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“You will remain silent!” the lieutenant commanded, a line of sweat breaking out on his brow.
I stared at him, trying to make sense of what was happening. Scanning the rest of his men, I could see no familiar faces. What was going on?
The lieutenant indicated two of his men. They looked even more uncomfortable than him as they stepped forward to grip one of my upper arms each.
When I didn’t resist, a third guard tried to remove Ember from my grasp. She snarled and snapped at him, and he whisked his hand away, looking to the lieutenant.
After a brief hesitation, the lieutenant indicated for him to leave Ember with me. I held the fox even tighter as the guards hustled me toward the hall.
Before they had me fully out of the room, however, I dug in my heels and stopped, twisting to look backward. The sudden resistance took them by surprise, and I managed to pull part way free of their hold.
“Go to Amara!” I said, my eyes on my uncle. “At the Guild. Tell her who you are and ask her to give you my coin. You have to go to Tarin and tell my parents—”
“Enough!” The lieutenant’s shout cut across my words, silencing me.
The two guards recovered their hold, gripping me more tightly this time, and I was marched awkwardly up the hall. I managed one last look back over my shoulder at my astonished family who were still pressed against their living room wall.
Outside, a covered wooden cart awaited us. I was half thrust, half lifted into the back. The movement dislodged Ember who landed on her feet inside the cart, disappearing unnoticed into the shadows at the back.
Heavy gloves were placed over my hands before they were bound behind my back, and I noticed that the guards all wore gloves of their own. Other than their faces, they didn’t have an inch of skin showing anywhere.
When I tried to ask what was going on, they all reacted violently, one of them shoving a heavy gag into my mouth. I made no attempt to resist since it seemed pointless. Even if I could get free from so many guards, where would I go? They were already taking me to the one place I wanted to go—the palace where Amara and Nik were currently located.
But when we arrived in the palace courtyard, there was no sign of either of them. The handful of servants and officials who were moving in and out of the palace and surrounding buildings all stopped to stare at me, but no one offered assistance.
The guards dragged me roughly off the back of the cart and hustled me through a side door and down a set of stairs hewn from stone. I could barely catch my breath with the gag blocking my mouth, and it was hard to see past the tears.
What sort of misunderstanding had sent the guards after me in such an intense manner? If they had just asked me to accompany them back to the palace, I would have come willingly.
Unbidden, Grey’s final words came into my mind. I tried to push them away, but they took root, blossoming and growing along with the fear in my belly.
A clanking sounded as yet another guard opened the metal bars of a cell door. When they tried to thrust me inside, I struggled, wriggling from side to side and making garbled, muffled exclamations.
Once again they all reacted out of proportion to my actions, but when I twisted far enough to catch the eye of the lieutenant and thrust out my bound hands, he hesitated. Glancing at the others, he shrugged and removed my bonds.
As soon as the final knot came loose, I was shoved into the cell. Losing my footing, I sprawled across the straw-covered floor. I didn’t bother to get back to my feet, merely rolling onto my back and ripping off the gloves. With them gone, I reached up and pulled off the strip of material holding my gag in place. The second I spat it out, I began coughing, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. The gag hadn’t actually blocked my airways, but I had been fighting my panicked mind the entire time, trying to reassure it of that fact.
A distant shout made me sit up just in time to see a streak of orange slip through the bars of my cell. Despite everything, I smiled. I wasn’t alone.
Climbing slowly to my feet, I picked up Ember and held her close, taking comfort from her warm presence. The cell door had been locked, and no one was in sight. Across from my cell was nothing but a stone wall. I pressed myself against the bars, trying to peer back down the corridor toward the stairs, wanting to see if I was truly alone.
I wasn’t.
Sitting in a chair at the bottom of the stairs was a man. He wasn’t dressed in the blue and gold livery of a servant or royal guard, and he didn’t carry himself like one either. Even from this distance, I could see the quality of his clothes—far finer than a mere servant—and sense the indefinable air of power that hung around him. Even his age seemed too advanced for a guard. And yet he was clearly guarding the row of cells. Why?
He saw me watching and nodded, an unexpected courtesy in the setting. When I opened my mouth to call out to him, though, he shook his head sharply, his eyes conveying a warning. Remembering the gag, I snapped my mouth shut. There was no point talking if he didn’t want to hear what I had to say, and I didn’t want to end up gagged again. Neither did I want to bring more trouble on myself when I didn’t even know what original crime I had committed.
Had the royal family been offended that I had gone into the city instead of coming straight to meet them? It was impossible to imagine they would react in such an exaggerated manner over an issue of etiquette.
Did they blame me for killing Grey, however unintentionally? Perhaps they had intended to question him after his capture and were angry to have missed the opportunity?
I stayed at the bars, waiting to see what would happen, but as the hours ticked by, I couldn’t maintain a state of alert. At first I had thought my imprisonment a temporary measure and expected someone to arrive to speak to me at any moment. But no one came.
The old man remained in his seat as the hours wore on, and eventually I stretched out on the single, lumpy mattress that lay on the cell floor. Ember curled beside me, and thanks to her familiar presence, I even managed to doze, exhausted from the travel. But when the sound of an opening door echoed down the cells, I flew back to my feet, rushing to the bars.
But the person who came through the door wasn’t an incensed Nik or outraged Amara. A man in the livery of a servant handed the old man on the chair a tray of food and immediately withdrew. The man carefully removed one bowl and plate from the tray before carrying the rest down the corridor in my direction.
“Stand back,” he ordered in a deep voice that commanded instant obedience. “I’ll only give you one warning.”
