Chapter fifty-four Fallyn
Chapter fifty-four
Fallyn
Consciousness returned to me like the ebb and flow of the tide—slowly, scattering beneath waves, and then all at once. The dip in the mattress I lay on shifted. I brought my hand to my thigh expecting my fingertips to grace the steel of the blade I kept there, but of course my sheath was empty.
“What use for a dagger do you have, my dearest?” I remembered his voice as if from a memory within a dream that quickly catapulted me into a nightmare. Prince Rylon, my not so dearly betrothed. “Your happily ever after has come to find you.”
Spoken like a true aristocrat who has never been told the word no.
“If you think for one second I’m going to marry you, you’re out of your gods-damned mind,” I hissed. A flash out of the corner of my eye had me flinching. His cocked fist stopped mere inches from my face, a warning.
“You belong to me, Fallyn. And tsk, tsk,” He wagged his finger at me to chastise me, “There is only one God. The Morningstar, and his name is to be invoked only with respect.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. The golden light of sunset accented his blonde mane, making the glinting jewels on his crowd stand out even further. I was getting really fucking sick of men claiming me as if I had no say in the matter. At my silence, he continued.
“No amount of your conviction will change that. In a fortnight we wed. Look who I brought for you.” His voice hardened into the spoiled aristocrat he was known to be as he tossed his next command over his shoulder. “Bring them in!”
I thought I had nothing left to lose. Nothing left to truly fight for, not even my life.
Until two disheveled women were shoved into the room.
Two women I’d thought dead. My heart leapt to my throat as Dess and Rowena were shoved to their scraped up knees in the room.
Dirty, decrepit, dressed in rags. They were skinny, far too skinny and their eyes were hollow and sunken in, but they were alive.
A shapeless cry fell from my lips before I could stop it as tears marred their dirty cheeks.
A sting of steel caught my throat, stopping me from lunging forward to them, forcing my attention back to Rylon with a venomous, seething glare.
“Think of them as a wedding present, my consolation prize. Behave, and you can play with them. Don’t, and you’ll be the one who lives to see the consequences.
” Patting my leg where my empty dagger sheath mocked me in lieu of a farewell, he saw himself out of my gilded cage.
The lock hadn’t yet clanged deeply against the heavy steel and wood of the door, nor had his dull footsteps faded down the hall before my knees hit the ground before them and my arms were around my two remaining best friends with tears falling from my eyes.
“How is this possible?” I choked between sobs as I held them close. “I thought you were dead.”
It was Dess that spoke next. “We thought you were dead too. When we saw you’d been denied reentry to the city, we snuck out of the city. We looked for Thaddeus, but he insisted on staying in case you found your way back in and you were hurt. He refused to leave you. Is he with you?”
The hope in Dess’s tone gutted me faster than any instrument could.
Rowena’s eyes widened over her partner’s head at my crestfallen expression. Dess’s words were like blades reopening barely closed wounds. “No….”
Dess’s throat bobbed, “Thaddeus isn’t...”
My fists trembled, the words I’d only thought to this point tumbling out. “It’s my fault. He died saving me.” I recounted how Thaddeus bought Ash and me time to run, how he gave his life for us. How he made Ash promise to get me out alive.
“Typical. Thaddeus does what he wants, and typical you for feeling bad about it.” Rowena cupped my face, forcing me to look at her.
“You were his best friend in the world, Fallyn. There is nobody he loved more than you. His death,” her voice cracked over the word, “is a tragedy, but not a tragedy of your making.”
“She’s right.” Odessa tightened her embrace as we sobbed. “But fuck, I miss him.” Dess’s words crashed through my body, rattling and echoing through my hollowed chest. “He’d know just what to do.”
But fuck, I miss him.
My chest ached, a symptom of the very real shattered heart that lay within. I clutched my friends tighter as my anguish simmered and changed into something darker. More desperate.
Rage.
I sent up a silent prayer to all of Olympus.
To any god or goddess that could hear me.
I would not lose my last remaining friends.
I would see them out of this. Looking around the room, I felt my anger heat, but my optimism cool.
Barred windows, massive locks, roots, dirt, and stone making up the basin of the wall—
That was it. Dirt and roots.
It hadn’t worked in Ash’s manor, but it might work here, depending entirely on how high up we were.
I dropped my voice to the tiniest of whispers. “Are you guys any good at climbing?”
“Climbing? Climbing wh—” Odessa followed my gaze to the window, horror merging with shock on her delicately pointed features. “Are you out of your mind?” Her whisper wasn’t loud, but it punctuated the silence like the deep tomes of a bell.
“So people keep asking me.” I was already set to work on the stone, using my magic to pry out the dirt and mortar that held them together.
A single glance back showed Odessa standing frozen as if she were terrified to move.
“You want this to work? You want to run? Help me.” The stones slid out from one another easily with little to hold them in place.
The harder part was making as little noise as possible and ensuring that rocks I didn’t want moved stayed in place.
Rowena carefully, slowly moved the rocks out of the way, placing them by the cell door, lest anyone’s attention drift our way in the meantime.
Using the dirt I’d removed, I packed the stones in, creating a tight wall that hopefully wouldn’t come down easily.
Hope bloomed, however small, in my chest, insistent on digging roots and growing despite the anxiety that surrounded it.
When the hole in the wall was big enough that we could easily fit through, I strengthened the vines until they were almost the size of my wrist—small enough to grip tightly, but large enough to offer substantial support.
Holding the magic steady, I glanced at the two most important people in the world to me. “Who’s first?”
Rowena didn’t answer. Odessa didn’t either. But several booming knocks on the door behind them did. “Open the door, you miserable wenches!” The door opened, slamming over and over into the stone wall I’d haphazardly erected.
“Odessa, go!” My hands found her shoulders first, all but throwing her at the impromptu window.
She winced at the jagged edges catching her skin.
“Go!” I urged when she glanced at me again.
Cracking sounds from behind us may as well have been a ticking clock.
“Rowena, run!” My magic fizzled, and a gasp was heard from below the window.
I held tight to it, staring beseechingly at her.
“Not without you, Fallyn! We go together!”
“I have to hold the vines first,” I cried, watching the stone wall crumble more with every bash from the cell door.
I grabbed my friend’s hand. “I thought I lost you once, and it killed a part of me. I lost Thaddeus, I refuse to lose you too! Now, run! Before they send reinforcements.” Rowena sent me one last look, eyes puffy with unshed tears.
I smiled. “Dess needs you. I’m right behind you. Go.”
Rowena’s tears fell at last, a sight I’d never before seen, making it all the more acutely painful when the stone wall fell with a crash of stone over stone at last. I ran, leaping to the edge of the window.
I leapt, but in the air there was nothing I could do about the fist ensnaring my hair. My back hit the stone ground followed by a crack that could only have been my head.
I heard my friends call to me between the stars in my vision, their voices fading as a shadow fell over me. A laugh weakly tumbled from me, as demented as it was triumphant.
“You think yourself victorious? We’ll hunt them down.
” The unfamiliar voice was slow. Unhurried in his amusement, savoring the moment as he circled me.
As his men tied my hands. “And this time we’ll kill them.
When you watch, when you see the blood flow from their open throats, just know it was entirely your fault. ”
I screamed, only two words. Part of me hoped they were close enough to hear—a bigger pat hoped they were already far beyond the reaches of this cur. “Find Ash!” My voice echoed around the stone room before a boot filled my vision, making darkness and pain reign over me once more.
The sound of steel rattling over stone and heavy footfalls stole me from the reprieve of my darkness, and no matter how tightly I clung to it the light along with wakefulness was thrust upon me.
“She’s coming to, Highness.” Her voice was far away, distorted, as if trying to speak from beneath water.
I heard only a growl of satisfaction as a response before my movements were not my own.
Blinding pain exploded behind my eyes so abrupt in its intensity a low shriek was ripped from my throat.
The chain around my neck tightened and squeezed, forcing me to sit up if I wanted to breathe.
Though my vision became blurry and my head was stuffed with fire and cotton and an incessant buzzing noise, shapes began to emerge.
A massive white tent, the size of my house back home, filled with white furs to anchor against the cold.
A massive red and black throne with gold embellishments, a hand with a ruby ring.
Blonde hair and a domineering, cruel smile.
I was chained at Prince Rylon’s feet at his throne like a wayward pet.