He hovers like a shadow that’s as familiar as my own.
“Only a few days, I think. Not too long. It didn’t have to be to nearly break me.” The door to what was my cell looms in my periphery. Haunting me.
“I should’ve gotten you out sooner,” he murmurs.
“Yes. Back then. But what’s done is done.” I glance at him. Kaelis doesn’t flinch or look away. “At least you were swift this time.”
We plunge into the desolate darkness. The second level is laid out exactly like the first, but there are no noises here. If those within can hear our footsteps, they are too broken to react.
On the switchback of the final staircase I imagine we’re somewhere below the riverbed. No one says anything as we reach the final hall. Here, there is nothing more than stale air and rough stone stained with memories best forgotten.
Despite what Ravin said, and Kaelis’s research supporting it, my chest is so tight I can barely breathe: Do I dare believe my sister is here? I can still feel the bones that I thought were hers in my arms.
We come to the final doorway. Cell five.
I pass the lantern to Kaelis and search the key ring I filched off Glavstone’s desk to find the one that unlocks the door. It takes my trembling hands three tries to find the right key. I move agonizingly slowly. But none of them dare try to do it for me.
The door opens with a sharp scream of old hinges. Beyond it, a narrow, short passage ends in another locked door—to prevent runaways, I’d suppose. The cells on the first level of the dungeons had solid doors, but nothing like this.
A lump catches in my throat, one I can’t force down no matter how hard I swallow. Hands trembling, I fumble with the keys again, their noise jarring against the suffocating silence. I yank open the second door, and a rush of putrid air barrels into me. I gag, the stench of death and decay thick on my tongue. For a heart-stopping moment, I worry she died mere days before I could get to her.
Not when I was so close…
I step inside, unable to bear the mystery any longer and yet terrified of what I might find. The darkness is so absolute, it is an abyss that swallows the dim flicker of the lantern. Another step. The ghostly shifting shapes coalesce into a figure in the very back, huddled in a corner.
Is she moving? Is she even breathing?
Stumbling, I make my way to her, fighting against the swamp of dread and guilt that mires me. I want to run, but I am too bogged down with horror and fear.
Arina, forgive me for all my weaknesses. For taking so long. Forgive me. Forgive me…
The walls are streaked with filth and the desperate etchings of fingertips raked across stone until the prisoner’s nails surely gave out. The floor is stained with a sickly, mottled brown from horrors more numerous and vile than my brain can conjure.
I’m only a few steps away when I see the faintest tremble to her shoulders. She’s alive.
I choke down a sob as a thousand buried emotions resurrect themselves at the same time.
She’s hunched, curled in on herself, arms folded tightly around her knees as if trying to shield what little remains of her body. Her arms are so thin I could nearly wrap my thumb and middle finger around them. On papery white skin from shaved scalp to curled toes is a tapestry of bruises and scars and still-weeping wounds. I’m almost afraid that if we even try to move her, she’ll crumble to dust in our hands.
But she is alive.
Every labored breath protrudes her ribs, visible through the holes in her rags.How is she even still breathing?I ask myself.
But that’s my little sister, a rebel to the last. Every breath she takes is defiant.
She mutters over and over, her words indistinguishable. Like a long-unanswered prayer for salvation from this place. I kneel next to her. She doesn’t move.
“Arina?” I whisper.
She flinches but doesn’t turn.
My hand lands on her shoulder. “Arina. It’s me.”
With agonizing slowness, she lifts her head. I know that profile instantly, even hollowed as it is.
It’sher.
Tears stream down my face. Her eyes are distant and unfocused. But they’rehers.The lantern light picks up the gold in them, and they seem to glow an almost catlike yellow.
