Chapter 41 - Taste of Iron
Even within the void, darkness is never eternal.
Only my reprieve from the abyss was not so pleasant.
The sharp taste of iron weighed on my tongue. No, not just the taste of iron…an actual weight.
I opened my eyes but still could not see. Something heavy covered my eyes and scratched my face. I shifted my shoulders—I was lying on a floor made of steel plates. Iron chains manacled my wrists and ankles.
I tried to slow my breathing, even though I could only breathe through my nose. My mouth was sealed shut with an iron gag. I shook my head and both the chains of my gag and my chainmail blindfold rattled.
I had been captured—imprisoned for sorcery.
No time to panic, I had to figure out where I was.
Everything smelled metallic. I could not hear anything—not the rustling of wind, or the din of conversation, or even footsteps against the floor. I had never heard such loud silence before.
I must have been underground.
I writhed on the floor, the sharp rattling of my chains bouncing off the metal walls and floor. I pulled at my restraints and tested for a weakness, but I found none. My blindfold would catch all my tears. Steel mitts encased my hands so I could not scratch blood from my skin. The iron gag stopped me from biting my tongue or opening my mouth.
Every way I could think of using the moisture in my body to get a sparkle of magical tears, the Hytons had prevented it.
Though they would be useless for my escape, tears stung the backs of my eyes. The restraints were not made for me—they were Fraleigh’s. If this is how far the Hytons would go to keep a fist over Fraleigh…how did I ever think I could convince Derrick to release her?
Even with all my struggling, the Hyton dagger stayed securely against my calf. I supposed Derrick did not bother to frisk a sorceress for weapons.
My heart ached. Had Derrick really imprisoned me and chained me?
A familiar voice echoed outside, like it filtered through a thick metal door. “Relax, Jonson, the little serpent is just waking up.”
I smiled around my gag. Daigen was there, probably disguised as a mortal soldier, and he had spoken up loud enough that he wanted me to know it.
Though his presence was a strange comfort, he was not there to rescue me. Time was running out, but he had made it clear that my heart’s desire would lead me to the right answers.
I focused on what little magic responded within my body. Seeing Ilsa’s and Anders’s memories had left me exhausted, but I could not give up. The magic drew my attention to the hint of familiar sweetness that lingered on the back of my tongue beneath the tang of iron. Although Derrick had hired an assassin behind my back, I could not believe he could ever bring himself to slip a sleeping potion into anyone’s drinks.
And that tea was too good for Rosaline to have made it, in fact, it was…perfectly brewed.
General Hyton.
I screamed a curse around my gag. I had thought he was appeasing me because I was powerful, but no, he was coveting me. I had the magic of the North—I could bring down armies and defeat Death.
I had, no, I was, everything he had ever wanted.
I bit down on my gag. Fuck him, he was a monster. He had tricked Astrid into falling for him. He had used her love for him to get the crown of Lycaster. He…
…he sounded exactly like me.
I unclenched my jaw as my white flame gently fanned truth through my veins.
He was a monster, but so was I. Had I not seen his betrayal coming because he was merely my mirror?
As much as I wanted to deny it, I could not condemn the General for doing what I had done to Derrick for years. I had made him love me, want me, and need me because I had thought that was the only way I could have control.
Even for the past few weeks, what had I done? Entered his mind night after night to get him to free me. I had cared for Derrick and wanted to heal him, but my motivations were not entirely pure either. The result was still the same.
Ragnar’s actions had broken Astrid…and I was going to break Derrick.
I shifted on the floor and rolled onto my back, letting the chains fully weigh on the center of my chest. I could not just wallow in failure. If I did not release Fraleigh by the full moon, Riyan’s body belonged to Ganora.
Ganora had made her terms for Riyan’s freedom clear, but there had to be another way. Something had to be more powerful than…
My eyes widened beneath the chainmail. The white flame gently danced around my heart, filling my body with white light from my chest down to my toes.
Every agreement had a back door except one—one that not even Ganora, nor anyone else, could interfere with.
I channeled what little magical energy I had and sent out a call to Daigen. I felt a little tickle between my eyes as he made the tether connecting his mind to mine. The connection was weak, but I still sent out: “ I know what I need to do. Can you get me to Nordingaard? ”
Daigen’s answer filtered into my mind. “ I will free the corpse reaver. You run, and run fast. ”
Heavy footsteps slammed into metallic stairs outside of my prison and then two bodies snapped to attention.
Keys jingled. A heavy lock clicked open. Then another. Then another.
A frightened voice whispered outside the door, “General, are you sure—?”
“I fear nothing, Jonson,” General Hyton replied. A heavy door groaned on its hinges. The General’s voice was louder as he stood over me. “Especially not a girl who just needs a firm hand.”
He grabbed my manacled wrists and hauled me to my feet. The chains slithered off my ankles and my legs were free.
The General’s voice rumbled against my chest. “I will escort her to His Excellency myself.”
My heart dropped. I needed to run, not face Derrick.
General Hyton pushed me forward and I blindly followed his lead. He kept his hand around my chains as we walked up a set of stairs.
His voice brushed against my ear. “Apologies for the preventative measures, but the palace is in chaos. The maids found you in the Duke’s chambers and word spread like wildfire. Everyone from the peasantry to the nobility is calling for your head.”
Even with a chainmail blindfold, I could see right through his lies. He had timed everything just right so Derrick would find me unconscious.
The General’s voice dropped to a whisper only I could hear. “Our Duke is descending into madness. We cannot predict what he will do with you now, but I do know one thing for certain—he is so unstable, he needs his General now more than ever.”
A muscle in his arm shivered as his thumb stroked my wrist. “And even a mad Duke would not kill a sorceress if she was blood-bonded to his General.”
I nearly jumped up the next step but found nothing but air. My heart leaped as I fell, but General Hyton caught me.
He did not just want me as a sorceress, he wanted me…as a woman. I was the only noble woman free of a blood bond, making me able to bear children… heirs …oh, I was going to vomit.
I was no different than a teenage Astrid to him, an available womb.
General Hyton hauled me to my feet. “Your pink-beaked raven is caged in the guardhouse. Your Bloodstone allies have abandoned you. Your mother has no sway over the Duke any longer. Your little friends are too wrapped up in themselves to help you.”
He thought he could back me into a corner to agree to his horrid proposal?
A thought even more bitter than the iron on my tongue seeped through my mind. My white flame gently danced, spreading not anger through my veins…but pity.
General Hyton might have been the brother made of steel, but he was transparent as glass. If the gag had not forced me into silence, I would say…
I see you, Ragnar Hyton. I am you.
We clung to towers and then battlements like creeping vines. We carried the burden of a birthright that was never ours. We feasted on the greatness of our achievements yet we were always starving.
Always starving.
But just as I had learned to crumble, so could he. He did not need to seize the North like the Conqueror had. He did not have to plot, and kill, and fuck to finally have the satisfaction he craved.
The owner of the crimson ribbons in his night table drawer was still waiting for him. And if she was anything like her son, she would forgive him for coming to his senses nearly too late.
But he would not release my gag, so he could go through the rest of his life pretending he was not a monster too.
General Hyton halted me. I tried to figure out my surroundings—smell of gentle perfume, carpet beneath my feet, and the slow rhythm of the General’s breath behind me.
He swept my hair from my back and over my shoulder. I scowled behind my gag as his breath caressed the shell of my ear. “You deserve mercy for everything you did for my son. As the General of His Excellency’s army, I can give you that mercy in one of two ways: a blood bond on the full moon or a blindfold on the scaffold.”
I held my breath as he wrapped a ribbon around my neck and suddenly the familiar surface of my Nordingaard crystal was flush against my throat.
He pulled the ribbon into a tight knot. “Think on it, Serafina. I would hate to see you go to waste.”
A smile tugged on my lips that he could not see. General Hyton wanted my power, my magic, and my blood bond. He thought he could put me in a vulnerable position like he had with Astrid’s pregnancy and force me to go along with his plan?
Little did the traitorous General know, I was not afraid of any axe on the scaffold.
The final stepping stone to finish what the Man of the Mountain had started had laid in front of me while I was chained and manacled. I was finally going to choose eternity. I would become ageless, deathless, and more powerful than ever.
I would make a bargain that not even the Queen of the Giants could refuse.
A life for a life given in love. Ganora wanted a weapon to free her sister? She could have me.
A door creaked on its hinges and the General’s voice lifted to a deceptively reverential tone. “Your Excellency, I bring you the sorceress.”
He pushed me through a doorway. I did not resist.
Once the General left, all I would have to do was manipulate Derrick one more time into letting me run. I would take Annalisa and Brietta, flee to Bloodstone Fortress, and trade my life for Riyan’s.
Just as he had done for me.
Carpet beneath my feet turned into wood. The General’s boots thudded across the floor until he retreated through the doorway.
The low ebb and flow of Derrick’s breath reached my ears. It was slow, but strained and ragged, like a bull ready to charge.
All I had to do was face Alastar one more time, then we would all be free.