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Chapter 1
Snow
I never slept wellin this tiny cell. The stone floor was cold, damp, and hard as hell, chilling me to the bone. Moonlight filtered through the small, barred window near the ceiling. Cockroaches crept along the walls, and rats scurried along the floor. I rolled onto my side, curling in a ball to preserve what little heat remained in my body.
I clenched my hands, my nails digging into my palms, nearly drawing blood. The bitch had won. For now, at least. She’d had me imprisoned for my father’s murder, planting the poison in my memento box, buried among the collection of my mother’s jewels that I treasured. Here I resided, in this hellhole filled with decay and filth, in the cells beneath my father’s manor.
Of course, mysupposedtreachery had been uncovered by one of my stepmother’s servants and brought to her at once. Shock had ruptured our once-cozy estate into opposing factions. Those who did not believe I’d harm my father, and like I did, targeted my stepmother with the blame…and those who turned eyes filled with suspicion toward me. A few people from that latter group, I’d known all my life. I didn’t know how, but my wicked stepmother had a powerful way of fooling them…almost as if she’d put a spell on them.
Servants in my father’s household, the workers in the orchards, and even the townsfolk in the city had turned against me, believing that evil woman’s lies. How could they be fooled by such filth? She told everyone I had wanted my father’s lands and had hoped to assume his title of ward of Tritonia, and in my greed, I had paid one of the bakers to spike my father’s meals and wine with arsenic. Of course, the baker had been murdered to prevent him from revealing the true evil. Even those who remained loyal to me were too frightened to fight the evil witch and obeyed her.Cowards.
Something nibbled at my ear. Little claws pinched my skin as something crawled along me. Yelping, I sat up and brushed it away, dusting my head, my neck, my shoulders, still feeling its filthy little feet all over me. No matter how many times I came into contact with a rat, I never got used to it. Nor would I ever.
Kelvin, the old man in the cell next to mine, cackled away. I didn’t yell at him to shut up. Five moon cycles ago, he’d gone mad, after my evil stepmother had him tortured and thrown into the dungeon. His crime? He’d dared to accuse her of trying to kill her husband. At the time, my poor, trusting, doting father had refused to believe Kelvin. The torment of it all—the guilt, the doubt, the suffering—it had all been too much for poor Kelvin. His poor mind had split into hundreds of pieces, leaving no trace of the man he used to be.
I glanced over at the cell door, hoping that deliverance came for me today. A bowl rested at the foot of the door. Half of the slop had spilled over the edge. Clearly, the witch did not possess an ounce of generosity, could not even provide a decent meal. Uninterested in the food, I returned to my thoughts.
My chest tightened with a mixture of pain and longing. I missed my papa with all my heart. He hadn’t been gone a full year yet. My whole world had crumbled the day he’d passed. I still remembered it vividly. I’d stayed by his side every waking moment, spent the hours talking to him or reading to him from one of the many books that filled his vast library. Sometimes, I wrote poems for him, earning his pained but appreciative smiles. If he felt up to discussing business matters, I would deliver news of his apple orchards or tell him about my latest meeting with the sea king.
All the while, my evil witch of a stepmother visited once a day, usually at night, to give my father an obligatory kiss on the forehead. For a brief moment, she would pretend she cared by asking him how his health was.
My father’s face had lit up whenever she’d visited. He’d truly adored her, had been captivated by her, even though his affections were not returned. The thought made my stomach roil.
While I’d cared for my father during his failing health—and had handled his duties to the sea king, his orchards, and his estate—my stepmother had planned her wicked plan, plotting my father’s and my demise. She’d blackmailed the servants into putting poison into their lord’s food and had paid off those traitors who’d planted the evidence against me. Then she’d used my family’s fortune to buy up new lands and farms, expanding her territory beyond Tritonia and into Wildfire.
The noose around my throat tightened. How could she do this to her husband and stepchild? In her wedding vows, she’d promised to take care of us. To cherish, love, and honor us. Clearly, those words had meant nothing to her. All she had ever wanted was my father’s lands, title, and wealth. With me out of the picture, she’d gotten what she’d aimed for. Grief raked through me, like the poison that had coursed through my father’s veins.
My father and the witch had met in a tavern along the coast of Tritonia. After a few months of courtship, he had brought her home to meet me. Her dark eyes had sparkled like jewels as she’d stood on the balcony outside the dining room and gazed out over his estate. The strange smile on her face had reminded me of someone happy to be reunited with something she’d lost.
Oh, how she’d feigned affection for me. She’d brought me wondrous gifts—silk dresses, dolls, bows, shoes, and leather-bound books to write my poetry in. Every gift, I had treasured. We’d taken breakfast together every morning and long horse rides in the forest for picnics and to explore my father’s estate and the lands beyond it. She took me on trips across Haven to the Darkwoods to show me the ancient ruins of one of the former kingdoms…had encouraged my passion for history and bygone civilizations. For hours, we’d sewn by the hearth in my father’s library, where she’d recount details about her family across the sea, her childhood, and her longing for a family of her own. Once my father had married her, she’d turned into a different person, practically overnight, and only then had I realized it had all been an act, designed to deceive my father and me.
After that, day by day, I’d seen less of my father. She’d kept him busy, urging him to buy more lands, to expand his business ventures. He’d gone off to do her bidding, leaving me alone with my cold stepmother. Her tone had adopted an impatient ring to it, and often, she’d snapped at me for the littlest of things, like humming or chewing too loudly. Each time she’d acknowledged me, it had been with lips curled into a snarl…unless, of course, someone else had been present, in which case, the compliments had flown thick and fast, along with pats on the hand and even the occasional hug, treating me as if we were bosom friends. I shivered now, as I recalled her touch. Oh, how I loathed her.
I clutched a clump of straw in my hand. This was the pitiful bed I had been blessed with. A token of my stepmother’s kindness, the guards had told me. I should thank her for not having to lie on the stones, they’d said. But I preferred the cold, hard surface to the scratchy straw.
Some of the servants had remained loyal for the first few moon cycles, bringing me extra food rations, blankets, a rock, and books. But then the dungeon master had discovered the items. Contraband, he’d called it, and he took everything away.
Everything, that was, except for the rock, which I had hidden in a crack in the floor. For days, I’d chipped away at the stone, digging deep enough for me to hide the stone beneath the straw. I retrieved it from its hiding place and admired its jagged edges. One of my father’s servants, Rumi, had managed to smuggle it in to me before the witch had sent her away. “You can use this,” Rumi had said when she’d handed me the rock, “to dig your way out of here.”
Sneaking me out of there was too risky; there were guards posted at the dungeon’s entrance aboveground. The men were paid shills from out of town and had no loyalty to me, the rightful ward of Tritonia, or to the sea king. Now, the only way I’d get out of that cell was if I tunneled out or if someone came to rescue me.
Three times I’d tried to send word to the sea king through my channel of loyal friends, hoping to get help. Each time, my stepmother had caught wind and had sent out her hunters, who’d tracked down and murdered the messenger before he could fulfill his task. I have no idea how the bitch found out—we were always very careful—but my guess is that she used some sort of dark magic. I knew she practiced the dark arts; I’d caught her burning candles and pouring blood into a goblet and drinking it once. No doubt, her dabbling in black magic had allowed her to bewitch my father. I wondered if it also controlled his servants and the traitor who’d poisoned him.
May his sould rest in peace, I thought. At least now, he was free from her torment.
Since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to continue my digging, pulling away the soiling pan that covered the hole. Down in my tunnel, I found the bag I’d stashed, which contained a candleholder, matches, and a candle. The tunnel was just wide enough for me to crawl along and turn around in to return to my cell.
During the first moon cycle of my imprisonment, I’d gotten through the stone in the floor. Nine moon cycles later, I estimated the tunnel probably extended halfway to the edge of the dungeons, on the edge of a cliff leading down into the salt mines. Judging by my progress so far, it would take me another nine moon cycles to be free of this hellhole.
Memories sat like a pile of stones in my stomach. The image of my dying father flashed in my mind. The horrid, gray pallor. The sagging skin. Patches of hair covering his otherwise bald scalp. Anger heated the blood flowing through my veins. What that witch had done to him!
That thought, coupled with the memory of how he’d looked the day he’d died, combined to inspire me to dig faster, to spend more time at the task each day. I had no idea if my efforts to escape the cell were ever going to succeed. The process was slow and tiresome. But I had to hold on to my hope. That, and the idea of avenging my father’s death, were the only things keeping me alive.
The guards never noticed the softca-chunkca-chunkcaused by me chipping away at my tunnel. They either fell asleep on their shifts, played cards, swore, drank wine, smoked, gambled with dice, or fucked whores. And sometimes, they did all of the above, which kept them more than adequately distracted.
Tritonia was rich with minerals and a salt mine, located three thousand feet to the north, provided noise to disguise my daily efforts to tunnel into the floor. Every morning, I waited for the miners to commence their digging. For nine whole moon cycles, no one had caught on to my activities.
Sea God, be merciful, and allow my luck to continue. Please… grant me freedom from this hellhole!
