Chapter Seven #2
Slowly, the guard’s gaze rises to me. Vaguely, I remember a flash of copper hair in the doorframe back home when the gardai took me. How this same guard had been the one who spoke and made my sister pause.
If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect the guard is sizing me up. But gardai aren’t afraid of peasants from Quayside. There’s no reason for them to be. They can cut us down and leave our bodies in the mud and get nothing but the High King’s thanks.
“Get up,” the guard orders.
I lift my chin, fear racing in my veins. “No.”
If this guard wants to kill me, I won’t make any part of this easy.
With a low curse, the guard strides forward and clenches a fist around my wrist. I rip my hand back but can’t break free. Strong hands jerk me up, pulling me out of the cell and slamming the cell door shut behind us.
Hot shame burns my cheeks. I try to fight, but I was always shit at hand-to-hand, and this guard is twice my size. Heavy with muscle, and solid. Breaking free is impossible.
I know I should be stoic, that I should be brave. I knew what I was risking when I went to the Whisperers.
But I’m not brave now.
Terror seizes me.
Deep down, I admit there was a part of me that dreamed I might be different from all the others who tried to buy magic. That I might be the one who finally survived.
Old Ones, I was so fucking stupid.
Twice, I fall, knees slamming into the hard dirt. The guard forces me right back up.
Every corner brings us farther down a corridor that looks exactly the same as the last. Cells, there are so many cells.
Some have wooden doors like mine; others have little more than iron bars that let the condemned stretch their hands out feebly in our wake.
One houses an older woman, with heaps of matted, sandy hair and sharp eyes as pale as the sky.
Others appear empty at first, but that’s only because there are no sounds coming from them.
The occupants inside are no more than bones still shackled to crumbling walls.
In one, ratty velvet hangs off small, flaking bones, and empty eye sockets stare out at us. He can’t be—couldn’t have been—more than eight or nine years old, and my heart aches. What could a little boy have done to deserve this?
I swallow the rising taste of bile.
The guard keeps moving, then finally reaches for a lock at the edge of an iron gate where the corridor narrows, fishing out a set of keys. The metal barely clamors as the key slips into the hole, and for a moment, my heart leaps. If it doesn’t fit, if I have more time to escape…
But the rattling lock clicks and the gate swings open.
We move faster now. The guard’s jaw tightens, eyes darting over every corner.
Here the floors are stone instead of dirt, and I sense that we’re rising up out of a dank darkness and into the halls of Castle Mount.
Fresh, clean air fills my nose—then a cloying, floral sweetness.
The guard pulls me up a narrow staircase, then across a sweeping hall tiled with polished black-and-white marble.
Crimson-and-black banners along with thin furls of crested flags stream from the high wooden beams stretching across the arched ceilings.
I recognize them from the ones that’ve been flying for weeks now—the colors of all the noble families arriving for the Assay.
The flags of the noble daughters about to fight to the death to be the next queen.
Women and men in finely embroidered wool or velvet cloaks mill in the hall, their eyes darting from one hanging flag above to the next, whispering.
The Assay must be just days away from starting now. And beneath the banners, the crimson and black that feels like a waiting shroud, all I can think of is the poor peasant woman the gardai stole for the competition, wherever she is.
I hope she doesn’t suffer in this place.
I hope she dies quickly.
I hope whoever she is, she finds the strength to resist—in whatever small way she can. I hope she can close her eyes at the end and dream of magic.
I will, when the end comes for me.
A pair of gleaming brass doors rises up before us, and the guard nods to the pair of gardai on either side. They sweep the doors open, and my blood races. Bracing for an executioner or a beating before they take me down to the Black Quay.
But the air inside is sweet. And it’s blissfully warm, lit by the crackle and smoke of a hearth burning chips of priceless cedar and rose petals.
Paned glass windows lining the back of the stone walls are thrown open to the gray sky and the churning black sea beyond, as though the sweet smoke and warmth are so common that it’s nothing to waste them.
My eyes sweep over the large chamber, counting the gardai and the long, brutal swords at their sides. And then I see her—there, right in the center of the room, is the High Queen herself.
It has to be her, the High King’s Cymrean queen, dripping with soft furs and heavy golden chains woven into elaborate knots around her.
Her hair is the color of wheat from the fields, bound up in tiny braids throughout her carefully curled waves.
Thick smudges of kohl ring eyes as cold and cruel as I’ve ever seen.
When they narrow on me, a shiver rips down my back.
Her throne is smaller than the one beside her, but no less intimidating.
Where is the High King?
The guard holding me up drops down to all fours and pulls me down, yanking me close enough to hiss, “Say nothing.”
Once I’m on the floor, I freeze.
A voice as hard as ice tears through the tendrils of scented smoke.
“I do not care for this tradition,” the High Queen declares, tapping her nails along the arm of the throne.
She says the word tradition like it has a foul taste.
“Explain to me again why we bother bringing a peasant rat into the test to find a queen?” Her lilting accent is strong despite almost two decades on our isle.
She arrived as the Cymrean ambassador’s daughter not long after the High King married his first wife, an Eireician noble from a family just as old as his own.
The copper-haired guard covers a cough and looks up to meet her glare. “To remind the people that no peasant will ever be worthy of power, Your Majesty. Hope is a stubborn weed. It will always try to root, so we scorch it out before it can grow.”
Ice flashes in the High Queen’s crystal eyes. “Hmm.”
I grit my jaw so hard it creaks in my ears and press my forehead into the cold marble, wishing I could sink down and escape through the mountain itself below us.
“She will not last. Look at her—weak as a drowned rat.” Her voice could cut glass.
“Watching her fail will remind any noble foolish enough to sympathize with the rebels again that no peasant will ever be worth what they risk,” the guard vows.
Her eyes snap to the guard’s with a bright malice as my heart freezes.
No.
They can’t mean what this sounds like.
My fingers press hard against the tile.
Fear races through me as I hear the High Queen speak again. “In three days,” she sneers, “the Assay begins. And only the woman worthy of the prince’s hand will still be breathing at the end.” I feel her icy eyes lock on me. “It will not be you.”
I don’t dare lift my gaze to glare at her. One word and she could order the gardai to run me through with their swords right here.
“Enjoy the precious food we waste on you. Walk these halls and remember that none of this will ever be yours. No matter what hope”—she spits the word out—“you think you feel, you and your kind will never win. Not against us.”
Old Ones, this can’t be happening. No peasant has ever survived the Assay. I have to escape. I have to get back to Finn. We can run—I don’t know where, but we could. She must have pil-fered enough coin from our father by now to buy the permits to leave the city.
I just have to survive long enough to find a way out of here.
I’ve survived worse, for longer. The uprising lasted three months—three months with no food coming past the city’s locked gates and smoke choking every street from the burning temples. We couldn’t open the windows for weeks.
Old Ones, it’s been years since we’ve seen the full face of the sun through the mist.
All I have to do now is stay alive long enough to run.
I raise my eyes to hers and plaster an innocent, awed smile on my lips. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
The guard pulls me up. We back away from the High Queen until, all of a sudden, the brass doors slam shut in our faces.
The guard’s grip tightens on my wrist, and we set off at a quick, sharp pace with me stumbling after through halls that blend into one another and glitter with crimson and obsidian gems.
My ribs squeeze tight around my lungs. I try to mark every twist and turn for later as clues I’ll need to remember how to find my way back out of here.
A cold draft curls along stone halls that grow more stark the farther we go. Up a flight of stairs, and another, and I see a bead of sweat forming at the edge of the guard’s copper hairline. I take my chance and rip my arm from the tight grip around my wrist.
These halls are a maze. I could hide in them, then run.
My wrist screams, and I’m off balance—weak from however long they’ve kept me in that damn cell. The staircase shifts around me as my weight pitches back, and I start to fall.
The guard’s straining grasp catches me by the neck of my filthy tunic and heaves me up. After a long look, the guard clamps another hand around my wrist and hauls me away from the staircase, down an eerily empty hall.
I kick, but the guard doesn’t let go—then shoves me up against the wall next to a wooden door.
“Try that again and it’ll be both our asses up on the Black Quay before you can scream,” the guard warns, then kicks a heavy boot to open the door. “Now get in and don’t make another sound.”