Chapter 7
SEVEN
ARYELLA
When you meet your betrothed, promise me you’ll make sure he knows how hard you fucking bite.
—FROM THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA’S LAST KNOWN LETTERS TO QUEEN ARYELLA I
I was apprehended by multiple brawny young men wearing the same black fighting leathers as the others.
They dragged me through the mammoth front doors of the fortress without a word.
Buildings were scattered throughout the fortress: living quarters, refectories, classrooms, and training halls according to the rough sketches Finn had left me before leaving Tovick.
Some guards eyed me with caution, others with distaste. There were a diverse array of complexions and heights but all appeared fairly young—between twenty and thirty years of age—well nourished, and strong. Maybe they were doing fine without their queen, after all.
“The captain’s on her way,” someone announced.
I looked between the fighters and their swords, my boots grinding gravel as I shifted. “You can put your weapons down. I’m not here to fight you.”
And I would prefer not to unleash the power of the gods on you , I thought.
“ I think you should ,” Shera replied mischievously from the forest beyond. “ It would be fun. ”
Clearly, my thoughts were louder than I wanted them to be. Our bond felt like a pathway divided by a wide open door. It was easy to think too loudly and let one slip through.
An athletic, ebony-skinned soldier with sharp, dark eyes, cutting cheekbones, and thick, tightly braided black locks stepped forward and assessed me with an unforgiving stare. Stunning, but powerful and deadly. She was one I’d avoid on the sparring mat.
“Lieutenant?” she barked at her subordinate.
“This one was trying to break in the main entrance.” The lieutenant tossed me in the gravel before the captain. “Knocked out three guards before we stopped her here.”
“For the love of the gods, I was not trying to break in!” I objected. “Your guards attacked me .”
“You’d better be joking,” the captain scoffed down at me. But others assuming I could do less because I was small had become an advantage. “ She took out three of you?”
“Otis Stoll and both Sharpe brothers,” the lieutenant clarified. “She appears to be… unexpectedly fast.”
“ Stoll ?” She gawked in disbelief.
Stoll must have been the big one. Something nagged at the back of my mind, and it didn’t take me long to recall a conversation at the tavern in Freyburn.
My friends had mentioned Stoll and the Sharpes, along with their friend Alec Gerard.
I remembered their wary reactions. These were dangerous men.
And I’d probably aggravated them before I’d even reached the fortress’s front door.
“Well,” the captain sighed, “go retrieve them.” She waved in the direction from where I’d come, then turned back to me. “And you are ?”
I cleared my throat. “I request an audience with Commander Winterton.”
Her lips thinned. “Your name , girl.”
I had spent a long time deciding what they would call me.
So much of Gavin was a part of who I was now, including his words from our last day in Warrich. “ Then burn, it shall. ” When I asked him to burn down that house I’d been starving in, he did without question. That day, he’d set something ablaze in me, too.
“Fera,” I answered. “My name is Fera.”
“ Fire ,” my umbra purred down our pathway.
“ You can still hear us? ” My scream when fighting that soldier was loud enough to echo past the fortress walls, but normal voices?
“Umbras have remarkable hearing.”
“And a propensity for eavesdropping, it seems.”
I heard and felt Shera’s responding laughter.
“Your surname?” the captain demanded.
“I have none. I’m from Brinnea.”
The city’s name wiped the smirk off her face. And it wasn’t a lie. I was born and raised in Brinnea… four hundred years ago.
“When were you last in Brinnea?” she snapped, and I was momentarily confused. Then I remembered Gemma’s letter to Damond. They knew the queen had been in Brinnea with the Butcher the night they thought he’d offered her up to Molochai.
“During the Solstice,” I answered truthfully.
Every soldier tensed.
Letting them believe I’d been anywhere near the queen on the night of her death might be a reliable ticket in. They wouldn’t dare kill someone with such valuable information. At least, not before their Commander was given the chance to pry it out of me.
“Who do you answer to?” ordered the captain.
“Not Molochai.” They paled when I spoke his name.
The captain narrowed her eyes. “Then who do you answer to?”
“I answer to myself.”
“Oh, the commander will love that. Where is he?” she asked another lieutenant, who leaned close and whispered in her ear.
All I heard was morning , search party , and hours .
“For the gods’ sake!” Her bark made the lieutenant flinch.
“What the hell does he expect to find? The queen’s severed body parts scattered across the northern province?
” My betrothed hadn’t given up on me, then.
“As if there’d be any of her left after the Butcher finished with her. ”
I bit my tongue to keep from snarling and lashing out against her lies .
When the captain retrained her eyes on me, her dark lips tightened into a thin line. “If it’s Commander Winterton you want, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. He’s currently dealing with more pressing matters than some hell-raising imp.”
“ Gods forbid the commander be inconvenienced. ” Shera’s sarcastic internal voice sounded eerily saccharine.
“Then it’s a good thing I have nowhere else to be,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll wait.”
She pondered me, then gave a stiff, commanding nod. A male and female fighter broke formation and approached me.
“Hand over your pack and your blades,” the captain ordered. “All of them.”
I held out my arms to let them remove my bag and knives from the sheathes around my waist, but when one of them reached for the four-hundred-year-old dagger in my hand, my fingers tightened around the hilt.
No. This was a part of myself I wasn’t willing to give them.
The guard’s brows pinched as she studied the blade in my hand. Gavin had kept it dangerously sharp for centuries, and it showed.
“ Especially that one,” she uttered. I rubbed my thumb along the smooth black hilt, branding the feel of it in my mind, my heart, in every place I could.
“Now!” Her sharp bark made me flinch, but I obeyed.
It wasn’t all I had left. Surely they wouldn’t try to take the rings around my neck as well.
And yet, I couldn’t shake how the hilt leaving my palm felt like an ill omen.
“Take her to the western cellblock,” ordered the captain. “Scan the perimeter to ensure she acted alone. Commander Winterton will decide what to do with her when he returns.”
“ Shera? ” I called out to her. “ Don’t let them find you. ”
“Already hiding.”
“And for the love of all twelve gods!” the captain shouted, sneering at me. “Do not let this fun little surprise out of her cell.”
My fingers twitched, hungry to wield power in defense as rough hands dragged me, my toes scraping gravel, past the stone building I knew Elias must live in.
I couldn’t help but notice that the cabins looked empty and bare through their small, worn and dusty windows.
If Finn’s notes were correct, Commencement didn’t start until the first week of Rainar.
This year’s batch of new soldiers wouldn’t arrive for a few days.
That meant I had some time to convince Elias to let me, an outsider, participate before the new trainees arrived and he wrote me off.
They took me to a dingy cellblock on the western side of the fortress, just as the captain commanded. A musty chill crept over my bones, and I winced and jerked when their careless steps splashed frigid water up my shins and into the soles of my boots.
There were four cells, empty except for my own, and the space was lit only by two torches on either side of the doorway. Dark enough that when I stood in the back of the cell, I knew they couldn’t see me. At least I had some semblance of privacy when needed.
I sat on the edge of the uncomfortable bed with no mattress and watched both guards assigned to me.
One, a burly, tawny-skinned man who gripped the hilt of his sword like I might disappear and rematerialize on the other side of the cell bars, poised with the blade that they took from me at his throat.
The other was a taller, thinner male with a pointy nose and shoulder-length blond hair.
He looked slightly more at ease until I stood and approached the padlocked cell door, causing them to tense.
“I’m going to guess you don’t often receive unexpected guests here.” I wrapped my fingers around the rusting iron bars. Their eyes flitted there. Could they sense how dangerous my hands really were?
They kept silent. I tapped my boot on the hard stone floor.
“What’s he like? Your… commander .” The word slid off my tongue with unintended anger. They shifted uncomfortably. “You know, I’m really just trying to make conversation.”
The dark-skinned guard’s eyes darted between me and his counterpart. “We were instructed not to speak to you.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.” The faint rapping of my fingernails on the metal bar echoed off the walls of the room. “I was hoping to make some friends.”
The silence was broken only by the steady drop of water leaking from the corner of my cell.
I cleared my throat loudly. “May I have a drink?”
Little did they know I could snatch the water out of the air with a flick of my wrists, but that would give me away.
“Please.” I feigned my best pout. “I’m quite parched.”
The blond guard sighed in annoyance, stood, poked his head out of the cellblock door and muttered something unintelligible to someone outside. Pride had me biting my tongue to suppress a grin. They deemed me threatening enough for guards on both sides of the door.