“Who was that?” Gandrett asked, not ready to let the opportunity pass. Yes, she had stayed behind, observing only and trying to make sense of what she had witnessed, but couldn’t find one logical reason why Joshua Brenheran would be here willingly.
“Just a messenger.” Armand’s eyes, as flat as his voice, stared ahead rather than at her.
“He didn’t seem like just a messenger.” No. He seemed like the man she had come here to retrieve.
She laid a hand on Armand’s arm, bringing herself to smile at him with what she hoped was understanding. “Don’t worry about me,” she hoped she cooed. “Go. We can continue our tour tomorrow.” He turned to look at her, some light returning to his eyes. “I’ll find my way back on my own. Just back there, right?” She pointed in the opposite direction of the one where Joshua Brenheran had left. “Your father is waiting.”
He bought it even if his gaze remained an enigma in hazel.
Gandrett waited until his footsteps disappeared then wheeled around, gathered her skirts, and ghosted toward the corner Joshua Brenheran had turned, hoping to find a trace of where he might have gone.
She found herself in an empty corridor similar to the one she came from, but there were more doors and some alcoves hosting suits of armor probably as old as the castle itself. Yet, no sign of her target.
Her training set in as she screened the doors, the slits underneath, for signs of movement. Nothing.
She inched forward along the hallway, glancing out the window to check whether someone might see her from the yard, then moved closer to the side with the alcoves between the doors, making sure she didn’t get caught.
Then she heard footsteps again, not too far ahead. So she sped up, her own silk slippers almost soundless on the polished stone, and found Joshua’s outline descending a staircase.
She followed, leaving enough space so she wouldn’t give herself away but stayed close enough so she wouldn’t lose him. Down, down. They had to be on the ground floor by now, still descending. Then, the footsteps stopped.
Gandrett halted, holding her breath as she listened intently.
Nothing.
As she turned the next corner, he wasn’t in the dim, windowless corridor, which didn’t seem to lead to any kind of rooms.
She turned, checking behind her. Had she missed an exit?
Her breath slammed from her lungs as a rough hand wound around her throat, pulling her backward into the stone wall behind her.
“Why are you following me?” His voice was like ice as he leaned over her, his breath like a cloud of frost.
Gandrett’s hands shot up to fight off his iron grasp, but he was strong—
“Again. Why are you following me?”
She fought for air, gasped for it, but his fingers were too tight. The dagger. She had to get to that dagger before he—
“I should just snap your neck,” he mused, not reminding her even a fraction of what she had heard of him. “You’re lucky the lord’s son takes interest in you, or I actually would.”
Now. She had to do it now. With all of her concentration, she let go of his wrist, for pulling on it wouldn’t free her, and plunged her elbow into where she estimated his stomach to be.
His hand dropped, and he cursed—long strings of violent curses, including the mention of Shaelak.
“The god of darkness is not interested in me,” she snarled at him as she wheeled around, finding him doubled over. She had been lucky and hit the spot right between his ribs that made one want to hurl.
With fast fingers, Gandrett pulled up her skirt and drew the dagger.
It weighed comfortingly in her hand, the twirled hilt providing solid grip as she grabbed Joshua’s shoulder with her free hand, one foot hoisting him against the wall with a quick push. No time for artful combat. This wasn’t training. This was life and death.
Joshua cursed again as he noticed the blade at his throat.
“It would be easier to free you if you worked with me,” she said as she studied his surprise face.
Surprised and furious. No, he wasn’t the least bit concerned about the blade. Just… annoyed, it seemed.
“Joshua Brenheran.” Gandrett set her foot back on the ground, her eyes scanning the young man towering over her for weapons. He bore none. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
He cocked his head, strain replacing his annoyance for a fraction of a second, but didn’t answer.
“Tell me if I’m wrong, and I’ll walk away,” Gandrett offered. But she knew by the sneer that graced his lips—Brax’s lips, Mckenzie’s lips—that she was right.
“Tell me,” his grin widened into a violent baring of his teeth. “How is my father doing? The old fool,” he hissed, hands balling into fists at his sides as he cursed yet again. This time there were syllables woven into the fluent string that she had never heard before—at least not when she’d been awake.
“Joshua?” As the first thrill of having found her target wore off, concern set in.
And fear.
Fear that finding Joshua Brenheran had been the easy part of her mission.
His hand knocked against the wall behind him. Knocked at first. Then, he slammed his knuckles into it until he was bleeding.
Gandrett leaped aside, her blade not moving an inch from his throat. What was he—?
She didn’t see it coming. With all her training, all her experience in bringing down warriors twice her size, she didn’t see it coming when his bloodied hand slammed into her nose, setting her face screaming with pain.
She heard herself gasp before the world went black.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Three days. He hadn’t heard from her in three days. Nehelon couldn’t even begin to describe the growing sense of unease that formed in his stomach.
Riho had checked in, reporting what he saw of Gandrett on his patrol-flights over the castle grounds every day. But it wasn’t nearly enough to allow Nehelon to sleep at night. Not nearly. Especially when the last time the crow had spotted her was two days ago.
He flicked a leaf from his arm and leaped off the tree, landing with nothing more than a soft thud. Beside him, Alvi threw back her head.
“I know.” He patted her neck, losing his hands under her thick black mane. “It’s been too long. We have been stagnant.”
The horse stomped one hoof and huffed at him, eyes inquiring.
“I don’t know when she’s coming back.” He forced himself to believe that it was a given that she would.
But deep in his chest, he felt that it might not be more than wishful thinking. That something was wrong.
Gandrett’s head throbbed as she woke. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had knocked her out that easily… Yes, the wolf. But this?
The image of emerald-eyed Joshua Brenheran didn’t leave her mind. He was there with every throb, his smirk, his flashing teeth. His broken knuckles—
It was the smell that hit her first. The sharp odor of grime mixed with the iron tang of blood.
She rolled over on the ground, which seemed to be solid rock covered with gravel, cold and wet.
Wet, right where she had laid flat on her stomach. She must have relieved herself while she had been out. She shuddered. That hadn’t happened since the Meister had let one of the older boys fight her till she was bloodied and broken and went out cold, and he had locked her in one of the underground chambers of the citadel in Everrun so she would learn what it was like to wake up disoriented and in pain. To learn the humiliation of no longer being in control of your own bodily functions. She had been barely thirteen then.
How she had hated him. How she had spent day and night after that to become the best. Just so she would never have to experience that again.
Yet, here she was, face caked in dried blood, gravel sticking to her cheek, and shivering from the cold that was seeping through the thin layers of chiffon.
She managed to crack her eyes open and found a narrow beam of light where she expected to be a doo
r. No movements outside. No sounds.
A push of her hands against the ground sent a gasp of pain from her lips, but she didn’t stop. Up… she needed to get to her feet… knees at least, so she would heave her body off the cold ground. And so she could assess her surroundings. Regroup.
It took a couple of attempts until she knelt, cowering over her knees, her back protesting as she tried to sit up. What had he done to her?
Judging by the soreness in her limbs and spine, he must have just dumped her into whatever dark room this was.
Gandrett clicked her tongue and listened to the sound as it bounced off the walls. Close walls. A small space. Stone walls, probably, just as the rest of the castle.
For a long time—Gandrett lost track of time as she sucked in sharp breaths between her teeth, fighting the cold and pain—she just knelt there, arms wrapped around her chest, hands tucked under her arms, and waited for her strength to return. Then, slowly, she straightened, and with time, her eyes adjusted to the dark enough to see the outline of the narrow door under which flickering light danced. Firelight, no daylight.
Her stomach churned, knees wobbling as she pushed herself upright, hands searching the dark for the closest wall to lean on.
She found it just a step forward. Rough stone, moist and covered in something soft and spongy. Some type of moss perhaps?
The touch of the cool, water-binding layer on the wall had her noticing her mouth was dry as sandpaper. She swallowed once. Twice. Until the movement of her lips let her taste blood.
She had to get water and, quickly, clean her wounds before they got infected, drink something so she would have the strength to fight her way out the next time the door opened—if it ever opened again.
Gandrett’s shivering got worse at the thought Joshua Brenheran might have put her here, not to keep her prisoner but to let her rot.
A surge of panic ran through her, causing her to stumble toward the door. Her shoulder stung with pain at the impact, and her shaky hands groped their way along the sides, looking for a doorknob, a keyhole, anything that would help her determine what kind of cell this was.
Calm down—that was what she needed to do. Breathe. She had trained for situations like this. And even if deep down she had always known someone would come for her if she didn’t manage on her own, she had never let herself grow lazy. She had always managed. Always found a way out. She would find a way out of this, too.
Facts. She needed to collect facts. Anything that gave information about where in the castle she may be.
She slid her hands further along the walls, marking the size of the cell—not dramatically small but just big enough that she could lay sprawled on the floor. Her assessment had given no indication of windows. She had to be underground. And they had been in the north tower when Joshua had surprised her and probably broken her nose—she reached up and gingerly lay her fingers on its bridge. A firework of white-hot stars erupted before her eyes at the painful contact. But it cleared her senses, her mind.
With two strides, now knowing the dimensions of the cell, she crossed the room back to the door and pushed. It didn’t move.
She searched the edges for hinges and almost yelped in relief as her fingers bumped into metal cylinders on which’s top she could feel the circular head of a bolt. It wasn’t fortified. Even if the door was locked and showed no sign of door handles on the inside, it might be possible to unhinge it.
Even if it was probably solid steel, the weight of a small horse.
All she needed was something to shove under it and—
She darted to the ground, testing the width of the door by shoving her fingers into the opening beneath it. Just big enough to get half her palm in. But she loosed a sigh of relief as her fingers curled around the bottom. Two inches of solid steel separated her from the drafty, cool air on the other side. A weight she could never lift on her own, but with the right tools—
Gandrett was on her hands and knees, gritting her teeth as the gravel dug into her kneecaps through the thin fabric. If she had her dagger—Nehelon’s dagger—she could use it to try to pry the door open somehow. Force the blade into the groove at the side where the lock had to be.
Her mind kept swapping options for alternatives as she ran her palms over the ground and found some bigger stones, a small log of wood, and collected them in her lap, wrapping part of her skirts around them so she wouldn’t lose them again.
Scanning the ground took her a solid minute even with aching limbs. But at least the activity kept the shivering at bay despite her dry throat paying the price for it.
She was panting by the time she had made her way to the second wall. Nothing. There was nothing of use in the small space.
No. It wasn’t time to give up just yet. She had two more walls to go.
Frantically, her fingers searched. There had to be something. Anything.
But there wasn’t. So she unwrapped the stones and wood and placed them by the door.
There was one final option. This room consisted of more than walls and a floor.
Holding her breath, Gandrett lifted her arms above her head and braced herself for the disappointment.
It didn’t come.
The ceiling was low enough for her to feel spider webs in the corner where she started. So she gritted her teeth and jumped, every fiber in her body aching as she coiled, then pushed. But with her hands, she hit solid rock.
Solid rock and metal. Something clinked as she landed on the floor.
She jumped again. This time a little bit further ahead. The chain clinked again. It had to be a chain.
The next time Gandrett jumped, she hooked herself into the metal and prayed to Vala this was her way out.
The chain came crashing down with an earsplitting bang with Gandrett rolling to the side just in time to dodge the avalanche of debris it brought raining down.
She kept her hands over her head, cowering in the corner by the door until the gravel stopped falling. Then, when silence fell once more, she leaned against the mossy wall and reached for her skirt where she ripped off a piece of fabric to shield her mouth and nose from the dust.
But she couldn’t sit still for even one moment. There was a chain somewhere in the darkness before her. The fact that solid iron had ripped out of its anchor in the ceiling told tales of how old this cell had to be. How weak the chain might even be.
Not only the chain, if she was lucky.
So she bound the piece of chiffon at the back of her head to keep it from slipping then ripped off more strips, which she wrapped around her hands so her palms wouldn’t slice open on the rocks before her.
She had just started to crawl forward when she noticed that the beam of light had disappeared in the settling dust. Not the dust. It was blocked by the gravel that she had put in motion.
So she started digging, slowly shoving rocks aside until she noticed rays of light in the haze, and it was pulling out into the draft.
Good. This way she would still get enough fresh air.
But her body already protested with every scraping of gravel, every lifting of her arms as she reached into the dirt again. Until—
There, under her fingers, the cold, rough surface of rusty iron.
Gandrett closed her fingers around it and pulled. Pulled even if her muscles were screaming.
The chain moved an inch then another. And slowly, so slowly, Gandrett gathered the entire length of it before her knees. What she would have given to be able to see. But this way, she had to measure the chain by the number of arm lengths she had hauled toward her.
Still, Gandrett didn’t allow herself a moment of rest. There were only two outcomes to this. In the better case, she would use the chain to throttle Joshua if he ever came back for her, and in the other, the iron between her fingers had to pull that door out. Either way, there was a chance it wouldn’t work and she would end up in Vala’s eternal gardens. But she had to try.
Even if the man she was supposed to rescue was the one who had p
ut her in here. She had to try, for her own promise, for her family.
With shaky hands—no longer from cold but from exhaustion—Gandrett braced herself on the wall beside her, one end of the chain in her hands, and pushed herself up.
If the anchor of the chain had broken, there was a good chance the iron door wasn’t the most stable either. But she would go for something smaller, more delicate first.
She fingered the chain links, measuring their diameter with her index finger before she ran her hand over the hinges of the door.
Vala be thanked, they were close enough in size that it was worth a try. So Gandrett looped the chain, one chain link over the top hinge, a second one over the bottom hinge, flexed the chain and shouldered it before she leaned against the wall, bracing herself, and grasped the chain tightly. She bit back a scream as she pulled sideways with all the force she could muster.
The screech of metal on metal told her that the links were grinding against the hinges, straining under the pressure as much as she did.
But they held firm.
And her strength was coming to an end.
In the soft afternoon light, Hamyn Denderlain, lounging in his throne, looked almost like the father Armand remembered from the years of his childhood. Almost. Hadn’t it been for the sour face.
“Father.” It was all he needed to announce his presence. The guards inclined their heads as he walked up to the dais, his father’s milky eyes shifting toward him.
“Ride out immediately,” his father commanded. “There are more villages revolting against our methods.”
Armand kept his face blank except for that smile he had perfected. Not the smile he used to give his mother. The smile he gave Deelah. The smile he even sometimes found himself giving Gandrett Starhaeven.
This was the second time his father summoned him in two days. The first time, the Brenheran heir had played the messenger. Strange—so strange to have him sneaking around the castle. But there was really nothing anyone could do about it. Not as long as both his father and aunt Linniue agreed he was to stay.
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