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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Corrick
Ithought I knew the Hold from every angle.
This is the first time I’ve seen it as a prisoner.
I’m locked in a cell on the lowest level, where smugglers and illegal traders are usually kept. It’s either ironic or poetic justice; I can’t decide which. Maybe simple necessity, after the front half of the prison was damaged in the attacks. The halls are torchlit, but the cells are shadowed and dim, and as usual, the smell leaves something to be desired. The stone floor is strewn with a thin layer of loose straw, but the walls are stained with every bodily fluid you can imagine.
I thought for sure we’d be taken to the palace, where I’d have to face my brother’s accusations. Instead, we were brought here, where one of my guards stammered through reading me my charges. He kept glancing up, looking at me, then at Commander Riley, as if he expected the officer to let go of my chains and explain this was all a big prank.
Smuggling. Sedition. Treason. I’ve heard the words before, on a nearly daily basis, but they’ve never carried so much weight.
At my side, Tessa was trembling in her shackles, her breathing quick and shallow.
“They won’t hurt you,” I said to her softly. “They’re good men. Just do what they say.”
“No talking,” the guard snapped, but then he blanched a bit and added, “Your Highness.”
Tessa is in a cell at the opposite end of the hall now, on the opposite side. The guards haven’t been rough with either of us, but I don’t want to give them cause, so I haven’t tried to yell to her. I can practically feel her worries from here.
Or maybe what I’m feeling is my own worries.
I don’t know what Harristan will do.
I know what he’d expect me to do, and that’s not very comforting.
I never realized it, but the straw on the cell floors is truly torture. It does nothing to spare me from the cold hardness of the stone, and itches through my clothes when I move. I feel every bruise acutely. My shoulder hasn’t stopped aching, and the wound Tessa stitched over my eye is throbbing, matched only by the pulsing pain in my swollen ankle. My stomach has been making a case for breakfast for a while now. Without sunlight, I have no way to mark the passing of time, so minutes feel like hours. I know the guards change shift at midday, but when it happens, it comes as a surprise anyway, somehow feeling both earlier and later than I expected.
I don’t expect to sleep, but my body has other ideas. I doze fitfully, waking with a jolt every time I hear a boot scrape on stone, but no one comes to my bars. No food, no water, nothing.
Bythe time the guards change shift for the evening, I’m ready to beg.
I press my forehead against the floor and bite at my lip, clenching my eyes closed. I survived what happened in the village; I can surely survive a day without food and water.
But I was wrong about the straw. This thirst is worse. My head pounds now, and the guard’s hesitant voice is loud in my memories.
Smuggling. Sedition. Treason.
I stood in my quarters and swore to Harristan that I wasn’t involved. And I’m not. Not the way he thinks.
What did he say to me about my feigned friendship with Allisander?
All that matters is what it looks like.
My throat tightens. I’m used to people hating me, but this is altogether different.
I’m not used to my brother hating me.
I’ve stopped hoping he would send for me, and I’ve begun dreading it. The thought of his disappointment weighs on me more heavily than every bruise the rebels gave me. Everything I’ve done to protect him, and I undid it all with pure selfishness. I didn’t need to leave the palace. I didn’t need to spend hours in the Wilds every morning. What did I do? Help a few dozen people prolong the inevitable?
And now Tessa is in the Hold. The one thing I always hoped to avoid.
I wonder who Harristan will choose to dole out punishment. Who will replace me as King’s Justice? My brother’s circle of trust is not broad.
A name pierces my thoughts like a needle.
Allisander.
