuck me and my stupid mouth.
He sighed. Well, no time like the present to really start being honest. “Both. Because when I dove headfirst into this, into you, I had an agenda, and you didn’t matter.
I was going to do anything it took to keep you out of the Magistry’s hands, and not because I cared about you or your safety.
I despise the mages as much as Magnus despises me.
So, keeping you out of their reach was priority number one.
And yes, with that I bargained for my freedom.
I was desperate, and you were no one to me.
Discovering what you were capable of, and whether or not you really were a witch, was priority two.
“But the thing is, Hazel, things change. Plans change. People change. All of this was before I knew who you were. Who you really are. I don’t have time to explain all of this to you right now because as I’m sure you heard, we have but a few moments until that shift change.
But I swear to you, I will. Just help me get you out of here. I have a plan to—”
The door groaned and swung inward, the first guard poking his head in.
“Time’s up. Let’s go.”
Slaide—master of storms and shadows and general calamity—began to panic internally. He leapt to his feet and stared wildly into Hazel’s glossy eyes. She was completely unreadable. “Agnes lives for now,” he whispered. “If you want to save her, get your shit together.”
“I said, let’s go.” He moved to grab Slaide’s forearm, and Slaide recoiled, a snake preparing to strike.
“Touch me, and it will be the last thing you do.”
The guard withdrew his hand and stepped aside to let Slaide pass. As he closed the warded iron door, Slaide peered past him into the cell, but Hazel had disappeared back into the shadows. The guard pocketed the wardstone, and they returned back where they’d come from.
When at last they reached the end of the dungeon hall, they were greeted by the shift change guards.
A new guard to take the place of the retiree, and one to oversee the swap and make sure there were no hiccups and nothing was removed from the prison.
Especially no keys, and certainly no wardstones.
One was a middle-aged man of medium build, with sandy blonde hair and striking cobalt eyes. While he couldn’t recall the guard’s name, he remembered the man from his own time in the dungeons. The thought of him being left alone with Hazel was… unsettling.
The other man was much younger, closer in age to himself and lacking the confidence of a seasoned warrior. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and an expression dripping with concern and fear. And then it hit him. Ezekiel.
“It’s about time, Breck. Not setting much of an example for this recruit, returning to your post this late,” said the blonde man.
“Yes, sir. Apologies, sir. Just finishing up rounds. Won’t happen again.”
“I should expect not. You know the consequences for tardiness. I wouldn’t want to have to use you to demonstrate to Bertram here how things work.”
No. Fucking. Chance.
Breck bowed his head submissively.
“Anyway, moving on. This is Ezekiel Bertram, one of our newer members of the guard. He’s been working shifts on the upper levels for a bit now, and has proved himself trustworthy and capable. So tonight, he’s your relief.”
Slaide noticed the subtle shift in Breck’s expression, and knew they must be thinking the same thing.
This was no place for a novice. The upper level dungeons were nothing in comparison to the monsters they kept down here.
Lucky for Bertram, there was only one inmate, and she wasn’t much of a threat.
“Ah, it’s nice to meet you, Ezekiel. You’ve been the talk of the barracks the past few days. Nice to have some competent men joining the ranks, finally. As it stands, I’ve nothing to report. Our prisoner has remained quiet, though she refuses to touch her food.”
Probably thinks it’s poisoned. Who could blame her?
“Your goal this evening is just to ensure she remains quiet. If you can convince her to eat, even better. His Majesty plans on turning her over to the Magistry soon, and their testing will surely be rigorous. It would be a shame for her to starve to death before she makes it there.”
Pardon? That bastard. Though he supposed his week was up, and that had been the deal.
Slaide had kept his word, though none of this had gone as he’d expected or hoped.
She didn’t win the tournament. Granted, no winner had been announced.
But in the eyes of those who mattered, she was no champion.
He’d discovered that Hazel did, in fact, have the magic they were looking for, but it had been a complete and total disaster.
And Slaide had broken his golden rule when interrogating and infiltrating the minds of his captives.
He’d gotten much, much too close.