Now that I had gotten her to talk, she didn’t stop, and we chatted way into the night, at ease in each other’s company but wary of the door opening again.
It didn’t, and eventually, I felt sleepy. I drifted off into a sleep, deeper than it had any right to be.
14th January
At first, I thought I was dreaming it, but the explosion and the noise of the door being blown off its hinges and catapulted across the room was enough to tell me it was real. I jumped out of bed and saw that Allaya had done the same. The door that had opened was the one closest to me, which meant that it was the one leading down to the dungeon. Fear ran through me, but I could hear cheering and hollering from the women below. What was happening?
Helena was the first to walk through the door, followed by Cass, then the others. I looked at them amazed as Helena walked to my cell. She wrapped her hand around a bar, and I watched as it turned red and started to smoke.
“What…?”
“We’ve been smashing her bracelets for days with a rock we found,” said Cass, grinning. “Even though we couldn’t get the damn things off her, we finally managed to break through to the clockwork. From there, it was simple to break the mechanism that stopped her magic from working.”
“We broke it yesterday morning, but I needed time to recharge so to speak. The food they brought down helped me get my strength back. There!” the bar around the lock snapped off completely, and the door fell open.
“Do hers too.” I pointed at Allaya’s bars.
“We need to be quick, Helena, blowing those doors off caused a right racket. The guards will be here soon, said Cass”
As if on cue, the main cell door opened and two guards rushed in They must have been the night guards, as I’d not seen them before. They were just as huge as the day guards though and had the same good looks on the outside but with ugliness showing in their features.
Helena turned to them and waved her arms about. Her hands seemed to erupt into flame, but she aimed the fireball at the two men where it hit them square on. They both flew backwards out of the open door. I’d never seen magic performed before. It was cool.
She turned back to Allaya’s cell and began the process of heating the bars.
She was almost through when an alarm sounded. The rest of us covered our ears to protect them from the screeching sound, but Helena continued, completely focused on the task at hand.
Seconds later, the second wave of guards ran through the door, and this time, there were a lot more of them. Helena broke off from what she was doing and repeated her amazing fireball trick. The bodies of guards began to pile up.
“Way to go, girl!” shouted Alice.
“It’s a good thing you’re a Fire Diamond. We’d never get out of here if you only had air or water to play with,” agreed the girl with the gold tattoos, whose name I’d forgotten.
“Don’t dismiss the Air and Water Diamonds. They’ve got tricks,” Helena replied as the bar completely melted away in her hand. Another group of guards was behind the first lot, and I could already hear them racing down the corridor outside. We all followed behind Helena as she stepped over the bodies of the original guards, her arms held aloft as she rounded the corner with the rest of us close behind her. One of the guards held a gun, a strange looking brass colored thing and as we got closer to him, he pointed it straight at Helena.
“Let ‘im ‘ave it,” shouted Alma from somewhere behind me.
Helena’s hands began to glow again in the same way they had before. She threw the fireball straight at the guard, but he shot at the same time. We all watched as if in slow motion, to see which would fall first.
A cheer erupted around me as we saw the guard, plus quite a few of the others behind him fall backwards with the force of the fireball.
We all began to rush forward, but Helena didn’t move. Something was wrong, but there was no blood, and she was still standing.
“What’s the holdup?” shouted Alma.
“The gun! It stopped my magic.”
“It can’t have, can it?” I said, although I realized I knew nothing about either magic or Heart technology. “The inhibitor is broken.”
“I guess they’ve invented an inhibitor gun now too.”
“But the gun isn’t even pointing at you anymore. It’s over there on the floor next to the guard that was holding it,” Alice said.
I looked to where she was pointing and saw that she was right. Still, if Helena’s magic wasn’t working, I didn’t fancy hanging around to figure out why when a load more guards could show up at any minute.
“Come on!” I shouted, “we need to get out of here.” We were in the long corridor, which had a door to the other basement room and the stairs to the main part of the palace at the opposite end. Not wanting to go to either of those places, I tried another door. It led to a large entrance hall with a huge sweeping staircase and the exit.
“This way,” I kept my volume to a minimum and crept towards the huge double doors with the others behind me. There were no guards here. Probably because Helena had fried them all. My heart sank when I realised that there was another of those touch pads to open the doors. I tried my hand, but nothing happened. Without Helena’s fire spell, there was no way we were going to get through. The door was similar in style to the ones back at my own castle. The ones with the cogs that opened up to the treasury. Without a palm print, we didn’t stand a chance.
“We need someone who has access. Can we go back and carry one of the guards here. Maybe their palm will open the door.”
“I have access, maybe I can help.”
We all looked up. On the stairs was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. He was also someone I recognized. I’d last seen him just over a week ago. It was the Ten of Hearts.
“You are the prisoners,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He walked down the stairs and straight over to me. “I must say, I’m very surprised to see you here. Why are you helping my mother’s prisoners to escape? Or are you one of them?” He put his finger under my chin and pulled my face up slightly. Just this touch made me squirm. I couldn’t decide if I was nervous or angry or if it was something else entirely. Either way, I didn’t like the fact we had been caught, even if we could overpower him.
“Can you open the door for us, please? Your mother put us all in the dungeon.”
“I know. I wonder what she had on you.” He held my gaze, and I was struggling to remember what I was saying. “So can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Open the door. We need to get out.”
“I would love to, but I don’t think Mother would be happy with me if I did.”
“Mama’s boy,” I heard Alma say under her breath.
“Where are the guards?” He looked around him and for the first time since he’d walked down the stairs, he didn’t look so sure of himself. Maybe he had just realized that he was alone.
“We got ‘em,” yelled Cass, are you gonna let us out or not because the way I see it, there are twelve of us and only one of you and we need your palm print. The rest of you, we haven’t got any use for!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” whispered the girl beside me. It was the same one who had said the guard was cute.
“Ladies, I’m afraid you are wrong. I have a whole team of guards who will be here any second, and I don’t want to tell them that I let you all out after calling them.”
“You didn’t call nobody,” said Alma.
“He’s bluffing!” someone else called out.
I was just about to ask him again to open the door when there was a racket from behind him. A steady stream of guards was coming down the stairs.
“Get them and put them in the dungeon,” said the Ten lazily. He turned back to me, and a second before I ran, I heard him say, “It’s a pity.”
I ran in the opposite direction from the way we had come. There was an open door, and my plan was to run through it. I didn’t make it that far before a set of thick arms surrou
nded me and began to drag me back to the main doors. I was one of the first to be caught owing to my short legs. I watched as the others spread out in all directions with the guards chasing after them. Allaya was caught next, and we both were thrown into the dungeon together. At least, they hadn’t thrown us in the caged room, but we were no better off than we had been to begin with.
Allaya ran to the river and drank the water as if she had just come from a desert. I bobbed my head down to the surface to copy her when I heard a splash and huge droplets of water sprayed over me.
Allaya had taken all her clothes off and jumped in. I watched as she floated quickly downstream, stopping at the wall. I could just about see the tops of the bars beneath the surface, stopping us exiting through the tunnel the water flowed down through
She swam to the side and rested her arms on the stone there.
“Are you ok?” I asked her. “I thought this river was too fast to swim in.”
“I’m fine,” she smiled for the first time since I’d met her. It illuminated her face more powerfully than the dim light bulbs. “I’m a strong swimmer. There is a lake by my house where my cousins and I swim all the time.”
I realized just how sheltered I had been in the castle. The Club Kingdoms are full of rivers, lakes, and bogs. We even border the ocean, but at seventeen years of age, I still couldn’t swim.
“I think you should probably get out anyway,” I replied to her. I can’t swim, and if anything happened, I wouldn’t be able to save you. Besides, there are mhyrmids in there.”
“Mhyrmids only bite if you provoke them. I’m honestly fine and well…I need to be in here. I feel dirty. I need to wash it all away.”
I finally understood. She wasn’t swimming for recreation. She was washing off what had happened to her. I sat on the edge and dipped my feet in. if mhyrmids didn’t bother her, I wasn’t going to let them bother me either. I scooped up water with my cupped hands and washed the parts of me that I could reach. The door behind us opened, and Cass, Ruby, and the girl with the gold tattoos were pushed through.
“Well, that worked well!” said Cass sarcastically.
“Have any of the others escaped?” I asked. In reality, we only needed one person to get out of the castle. They could then bring people to come rescue us. Or they could go to The Ace Palace and let the Aces know what the Queen of Hearts was up to.
“I don’t know. Everyone ran off in opposite directions. Alma climbed up a bookcase, and the last time I saw her, she was lobbing hardbacks at anyone that dared to come near her.”
I stifled a laugh. We were in a horrible situation that was getting worse by the minute, but the thought of Alma throwing books at the guards made me want to laugh.
I soon sobered when the door opened, and Helena came flying through and fell down the stairs exactly as I must have done when they had first thrown me down. I jumped up and ran over to her. The others got there before me, and I was glad to see that she was, at least, alert and sitting up, albeit with a look of pain distorting her features.
“I don’t think I’ve broken anything, but, bloody hell, it hurts!”
One by one, the rest of the women were caught and thrown back into the dungeon, although none quite as roughly as Helena was.
Even Alma had been caught, and she went back to her usual place and picked up where she had left off, weaving the bits of leftover straw.
“What do we do now?” asked Cass of the rest of us. We had automatically ended up in a kind of unplanned circle with the exception of Alma and Allaya, who was still washing herself in the river.
We were all silent, beaten in our attempt once again. What could we do? Allaya sat down next to me, still soaking wet in the robes she’d just put on.
“I wish I could have washed these too,” she whispered so quietly that only I could hear and I knew she was talking about the bloodstains.
“We could try something else. Find another way to escape,” said Ruby.
“It won’t work!”
“Shut up, Alma!” chorused the group
“I hate to say it, but I think Alma is right,” said Helena, rubbing the leg she’d hurt in the fall. They’ve slapped more of these inhibitors on me so I can’t do any more magic, and, quite frankly, I’m exhausted.
“We smashed the first bracelets, and we could smash them again,” Cass replied.
“To what end? They seem to have a steady stream of guards here. We’ll never get through them all.”
“What if you pointed your fireballs towards the walls,” butted in Allaya. “Could we blast our way out from here?”
Helena looked like she was just about to answer when the door at the top of the stairs opened. The queen walked in, a guard at either side of her.
“There will be no blasting through walls. You’ve done enough damage and cost me more guards than I care to mention.” She spoke calmly, but something in her voice scared me. “I have no need for most of you and keeping you all down here is giving me a headache with all the problems you’ve caused. Tomorrow, I’m going to issue a royal decree that I’m bringing back the death penalty. The guards are constructing a gallows as we speak, and as you are the most troublesome, Diamond, you will be the first to go.”
We all looked at Helena in shock. She was pale to begin with, but any color she did have left her face. The banging of the door told us that the queen had left.
“We are getting out of here tonight!” Cass said urgency in every word.
“How?” I asked. I admired her determination, but I couldn’t see how we would get out.
“I could try to swim upriver,” offered Allaya.
“She’s a strong swimmer,” I added. “She has a lake by her house.”
“We already tried before either of you came down here. It’s impossible,” said Ruby
“Please let me have a try.”
“Be my guest.”
Allaya took all of her clothes off for the second time and quickly jumped into the river. We watched as she tried in vain to swim against the current, but it was evident that she wasn’t going to make it.
For every stroke she made upriver, she fell back two, and after a good ten minutes of trying, she was still nowhere close to swimming through the opening that the river ran through.
She dragged herself out and fell to the floor, panting with the effort. We had no towel or means of drying her, so she had to put her clothes on wet once again. She wrung her hair out and came back to join the rest of us.
“I’m sorry, guys. I thought I could make it.”
“How is your magic?” asked Helena. The inhibitors on my wrists now are stronger than the original ones, but yours look like the originals. Maybe we could smash the casing on those like we did mine.”
“It took us hours and hours of hitting your wrists with a rock to break them, Helena,” said Ruby, not giving Allaya time to answer.
“We’ve still got hours, though, don’t we?” countered Cass, looking excited.
“It won’t work,” said Alma from somewhere behind us.
“If you say that one more time, Alma, I’m going to hang you from the noose myself, saving the queen the trouble!” shouted Ruby. Alma only responded by mumbling something incoherent.
With the only plan we could think of being smashing the inhibitors around Allaya’s wrists, we set to it with gusto. The rocks they had originally used were still there. Allaya rested her wrist on the bigger of the two, and the rest of us took turns smashing the smaller rock on the inhibitor, being careful not to hit Allaya’s wrist in the process.
After my half-hour slot of bashing down on Allaya’s wrist and apologizing every time I did, even though I’d been so careful not to hurt her, I was glad to be able to leave someone else to it. Allaya, on the other hand, was showing nothing but patience even though the whole process must have been downright uncomfortable. I decided to take myself for a walk around the huge room. There was very little to see except the river itself, just stone everywhere. Gray stone floors, wall
s, and stairs. I walked the perimeter a couple of times, both for exercise and for an excuse to be have some time to myself. One of the girls, whose name I couldn’t remember had taken over after my slot with Allaya, and the rest of them sat discussing what they were going to do once we had Allaya’s magic at our disposal. Alma sat away from them, minding her own business and weaving away. I watched as she picked up her weaving and placed it on her head. With the tiny scraps of straw she’d managed to salvage from the floor, she’d made the most beautiful straw hat. It was exquisite, perfect in every way, and would rival anything I’d seen in the shop windows of Hearttown in Urbis. She caught me staring at her, and for the first time since meeting her, I thought I saw her smile. I smiled back at her, but her attention had already gone back to the floor where she picked up another couple of pieces of straw and began her task all over again.
I continued my trek around the room, using the time to think of my own ideas for an escape plan. The sound of the river, blocked out the sounds of the women speaking and the constant thwack, thwack, thwack of rock against metal. I dipped my hand into the water again, with thoughts of trying to summon a fish. My magic might have been tiny, but, perhaps, if I could learn to harness it, I could help Allaya in some way. The river was lower than it had been or was I imagining it? I’m sure I didn’t have to reach quite so far to hit water as the last time I tried fishing. It had looked normal just a couple of hours before when Allaya had swum in it.
I looked at the opposite edge and saw a telltale line where the wall was wet. The river was a good five or six inches lower. As I watched, the tide line increased which meant the water level was dropping. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand what was going on. Since I didn’t want to alarm the others, I just watched. Within the space of ten minutes, it dropped another foot in height.
Three of Clubs (War and Suits Book 2) Page 9