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In any case, criminals weren’t the only jailed souls languishing multiple levels beneath the earth. Spring’s mad were ensconced in a separate wing of the dungeon. I wanted to see if their living conditions—if it could remotely be called living—differed from Autumn. It shamed me to realize I had no idea.
Poet would know how each Season compared. He would have made the effort to know.
I got as far as the top of the stairway, which disappeared into a void. It wasn’t the darkness, nor the mucus-colored walls, nor the odor of urine and decay that had me gripping the banister. Rather, it was the solitary groan reaching out from those depths.
It was the feeble sound a person made when they were about to wilt. My father had produced that same noise when he died, when the Spring forest had gone still for the slightest moment, long enough to acknowledge his last breath. I’d tried to bury that moment under countless sunrises and sunsets.
Likewise, such a din was the reason I had avoided the dungeon back in Autumn. I’d let Mother handle the gruesome affairs and averted my eyes as guilty prisoners met their seasonal maker on the scaffold. Dealing with those horrors would be forthcoming, but I hadn’t planned to endure them until forced to.
Do not let that subdue you. Have courage.
You are tougher than you imagine.
My impulse said so. Be that as it may, misgivings slithered in like a serpent, telling me I was not prepared for this.
Crimson stained the railing, streaked as if blood permeated the guards’ hands often. Iron manacles rattled, the noise rippling up the stairway. Someone whimpered—then shrieked in agony, the sound lashing through the distance.
Like a coward, I fled. Tail tucked, I bolted down hallways, pushed past doors, and rushed through a winding passage. I didn’t care where I headed or who saw me. In my dazed state, I knocked into a shoulder, ignoring the startled exclamations of witnesses.
Accusations pricked my mind. The people’s needs mattered more than my timidity. If I couldn’t face the gruesome, I hadn’t a prayer of becoming a stalwart ruler for my people.
My stitches had been removed yesterday, so I grasped my skirt and sprinted without taxing my leg. Noontide drowned me in pale blue as I barreled through a gate. The partition flew open like a maw—and I smacked into Poet’s chest.
“What the fuck—,” he uttered, reeling back.
I scurried from him, and my hip crashed into an urn. The pot hit the ground and cracked open like an egg, scattering chunks of ceramic. Poet’s hands lashed out and snatched my waist, saving me from going down with the mess.
My shaky hand clutched my stomach. “Oh,” I trilled. “My apologies.”
Recognition flashed across Poet’s face. His eyebrows stitched together as his attention shifted between the urn and me. “Never mind that, sweeting. People throw themselves in my direction all the time.”
We stood in a courtyard overlooking an herb plot twenty paces away. A fleet of clouds sailed overhead, their edges frayed and shredded like gauze. Beneath the neighboring archway, water slid down three grades of flat rock and trickled into a shallow pool.
He wore a jacket adorned in copper chains. Beneath each eye, the same metallic paint tapered into four points like webbed fingers, each one ending in dots. Those decorated orbs trained on me, tapering in concern. “Briar—”
“I’m fine,” I muttered.
Recollections diced through my mind. The scrape of the manacles. The prisoner’s desolate, pleading whine. The scream that followed.
Poet surveyed me. After scanning the courtyard, he guided me beneath the archway. Tucked away there, no one would see us. No one would see him ignore my protest, pull me close, and nestle my head against his sternum.
I told Poet what had happened, my lips moving against his jacket, my exhalations skating across his pulse. The more I drained myself, the more I burrowed into him.
He caressed my ear, rubbing the lobe with the pad of his thumb. After I finished, he waited a moment before responding.
“It took me longer to brave those stairs than it took you,” he confided. “In my humble fool’s opinion, you don’t know your own strength. For pity’s sake, look at what you did to the urn. Loutish princess.”
Humor broke through my distress. I let out an affronted laugh, a sound that reached Poet’s ears and caused his visage to soften.
“Much better,” he intoned. “Humor has its merits, after all.”
His soothing timbre did the opposite of what it should. Renewed agitation stirred up like debris inside me. My voice and fingers continued to quiver, no longer from sorrow but from something highly improper yet instinctual.
“With you, I think one thing. Then I say and do another,” I admitted.
“That’s called being human,” Poet reminded me. “You’re not alone there.”
Perhaps. This jester didn’t owe me anything. Other than with Royals and lovelorn minstrels, he had a right to do as he pleased, with whomever he pleased.
