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Weird, but okay.
I have no idea why Wyatt would be in the dungeons, but I suppose I’m about to find out. It’s strange that the castle seems decidedly empty today. Where are all of the guards? I was tucked away in the library for a little while, but only a little while. I wasn’t really gone all that long. Certainly not long enough that my entire team of employees would find it okay to simply vanish.
The dungeons are located beneath the main castle. It’s the castle where I live and where I run the kingdom. To be fair, it’s quite a large place. It takes me nearly ten minutes to reach the entrance to the dungeons, and I’m a little surprised to find that the door to the staircase leading down is ajar.
How unusual.
The dungeons, to my knowledge, haven’t been used in years. Not since my father was king. Once I took over his duties, Cheryl and I felt that imprisoning citizens gave a bad impression of what a noble king should be like, so we all but stopped. This doesn’t mean we don’t discipline citizens for infractions, but it’s so rare that a citizen does anything out of line that the idea of imprisoning any of them feels wrong.
Only, as I make my way down the winding staircase, I’m surprised to hear...noise.
A lot of noise.
It seems as though the dungeons are not nearly as empty as I was led to believe, and shock hits me to my core when I reach the bottom of the stairs and the sounds become even louder. At the bottom of the stairs is a gated doorway. It’s unguarded and, like the other door, is ajar. This is good because I don’t have keys. No one has keys. At least, until just now, I didn’t think anyone did.
Because the dungeons are supposed to be empty.
Why would anyone carry keys to a place where they aren’t even supposed to go?
I push the door open and start walking down the row of cells. I peer into the first window of the first cell. What the fuck? It’s Billy Brandy, the baker. I reach for the hooped door handle and tug, but it doesn’t open.
Billy stands up and comes to the door. His face is bruised, as though he’s been beaten. I thought he left town. Wyatt told me he’d gotten married and left to live in Dark Town with his new bride. Why is he here?
“What are you doing in there?” I ask, shouting, but Billy looks confused.
“King, you had me sent here,” he says.
“No,” I shake my head, still shocked to see him. I tug on the door again. “I would never have you imprisoned, my friend. I thought you left town.” A shout distracts me and I turn to the cell opposite Billy’s. I move to it and inside, I see the Dark Wizard.
What the actual fuck?
Why are my citizens locked in cages?
Does Wyatt know about this?
Where the fuck is he?
I turn to go back upstairs. I need to get the keys to the dungeon so I can let them free. I can let them all free. Surely there must be some sort of explanation for all of this, but when I reach the staircase, I only make it halfway up before Wyatt appears. He’s twirling a ring of keys and he’s got a smug look on his face.
And then it hits me.
I’m a fucking idiot.
“What have you done, Wyatt?” I ask.
“Something you should have done a long time ago, your highness.”
He pushes me, catching me off guard. My reflexes are good enough that I don’t stumble down the staircase, but with each step forward that Wyatt takes, I find myself moving backwards, back toward the dungeon.
“You did this?” I ask. I still can’t wrap my head around it.
Wyatt only laughs.
“Of course, I did it. What? Didn’t think little old Wyatt had it in him? Didn’t think that weak, weird, wacky Wyatt could do anything like this?” He shakes his head. “You should have known when your son mysteriously died that the kingdom didn’t want you. You should have realized it when Cheryl ‘killed herself,’” he says, shaking his head.
Realization dawns.
It was him.
