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And these aren’t even the real dungeons,I think bitterly.These are just the cozy holding cells they keep you in until you’re prosecuted.
I keep track of every sound in the dungeon, waiting for the familiar rhythm of boots in the hall alerting me to the guards. But all I hear is the skittering of a rat across the cold stone floor, the nearly imperceptible sound of a spider weaving a web of silk in the window above me and the slow drip, drip, drip of water from the ceiling.
Somehow, all of this is still a step up from the alleyways I used to sleep in.
It was raining the night my father decided that parenting wasn’t for him, and finding a dry place to sleep on the streets was nearly impossible.
I would have killed for the lice-covered mattress there.
Every day, I wondered if the guards would arrest me for stealing from the vendors at the square, and every night, I worried that the slavers would come for me.
I never imagined that I would demand to be arrested, or that I’d end up engaged to an arse-faced prince, or even that I'd spend my last nights on earth in the royal dungeons.
I sigh and rub my temples.
What have I done?
None of the guards have come back to tell me what’s next, maybe because it’s obvious. I run a hand over my neck where the hangman’s noose will rest and wonder for the hundredth time if damning myself really was the best solution.
Suddenly, Zai’s and Mel’s warnings about my impetuous nature feel valid.
I hadn’t thought it through before. It seemed like my only option in the heat of the moment, but now that my death lingers in the air like a promise, that certainty is feeling a little less solid.
For all the good that knowledge does me now.
