Mia nodded and returned her attention to the kettle, pouring a hot drink for herself and Demetri.
“Unless…” Demetri started, spinning in his chair.
“Unless what?” Mia raised an eyebrow.
Demetri’s face became thoughtful. “Unless you want to make one last attempt at hacking into the system? I’ve got an idea.”
A small part of Chloe had always wondered what prison life would be like. That small rebellious part of her that kept her just out of the clutches of the Lagarde family’s inner circle.
Sure, she had made relatively good choices—drinking too much and wasting money aside—but there had always been a sort of romantic quality to the idea of being a felon. She had watched TV shows and films and had always figured she’d be able to survive in prison. It never looked that hard.
But after a week of being locked in a cell with little to do other than her daily walks around the mess hall and the “leisure” room, Chloe found that the romantic quality had started to wear off.
The only good thing to come of her sentencing was that she was now allowed visitors. Every day at the same time, Gideon came to see her. Thanks to the prison’s regulations, only one visitor at a time was allowed.
“Apparently they once let in three visitors to see this really big badass warrior, and the visitors banded together to fight off the guards and break him out,” Gideon said, a faint note of admiration in his voice.
Chloe laughed. “Where did you hear that? Four people couldn’t take on all the guards in this place.” She tried to imagine it—how powerful those people must have been.
“It’s just what I was told,” Gideon replied.
“By who?”
“Francesca,” Gideon said as if it were the most matter-of-fact thing in the world. When he saw Chloe’s blank expression, he added, “Oh, that’s right. I forget you’ve been in here nearly the whole time we’ve been in Nauriel. Francesca is the minotaur who runs Fables and Foibles, the apothecary shop.”
“Apothecary shop.” Chloe wracked her brain. “Isn’t that the place you ran out of because Tag stole some stuff?”
“Lizard eyes, right.” Gideon laughed. “It was. I felt guilty for the trouble he caused, and was in need of some ingredients to try out some new potions. I managed to calm Francesca and her brother down, and we quickly got to chatting. Now I see them every day, and I help out around the shop and complete small tasks to gain experience and learn new recipes.”
Chloe smiled, and shook her head in disbelief. “Look at you. First time I met you, you couldn’t even combine ingredients in a pot without setting a damn house on fire. Now you’re learning the trade from a minotaur.”
Gideon chuckled. “It certainly helps when you specialize.” He winked, grinning sheepishly at Chloe.
“You reached level 10? When?”
“Yesterday,” Gideon replied. “After successfully brewing a sleep potion and helping get Francesca’s daughter down to rest—she’s teething and, if you’ve never heard a minotaur teethe, it’s deafening. Anyway, I slammed my focus into the Mage class, and here I am. Increases to etheric potential and intelligence, and a host of new spells and bonuses to help my magic.”
Chloe told Gideon how proud she was of his progress. How much she wished she could be out there with them having fun in the streets.
Gideon nodded, but there was clearly something going on in his head that he wasn’t quite prepared to share. Chloe probed, but to no avail, and soon the visiting hours were over. Gideon asked the guard if he could use the facilities before he left, and was ushered out a side door while Chloe was taken back to her cell.
It was around evening when Chloe sensed that something was wrong in the prison.
She rose from her bed, heeding the familiar call to dinner that she had become accustomed to. At first, she contemplated ignoring the call, not having much appetite for more gray slop, but when Jesepiah appeared at her bars, she turned to face her, watching all the other inmates file on by.
“Psst. Come on. You don’t want to miss...dinner.” Jesepiah winked, a small white leaf floating out of her hand and landing on the floor in Chloe’s cell.
Chloe waited for the inmates to pass, and Jesepiah went with them. She picked the note up and read its contents:
Don’t eat the food.
Now eat me.
Chloe looked up and down the corridor, her heart jumping as she heard the last of the guards approaching, checking that all the cells were empty.
She shoved the paper in her mouth and darted toward the mess hall at double speed.
The line for the food was nearly done when she joined it, grabbing a bowl and letting the chefs slap the gruel into it. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, she took her usual seat next to Jesepiah—having forgiven her for her misgivings and thanking her for the shirt—and played with the gruel, stirring and letting the thick cement-like paste thwop back into the bowl.
All around her, the inmates were being rowdy. Their mouths were full of gruel as they laughed, shouted, and joked, sending sprays of the stuff flying. Even the guards were at a separate table, eating, although their share of food looked a million times more appetizing than the crap they gave the inmates.
After a short amount of time during which nothing happened and Chloe began to grow suspicious of Jesepiah, Jesepiah stared at the wall with a grin on her face, her own gruel untouched.
“And three…two…one…”
It happened in an instant. The inmate in front of Chloe hiccupped, then flopped over. Her head banged into the bowl, sending gruel everywhere as she began to snore loudly.
Another inmate on the table behind them dropped her head, then another, then another. One of the guards stood up in alarm, then his legs turned to jelly and he keeled over and fell asleep on the floor.
Like strange dominoes, inmates continued to fall over. Thud, thud, thud. Eventually, all were snoozing except one or two particularly skinny inmates who hadn’t touched their slop and looked as though they were on a hunger strike.
“Wow, I always knew the quality of the food would kill someone eventually, but everyone at once?” Chloe smirked.
“Nice one. Now, Chloe. Move,” Jesepiah urged, rising to her feet.
Chloe smiled as she was pushed forward, the smile slipping when she saw that several guards were still standing in the entrance.
“Your plan for those?”
“They’re with us,” Jesepiah said smugly.
The guards remained as still as statues, only their eyes following them as they rushed through the corridor.
“How did you…”
“Now’s not the time for questions. Keep moving.”
They made it to the stairs, but before they ran down, Jesepiah pulled out a large piece of material, so thin that Chloe couldn’t understand how it held together. Jesepiah threw it over them both, adding, “Make sure this is covering you. If any part of your skin is showing, you’re screwed. We’ll make for level 1, follow the corridor, and turn right at the fork. We’ll avoid the guards and make a dash for the exit. Got it?”
Chloe steeled herself. “I think so.”
“Don’t think. Do,” Jesepiah said, sweeping her away and down the stairs.
As they neared the bottom of the stairs, they cautiously stepped out into the corridor. Triggering her Sneak ability, Chloe moved with barely a whisper of noise, eyebrows rising in alarm when she noted that she wasn’t casting a shadow on the floor.
They turned right at the fork without issue, then passed through a door and emerged into a large lobby area—the place Chloe recognized as the front part of the building she had been dragged into almost two weeks ago, now.
Guards lined the walls, spears held firmly in their hands. A few civilians approached a desk at which a stern-looking woman sat on a tall chair, piles of paper around her. One woman cried loudly when the gatekeeper woman refused to allow her entry to visit her husband.
“But it’s been three weeks!” she pleaded.
Jesepiah started walking forward, pulling Chloe with her. Sweat peppered her brow. If she had received an additional sentence for visiting the secret dungeon, what would she receive for trying to walk out the front door?
Not only that, but Jesepiah was strolling forward as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her head held high, even if no one was able to see them.
A memory sparked in Chloe’s head, one of her early sessions with the doc. It was a fragment of knowledge he had passed on, but it had never soaked into her mind until now.
“The trick in life is to act confident. Not everyone in the world knows who you are. If you want to own the room, pretend you’re owning the room. If you want to break into the staff room of Starbucks, enter as though you belong there. People only see what they choose to see.”
Was that what was happening now? A dollop of confidence, and the guards were ignoring the thinly veiled women? Jesepiah picked up her pace as she headed for the front door.
They were a few meters away when Jesepiah whispered, “Now!”
In a sudden moment of madness, Chloe reached forward and pulled down the closest guard’s trousers. Jesepiah pulled her away as a laugh came out of her mouth.
The guard flushed, then bent and pulled his trousers back up as those around him sniggered and looked around for the culprit.
Several guards turned toward the sound of footsteps in the lobby, which then worked their way out of the building and down the front steps. A few of them left their posts to scan for the source of the noise, but they saw nothing.
After a moment or two, they returned to their posts, still laughing at the guard who had lost his trousers for a moment. None knew they had allowed two of their prisoners to escape.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Jesepiah dragged Chloe through the back streets of Nauriel, never once pausing as she doggedly trudged on.
Chloe spared glances at the groups of unsavory characters they passed, all seemingly oblivious to their presence as they wove between them, continuing to run toward their destination.
The moon shone brightly overhead. With every step, Chloe learned to trust Jesepiah, taking deep lungfuls of clean air and appreciating the wind on her face. It had only been two weeks, and she knew that technically the wind wasn’t real, but oh, how she had missed it.
Finally, Jesepiah turned them both down a narrow alley, then knocked three times on a wooden door and made a strange sound in the back of her throat that reminded Chloe of the birds that used to roost on the guardrails of her apartment’s balcony.
The door creaked open and a single eye peered out. With a confirming nod, the door opened wider and they entered.
They now stood in a small room with a fire burning warmly in a hearth. Chloe looked into the familiar face of the elf and cried, “LeavenHawk! I genuinely thought I’d never see you again.”
“That goes for me too, though it seems you have the advantage. I still can’t see you.” The elf smiled.
Chloe raised an eyebrow as Jesepiah snatched the material off their heads.
“There. That’s better,” LeavenHawk said.
Chloe couldn’t understand what was going on. She turned to Jesepiah, who began to chuckle.
“Here,” Jesepiah said, throwing the material over herself again. “Now you see me…”
Chloe gasped. The minute the material covered her, Jesepiah vanished from sight. She could see straight through it to the door through which they had entered the room. Chloe reached out, expecting to grasp only air, but her hand found something soft and squishy.
“Are you quite done feeling me up?” Jesepiah laughed, removing the material and re-appearing in the same spot.
“What is this magic?” Chloe said in awe, running the material through her fingers. It felt cool, as though she were running her hands through a mix of water, soap, and bubbles. “How is this possible?”
Chloe looked up, slightly annoyed at their smiling faces as her brain struggled to think of the answers to the thousands of questions she now had.
“Wait, what the hell is going on? How did you...with the guards. And… What?”
“One question at a time,” LeavenHawk said. “This is a fun story to tell. I want to make sure I don’t leave any of it out.”
And so they took a seat in the room, the fire crackling loudly as the elf explained everything. How her spies had been present at the auction and had watched Chloe carefully as she disappeared into the back room with Tohken. Although they had panicked when she had been taken alone, they had breathed sighs of relief when they saw the guards rushing to the back room and returning with Chloe between them.
“It was at that moment we realized we had underestimated Tohken. His spies truly trump ours. I’m still not convinced he doesn’t have a mole somewhere in our organization. Anyway, from that moment, we knew we needed to get you back. You were being made to suffer for a deed we sent you forth to perform, and that wasn’t fair.”
“Hey, I volunteered,” Chloe said. “It’s not like you bound and gagged and forced me.”
“Kinky,” Jesepiah added.
“Still,” LeavenHawk continued, as if not hearing Jesepiah’s comment. “You have shown honor and valor. That’s something that cannot be brushed off or ignored.”
LeavenHawk told Chloe how the Peregrin’s Creed had infiltrated the entire city of Nauriel. Wherever possible, they planted their roots and gained information, even having several of their members within the guard force that ran the Nauriel prison.
Chloe turned, mouth agape, to Jesepiah. “You? You’re part of the Creed?”
“Oh, heavens, no.” Jesepiah laughed, maybe a bit too hard for LeavenHawk’s liking. When she caught the elf’s eye, she coughed and composed herself. “No. I told you from the start that I’m a smuggler of rare potions and magical items. Every part of that was true. No matter where I am, I’m able to source the illegal and smuggle whatever’s needed to get the job done.”
“The invisibility cloak,” Chloe said matter-of-factly.
Jesepiah nodded. “Among other things. And it’s called the ‘Shroud of No-see.’ A priceless artifact, that, and one I’m hoping to sell for a friggin’ high price once I bust my ass out of this city and make for the next.”
“The Shroud of... Are you kidding?” Chloe chuckled. “It’s an invisibility cloak. Leave it at that.”
LeavenHawk continued the story before Jesepiah could retort.
She told Chloe that the guards within the prison reported back to her every day, and they had gotten worried when she’d disappeared into the hidden dungeon. Upon her return, they knew the sentence was going to become more severe, so they used their spies to get Jesepiah involved (after seeing that Jesepiah wanted to help Chloe), and hatched a plan to break her free.
“So your spies poisoned the guards and the other inmates?”
LeavenHawk weighed Chloe’s words. “Erm, poison is a bit of a strong word. We simply put them to sleep. Mixed a vat of sleeping potion and sent them all off to the Land of Nod.”
“Sleeping potion?” Chloe mused, wondering why that rang a bell for her. She suddenly remembered her visit from—
“Gideon!” she exclaimed.
“Yes?” Gideon’s voice came from a door on the other side of the room.
Chloe’s face lit up and she rushed to throw her arms around her friend’s neck. “You sneaky SOB,” she said, planting a wet kiss on his cheek.
Gideon pulled away, wiping the kiss off his cheek in disgust. “You’re welcome.”
“Gideon was our last ace in the hole,” the elf said, a look of admiration on her face. “He’s got a trustworthy face, don’t you think? The guards had no idea that when he was using their facilities, he was actually hiding the potion that would put them all to s
leep.
“All it took then was for one of my men to find the potion, distract a cook, and stir the potion into the pot. Boom. Job done.”
Chloe looked at LeavenHawk strangely. An elf saying “boom?” She chose to let it go.
“It’s so good to see you,” Chloe said. “Well, as a free woman, anyway. I can’t thank you all enough for your help. I was beginning to go stir-crazy in there.”
“How does that differ from your normal levels of crazy?” Gideon teased. “Nice greaves, by the way.” He winked.
Chloe punched him in the arm, noticing that he seemed to have more of something about him. He held himself taller. He seemed less gangly. Maybe it was just a newfound sense of confidence from choosing a class, but it was great to see.
“Who said that you were a free woman?” LeavenHawk continued. “You’re not out of the woods yet. The guards will flock to the street the minute they notice you’re both gone. We have to get you out of here, and fast. Is there anywhere where you can go that’s safe?”
Chloe thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Another city. Any city. We’ve got a quest to complete.”
“What about Tohken?” Gideon asked. “I thought the whole point of coming here was to take him down?”
A wave of guilt came over Chloe. He was right. That was what she had told them all, and that was the reason they were traveling together—to get the experience for the group. Ben and Tag had followed her purely on the promise of revenge.
Meanwhile, Chloe had focused all of her attention on acquiring the greaves she now wore.
Could she really just run to her next destination without giving the others the satisfaction they deserved?
“You have to leave. You have no choice,” LeavenHawk stated. “My Creed can only do so much to cover your asses before they find you. Get out of the city. Find somewhere safe. That is your new quest.”
Chloe met Gideon’s eyes, wanting to say a thousand things but knowing that now was not the time.
“Fine,” the mage said. “Let’s grab Tag and Ben and get the hell out of here.”
Collecting The Goddess (Chronicles Of KieraFreya Book 1) Page 39