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The guard bangs the bars again. After seven years in this place, I know better than to delay. I fold the letter again, slip it into the leather pouch where I keep all of her letters, seventy-nine in total since she stopped writing nine months ago, and toss the pouch on my neatly-made bunk.
There’s no point hiding the pouch or its contents. Nothing is sacred here. If the guards want to search my cell, confiscate her letters, read them, post them on the prison walls, there’s nothing I can do. If they destroyed her letters, I might have a little recourse, since I’ve fought and bargained for a few protections. But I couldn’t stop them.
I brush off my black uniform and slip my feet into the soft slippers we’re made to wear so that kicking hurts no one but ourselves, and move to the cell bars. I turn and put my hands behind my back, wrists close together, so the guard can cuff me. The irony of being cuffed, instead of doing the cuffing, stopped amusing me years ago.
The guard snaps metal manacles around my wrists. They’re normal metal. The crystal torc around my neck is what keeps me blocked off from the magic that I could use to escape this place. The manacles theoretically keep me from fighting the guards, but since they have control of their Elements and I don’t, truthfully, there is no fighting them.
Once I’m cuffed, the guard opens the cell and gestures me in front of him. I walk where I’m told to walk, through the prison’s twisting corridors, where my slippered steps are deadened by layers of enchantments. I don’t look into the cells on either side of the corridor. I have few friends in this place, and more than a few enemies, having put them or their allies in here. Fortunately, we don’t pass any of their cells.
“Turn right here,” the guard says.
I turn where I’m told, into one of the small chambers where prisoners meet with visitors. A man rises from the visitor’s chair. He’s not my hot-pink-haired love, but his ash-blond hair is almost as familiar. I couldn’t forbid him from coming the way I have Rachel, so he’s visited faithfully every month.
Darwin, former fae prince and current house-husband, steps forward and hugs me. He tips his head around me to glare at the guard. “Why is he bound?”
“No one told me not to,” the guard responds tonelessly.
“Take these off and get his belongings. I know the Crystal-spinner won’t be here to release him for a few minutes, but there’s no reason for him to be bound. He’s a free man.”
My knees go out from under me.
Darwin’s there to guide me to the chair he just vacated. He leaves his hand on my shoulder while he has a terse argument with the guard that I barely hear.
Two thousand, six hundred and fourteen days. Over five hundred letters protesting my innocence to anyone I thought might listen. No appeal. No hearing. No warning. And now I’m free.
Once the guard stomps off, Darwin sinks into the chair opposite me. “Lords, are you okay?”
I’m not. How could I be? But I nod. “How?”
“It’s complicated.” Darwin sighs. “I wish I could take you home and catch you up on everything that’s happened and let you enjoy your freedom until this place is nothing but a faded memory, but I can’t. We have to go straight to London. Amalla Saturn is waiting to meet you.”
“Amalla ... Saturn?” I may have forgotten a few details over the years, but I’m confident I’ve never known anyone by that name.
Darwin nods. “Titular Primus of the Capricorn Guild.”
Lots to unpack in that sentence. I’m vaguely aware of the Capricorn Guild. The Twelve Guilds are a cross-over between the Seen and Unseen worlds. Normal, non- magickal humans infest the Seen guilds; I’ve never had anything to do with them. On the other side of the Veil, the Unseen guilds are chapterhouses, sanctuaries, and libraries for mages who focus on the astrological aspects of their Elements. All Capricorns are eligible to join the guild and I received my invitation when I turned eighteen like every other mage, but I never responded. What does the Capricorn Guild want with me now?
“Titular?” I ask.
Darwin crosses one leg over the other. He’s dressed better than he has been on his previous visits. The months where he showed up in ripped tees and jeans, with milk stains on his chest and shoulders, were my favorites. Those visits gave me days of amusement. Today, in silk and embroidered velvet, he looks like the prince he used to be.
“The Capricorni are a secretive lot,” he tells me. “Ms. Saturn sent my father a message saying the Sea Goat’s Helm spoke your name and the Sapphire Chair sits empty. We hit the books and found that the Sapphire Chair is pretty much a throne for the head of the Guild, the Capricorn Primus. If the chair’s empty, that means Ms. Saturn isn’t the head of the Guild, although she seems to speak for them.”
Knowing the traits of my sign, I can’t see a group of Capricorns accepting any single individual speaking for them. “Huh. And she said their moldy artifact spoke my name?”
It’s less surprising that a magickal artifact would speak, since pretty much anything in the Unseen World that’s possessed by a spiritcanspeak, than it would say my name.
Darwin nods. “Middle name and all.Onslow.”
I remember back to the transcript I looked at way too many times the year he was a freshman and I was head of security for Bevington College.
“Careful,junior.” Darwin goes by his middle name, but he’s named after the father he hates, Callan Darwin Dùbhghlas.
Darwin starts to retort when the door opens. A red-robed and helmeted guard sweeps in. Just from the brisk demeanor, I can tell this is a different guard. Not that they ever let us know their names or see their faces.
This guard moves straight to me, puts a finger on either side of the crystal collar around my throat, and chants for a minute. The weight against my neck that’s been my constant companion for seven years disappears.
My Element rushes in like a tidal wave. It rocks me back and forth in my chair. My skin sheens with moisture. I let my Element fill every cell, before I exert my will over it. A light mist rises from my skin. I harness the tide into a quiet pond of power that sits low in my belly. It lets my center of gravity, which has been off for so long I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be comfortable in my own body, drop to a point where I feel balanced again.
I take a deep breath, roll my shoulders back, and grin at Darwin.
He nods. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you. I’d like a fuller explanation of how I’ve become a free man on the way to meet Ms. Saturn.”
“You’ll get one,” he promises.
